The production of chemical worlds: Territory and field science in global agribusiness

Journal article, 2013

This article explores how the marketing practices of an agrichemical corporation can be understood in relation to particular landscapes and soils. Surveying material from a three-year ethnography of farming practices in Sri Lanka, the text interrogates how paddy fields are rendered expressive for farmers. This ‘territorialisation’, the article suggests, is not to be understood as an effort to claim authority over a geographical space, but rather as a ‘worlding’ technique. Thus, the globalisation and agricultural modernisation promoted by the agrichemical corporation co-exists with an affirmation of the uniqueness of particular soils, and with a celebration of site-specific rural knowledges over general physical principles.