Skip to main content

Search

EversClifton VtP Annotation: [FallArmyWorm]

This visualization articulates how the Fall Army Worm, its effects, and 'solutions' to it are discursively constructed, and thus imbued with power relations. Agrochemical manufacturers make use of authoritative signification and combined with government support influence smallholder farmers. A profit-driven agrochemical relationship is legitimized. However, there is a scientific discourse that contests any need for a chemical response to the Fall Army Worm.

EversClifton VtP Annotation: [FallArmyWormElaboration]

The ethnographic message in the caption is clear. A more explicit theoretical mention of how discourse and power relate would enable a reader to also pursue a more theoretical engagement with the ethnographic material. It may also be interesting and generative to perhaps speculate how a discourse that 'listens' to the more-than-human - rather than only toxic chemicals (I am thinking here of the worm itself) - could be arrived at, if such is at all conceivable. 

EversClifton VtP Annotation: [FallArmyWormImage]

The image is created by the ethnographer. It is a direct re-presentation i.e. a point and shoot image. The composition | scale of attention | aesthetic appear to be of less concern than how the image provides an imediate everyday encounter with the discourses that the smallholder farmers might. The basic nature of the image is appealing to me given what takes me into that field, somewhat unfiltered (as much as that is even possible). A higher resolution image, however, would have enabled the viewer to read the posters/flyers etc.

EversClifton VtP Annotation: [ImageImprovement]

Zooming into the image to make the documents more legible would be helpful. It may also be worth considering juxtaposing - through manipulating the image with photoshop - the discourses with words from farmers, scientists, and alternative images of the Fall Army Worm. The juxtaposition could magnify how there are competing discourses. 

EversClifton VtP Annotation: [toxics]

Toxic communities are constructed and produced through discursive means. And caught up in these discourses are not just humans (and their livelihoods) but nonhuman beings. To contest toxicity requires not just challenging particular socio-economic systems that perpetuate, validate and legitimize particular discursive productions of communities as toxic is not enough. We also need to work differently disentangling our relationship with those nonhuman being that are ironically being produced as the pollutants (and threat). 

Dahake Shilpa VTP Annotation

The visualization captures the illegibilty of the printed paraphernalias, highlighting the nature of Fall Army Worm infestations, their side-effects and solutions, circulated for the farmers. Such misrepresentations are intentionally created by the agrochemical manufacturers to gain profits, moreover, the government agency is also promoting this. This has created a sense of insecurity and fear of loss among the farmers, hence resort to toxification of fields.