SOC433H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Colony Collapse Disorder, Environmental Toxicology, Agrochemical
1
Kleinman, Daniel L. and Sainath Suryanarayanan: Dying Bees and the Social Production of
Ignorance
• role of certain agricultural insecticides in causing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)—the
phenomenon of accelerated bee die-offs in the United States and elsewhere—as an opportunity to
contribute to the emerging literature on the social production of ignorance
• we develop the concept of epistemic form.
• Epistemic form is the suite of concepts, methods, measures, and interpretations that shapes the
ways in which actors produce knowledge and ignorance in their professional/intellectual fields of
practice.
• examine how the (historically influenced) privileging of certain epistemic forms intersects with
the social dynamics of academic, regulatory, and corporate organizations to lead to the
institutionalization of three interrelated and overlapping types of ignorance
• As the winter of 2006-07 began to thaw, Walker saw thousands of his seemingly healthy honey
bee hives collapse in a manner that he had never before seen. Adult honey bees suddenly just
disappeared, leaving no traces of their bodies
• He soon learned that hundreds of other beekeepers—commercial, sideliner, and hobbyists1—
were having similarly baffling experiences all across the United States
• CCD is of enormous social, economic, and environmental concern because it has accelerated the
decline of the primary pollinating species in North America.
• Why are bees important:
o Most existing populations of honey bees in the United States are managed by commercial
beekeepers, and thus, CCD threatens the political economy of US agriculture
o rely heavily upon the pollination services provided by managed honey bees
• A honey bee colony suffering from CCD is characterized by a sudden loss in its adult population,
leaving behind the queen, young emerging adults and brood as the only remaining denizens
• Detailed anatomical and molecular analyses of the remaining bees from CCD colonies by
researchers reveal signs of unusually high levels of infection
• causal role of certain agricultural insecticides in CCD as an opportunity to examine the kinds of
knowledge production practices and, by corollary, ignorance that are given legitimacy in the
controversy over CCD, and we consider their consequences for the actors who have stakes in the
outcome
• explore how the privileging of certain taken-for-granted approaches to knowledge production
leads to a systematic production of ignorance, and we consider the effects of this ignorance on US
regulatory policy and the lives of different stakeholders
why are there variations in results?
• University bee toxicologists, agrochemical companies, farmers, and commercial beekeepers have
different stakes in understanding CCD and regulating the risk factors associated with it.
• These actors have contrasting approaches and make different claims about the causal role of
manufactured agrochemicals in CCD.
• their differing knowledge claims have different implications not only for research agenda setting
but also for regulatory policies
• Typically, US regulators and agrochemical companies privilege toxicologists’ approaches over
the alternative orientations of commercial beekeeper groups
• how ‘‘ignorance emerges from within the rules, procedures and protocols . . .’’ that constitute
different professional and intellectual fields of practice.
The Social Production of Ignorance
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
2
• By looking in certain ways, one leaves unexamined other ways of understanding. As a result, the
production of knowledge is always matched by the corresponding production of ignorance or
‘‘nonknowledge’’
• the social production of ignorance belongs to a broader politics of knowledge
• systematic production of ignorance through the lens of ‘‘undone science’’
• Undone science refers to the kinds of research that get systematically ignored, left unfunded, or
incomplete, but is recognized by other actors as being worthy of serious consideration
• Example:
o Frickel and Vincent (2007) provide further hints into the influence of disciplinary fields
on regulatory knowledge gaps’’ in their analysis of expert understandings of
contamination in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They argue that
scientific disciplinary practices create knowledge gaps—areas where there is an absence
of understanding as the result of the imposition of ‘‘a particular framework of theoretical
assumptions, standards of evidence, and styles of interpretation’’
• scientific disciplinary fields are characterized not only by differing approaches to knowledge
making—what Knorr-Cetina (1999) calls ‘‘epistemic cultures.’’ They are also simultaneously
‘‘scientific cultures of nonknowledge,’’ whose differing orientations to control and complexity
lead actors to treat what is not known in different ways. Social actors utilize these differing
paradigms of nonknowledge in strategic and flexible ways toward advancing their own interests
CCD and production of Ignorance
• the roots of the work of these scientists are found in the research done by early entomologists and
honey bee scientists, who were associated directly or indirectly with the US Department of
Agriculture beginning in the late nineteenth century; their work is inextricably tied to a highly
chemically dependent agriculture
• Among the studies done by these scientists around the middle of the twentieth century was
research in which ‘‘treatment’’ groups of bees were exposed to predetermined amounts of
specific chemicals, and aspects of their mortality were compared to the nontreatment ‘‘control’’
group Among the studies done by these scientists around the middle of the twentieth century was
research in which ‘‘treatment’’ groups of bees were exposed to predetermined amounts of
specific chemicals, and aspects of their mortality were compared to the nontreatment ‘‘control’’
group
• . In highly controlled laboratory and field experiments, scientists measured each chemical’s lethal
effects statistically, using representations like ‘‘dosage-mortality curves,’’ ‘‘time-mortality
curves,’’ and ‘‘time-concentration’’ curves
• This epistemic form, which came to be dominant in environmental toxicology research on bees,
was structured to measure individual factors and their causal roles. It was designed to ascertain
rapidly appearing lethal effects on specific individual insect targets
• epistemic form is considered the legitimate means for understanding the potentially harmful real-
world effects of synthetic chemicals on bees. It is the form underlying the EPA’s regulation and is
used by agrochemical companies to justify their existing practices.
• commercial beekeepers offer an alternative epistemic form, which, with different methods of
data collection, observation, measures, and analysis, suggests explanations that challenge those
dominant in the CCD controversy.
• But their form and associated findings are largely ignored. There is a final aspect of the epistemic
form of toxicologists doing bee research that contributes to the production of ignorance
• This amounts to a preference for false
negativesoverfalsepositivesandmeansthatresearchersmayconcludethat there are ‘‘no differences’’
between treated and untreated honey bee hives, when there could be.
KEY POINTS FROM THIS SECTION:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
