Technology and restructuring the social field of dairy farming : hybrid capitals, ‘stockmanship’ and automatic milking systems

Butler, Deborah; Holloway, Lewis

Abstract

This paper draws on research exploring robotic and information technologies in livestock agriculture. Using Automatic Milking Systems (AMS) as an example we use the work of Bourdieu to illustrate how technology can be seen as restructuring the practices of dairy farming, the nature of what it is to be a dairy farmer, and the wider field of dairy farming. Approaching technology in this way and by drawing particularly upon the ‘thinking tools’ (Grenfell, 2008) of Pierre Bourdieu, namely field, capital and habitus, the paper critically examines the relevance of Bourdieu’s thought to the study of technology. In the heterogeneous agricultural context of dairy farming, we expand on Bourdieu’s types of capital to define what we have called ‘hybrid’ capital involving human-cow-technology collectives. The concept of hybrid capital expresses how the use of a new technology can shift power relations within the dairy field, affecting human-animal relations and changing the habitus of the stock person. Hybrid capital is produced through a co-investment of stock keepers, cows and technologies, and can become economically and culturally valuable within a rapidly restructuring dairying field when invested in making dairy farming more efficient and changing farmers’ social status and work-life balance. The paper shows how AMS and this emergent hybrid capital is associated with new but contested definitions of what counts as ‘good’ dairy farming practice, and with the emergence of new modes of dairy farmer habitus, within a wider dairy farming field whose contours are being redrawn through the implementation of new robotic and information technologies.

Citation

Butler, D., & Holloway, L. (2016). Technology and restructuring the social field of dairy farming : hybrid capitals, ‘stockmanship’ and automatic milking systems. Sociologia ruralis, 56(4), 513-530. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12103

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 16, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Sep 2, 2015
• Publication Date: 2016-10
• Deposit Date: Aug 4, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: Sociologia ruralis
• Print ISSN: 0038-0199
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9523
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 513-530
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12103
• Keywords: Geography
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/377335
• Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soru.12103/abstract
• Additional Information: Authors' accepted manuscript of article published in: Sociologia ruralis, 2016, v.56, issue 4