The Many-Faced Magic Bean: Tracing Future In Our Hands' Processes of Problematization Transforming the Soybean

Abstract

This thesis studies a small part of nature, the soybean, and how it is enacted and transformed in the reports the Norwegian NGO Framtiden i våre hender (FIVH). I analyze four of their reports, one published in 2008, and three published in 2018. These four reports regard the topic of the soybean and its connection with Norwegian agriculture and aquaculture. Through these reports, FIVH makes an effort to transform the soybean into a problem. I study how they conduct this process of problematization, and what kind of issues emerge from this process. With the method of document analysis and an abductive approach, I show how the reports of FIVH are rich with practices and devices that enable them to make the soybean governable, establish the value of nature-objects, as well as directing policy and recommendations to a set of relevant actors. To describe this wide range of practices, I employ several theoretical concepts of STS such as governmentality-studies, valuation practices, market devices and technologies of numbers. My analysis shows that the process of problematization can be divided into three modes of operation. Mode A describes how FIVH makes the soybean a governable object, and how they map the network of actors in the soy complex. Mode B describes how FIVH makes use of valuation practices to establish the value of different nature objects. Through these valuation practices, issues emerge. Mode C shows how FIVH finalizes the recommendations and policy, and how they prepare the relevant actors in the soy complex to receive these recommendations. This three-part analysis shows how a forest-issue emerged from the 2008 process of problematization. From the process in 2018, a more fragmented story enables six issues to emerge. These issues are issues of land conflicts, pesticides, deforestation, indigenous peoples and labor conditions, as well as an issue of developing alternative feed components. The practices and devices that enable these issues to come to life are complex, varied, and numerous.