新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Abstract

This paper explores the question of whether the building of a “community of practice” can promote change to sustainable agricultural practices by examining an action research project involving a university research team and a group of farmers in the Dongshan District of Tainan City between 2014 and 2018. The project assumed that such a transformation required a specific mix of farmers’ ecological, cultural, and social capital, and that a collective and social learning approach could facilitate a cumulative process via the construction of a practice community. The author (a research team member) uses Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus to analyze how the project contributed to changes in agricultural practices reflecting the project’s action hypothesis. The article suggests that two action projects (the Farmer’s Co-learning School and Fruit Tree Adoption) represent alternative agricultural fields that emphasize environmentally friendly farming and reciprocity between producers and consumers. However, systematic and scientific knowledge supporting environmentally friendly farming practices that fit the needs of Taiwanese food producers and consumers are still in the development stage, and more time is needed to construct the necessary ecological environment and social network required to maintain sustainable farms and sufficient livelihoods for farmers. This paper argues that an alternative agricultural field can help farmers adhere to a sustainable transformation in two ways: (a) by constructing and maintaining an alternative “good farmers” identity based on “environmental friendliness” via dialogue among farmers and between farmers and consumers, and (b) by introducing soil microorganism cultivation and biological control techniques to help farmers understand and enact ecological farming practices. Project results indicate that the local farmer participants acquired ecological, cultural, and social capital for a transformation to sustainable farming. One remaining challenge is the self-organizing of local farmers in a manner that supports the ongoing operation and expansion of the practice community, resulting in the sustainable transformation of regional agriculture.