Wednesday, 12 May 2021

The 2021 KBS Spring Series continues on Tuesday 18th May at 1.00 p.m. with a seminar by Rebecca Tamwebaze, John Walsh & John Lannon.   The seminar format is informal and interactive facilitating discussion and Q&A and will take place on MS Teams   Click here to join the meeting  The title and abstract are below.

Knowledge Sharing through a Bourdieusian Lens: Negotiating practices for a sustainability Logic in Uganda’s Agriculture Sector - Rebecca Tumwebaze, John Walsh and John Lannon

Abstract: There has been widespread modernization of agriculture world over, as countries focus on employing various policy and practice push strategies aimed at making a transition from subsistence-led to commercially viable agriculture. These strategies have led to increased agriculture production and productivity. In Uganda, the agriculture sector has registered improved growth rates over the last five years averaging 3.4 percent per annum. Unfortunately, this growth has come at the expense of overtaxing important environmental, social and economic resources. Amidst the intensification of agriculture activities, unsustainable agriculture practices have led to massive losses of natural vegetation, encroachment on wetlands, high loss of biodiversity, a general low quality of life in farming communities, as well as unregulated and exploitative black markets, which leave many farmers with low levels of profitability. This trend of unsustainable agriculture practices has been aggravated by low levels of awareness among farming communities as well as the failure to support relevant actors/players in the agriculture sector to share knowledge and collectively develop contextual knowledge on sustainable agriculture practices through collaborative learning. This study recognizes that the conceptual space of sustainable agriculture is congested with diverse knowledge characterized by different ideas/perspectives through which sustainability can be achieved. The agriculture space is also inhabited by multiple stakeholders such as farmers, farm households, technical experts, extension agents, scientists, researchers, private sector players, governments and NGOs. These stakeholders from multiple backgrounds possess diverse, sometimes conflicting knowledge (both formal and informal), which if brought together into collaborative learning spaces, can be negotiated to facilitate the collective co-creation, learning, development and application of contextual sustainable agriculture knowledge. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, this study analyses the agriculture sector, its inhabitants (actors), their different dispositions and experiences and their resources, which all have an impact on the final practices that the actors adopt. Drawing on an interpretivist epistemology integrated with the ontological choice of critical realism, the main objective this study seeks to address is to develop a knowledge sharing model for negotiating practices that promote a sustainability logic in Uganda’s Agriculture Sector.

All are warmly welcome, further information on the KBS Spring series can be found at https://www.ul.ie/business/research/research-events