- Home
- Conferences
- Reviews
- 2024 International Conference on Chinese Food Culture
- Panel 5-3 What is the Role of Social Scientists in the Design of New AgTech? /Karly Burch
Panel 5-3 What is the Role of Social Scientists in the Design of New AgTech? /Karly Burch
Karly Burch
Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, New Zealand
There is a growing recognition that it is necessary to better understand the social aspects of technology design and adoption, which has expanded opportunities for social scientists to participate in technology development processes. However, social scientists who are included within STEM-dominated research teams can be confronted with various, sometimes conflicting, ideas about where the social is and what social scientists do—a predicament this paper’s authors grapple with as embedded social scientists within agricultural technology (AgTech) projects. Our empirical insights are drawn from interviews with technology developers and project administrators within a transdisciplinary collaborative design project developing artificially intelligent robotics and human-assisted AgTech in Aotearoa New Zealand. We identified five roles social scientists might be expected to fill in innovation projects, which are shaped by how technology developers and project administrators conceptualize where ‘the social’ is within technology design, as well as previous experiences they have had in their education, research and work: the customer service representative, the quality controller, the social manager, the ethicist, and the social scientist. Our analysis highlights how expectations tied to these conceptualized roles might lead to internal conflict and confusion within research teams and for social scientists. We argue that such conflict and confusion can be avoided if inter- and transdisciplinary research teams: (1) begin from a shared understanding that technology design is a social process; (2) allow social scientists to articulate their own roles and value within a project, ideally as full collaborators early in the project design phase; and (3) provide space for social scientists to rearticulate their role flexibly, depending on the diverse social dimensions that may require attention during technology design.
Keywords: AgTech, technology design and adoption, transdisciplinary collaboration, social dimensions, social scientists
Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, New Zealand
There is a growing recognition that it is necessary to better understand the social aspects of technology design and adoption, which has expanded opportunities for social scientists to participate in technology development processes. However, social scientists who are included within STEM-dominated research teams can be confronted with various, sometimes conflicting, ideas about where the social is and what social scientists do—a predicament this paper’s authors grapple with as embedded social scientists within agricultural technology (AgTech) projects. Our empirical insights are drawn from interviews with technology developers and project administrators within a transdisciplinary collaborative design project developing artificially intelligent robotics and human-assisted AgTech in Aotearoa New Zealand. We identified five roles social scientists might be expected to fill in innovation projects, which are shaped by how technology developers and project administrators conceptualize where ‘the social’ is within technology design, as well as previous experiences they have had in their education, research and work: the customer service representative, the quality controller, the social manager, the ethicist, and the social scientist. Our analysis highlights how expectations tied to these conceptualized roles might lead to internal conflict and confusion within research teams and for social scientists. We argue that such conflict and confusion can be avoided if inter- and transdisciplinary research teams: (1) begin from a shared understanding that technology design is a social process; (2) allow social scientists to articulate their own roles and value within a project, ideally as full collaborators early in the project design phase; and (3) provide space for social scientists to rearticulate their role flexibly, depending on the diverse social dimensions that may require attention during technology design.
Keywords: AgTech, technology design and adoption, transdisciplinary collaboration, social dimensions, social scientists