Call for Papers for contributions in the Workshop organised by Peter Moser and Fabio Ballinari, Archives of Rural History (ARH), Bern

Cultivating, minimising and preventing: Strategies for handling the risk-idiosyncrasies in agricultural production

Agricultural activities are particularly risky for a variety of reasons. Firstly because they are mostly exposed to constant but unpredictable weather and climate changes. Secondly, demand and price-decision mechanism for agricultural products depend on a complex mix of state and market influences hardly susceptible by the individual farmer. And, thirdly, agricultural producers are by definition constantly creating new risks themselves through their economic activities of using biotic resources (plants, animals) which are re-produced in the process of production.
The combination of “external” and “internal” risks has, over the centuries, created a multitude of risk aware epistemic cultures within the farming population. Since the middle of the 19th century the emerging agrarian-industrial knowledge society has added to this knowledge a multitude of risk-preventing, risk-minimising and risk-cultivating institutions, discourses and practises for conceptualising and handling the risks in the agricultural sectors of industrial societies.
The aim of the workshop is to stimulate the reflection on the topic of the Symposium by identifying, exploring, contextualising and historicising in exchange with the participants of the workshop the great variety of risks, their conceptualisation and their handling in the agricultural sector in the period from the second half of the 19th to the early 21th century.

Proposals (250 words) in English or French are to be sent to peter.moser@agrararchiv.ch and fabio.ballinari@agrararchiv.ch; the deadline is 10 November 2017.

Bern, 11.10.2017