‘Farming is learned in the field, not in the classroom!’ – Enacting Sustainability as Social Organisation in Southeastern European Farming
Dimitrievski, Ivanche LU and Jönsson, Håkan LU
(2026)
In Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research
18(2).
- Abstract
- Sustainability in agriculture is as much a policy goal as a cultural and political project: privileging scientific expertise, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it defines what counts as competent farming, sidelining the everyday, hands-on skills that actually sustain it. This paper examines how skills shape sustainability in Southeastern European agriculture, focusing on North Macedonia and Greece. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, and specifically the concepts of in-difference and tinkering, we analyse three ethnographic episodes – ploughing, spraying, and hoeing – to show how farmers enact multiple versions of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Beyond demonstrating multiplicity, our findings reveal that skill... (More)
- Sustainability in agriculture is as much a policy goal as a cultural and political project: privileging scientific expertise, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it defines what counts as competent farming, sidelining the everyday, hands-on skills that actually sustain it. This paper examines how skills shape sustainability in Southeastern European agriculture, focusing on North Macedonia and Greece. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, and specifically the concepts of in-difference and tinkering, we analyse three ethnographic episodes – ploughing, spraying, and hoeing – to show how farmers enact multiple versions of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Beyond demonstrating multiplicity, our findings reveal that skill itself functions as a central coordinating mechanism, mediating between inherited knowledge, technoscientific guidance, social expectations, and labour organisation. Yet this coordination is not seamless: in making different sustainability demands workable in practice, certain forms of labour, knowledge, and responsibility are set apart and set aside. By focusing on the practices through which skill coordinates these demands, our approach reveals dynamics that remain hidden when policy focuses mostly on measurable outcomes, providing a basis for more socially just and inclusive sustainability interventions. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/b8e8c4ec-1438-43b4-8c16-110a26dd355d
- author
- Dimitrievski, Ivanche
LU
and Jönsson, Håkan
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2026-08-10
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- skills, Everyday Farming practices, Sustainable farming, Tinkering, In-Difference
- in
- Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research
- volume
- 18
- issue
- 2
- pages
- 22 pages
- publisher
- Linkoping University Electronic Press
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:105047466926
- ISSN
- 2000-1525
- DOI
- 10.3384/cu.2026.18.2
- project
- NEXTFOOD
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- b8e8c4ec-1438-43b4-8c16-110a26dd355d
- date added to LUP
- 2026-08-12 10:59:07
- date last changed
- 2026-09-07 04:02:09
@article{b8e8c4ec-1438-43b4-8c16-110a26dd355d,
abstract = {{Sustainability in agriculture is as much a policy goal as a cultural and political project: privileging scientific expertise, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it defines what counts as competent farming, sidelining the everyday, hands-on skills that actually sustain it. This paper examines how skills shape sustainability in Southeastern European agriculture, focusing on North Macedonia and Greece. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, and specifically the concepts of in-difference and tinkering, we analyse three ethnographic episodes – ploughing, spraying, and hoeing – to show how farmers enact multiple versions of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. Beyond demonstrating multiplicity, our findings reveal that skill itself functions as a central coordinating mechanism, mediating between inherited knowledge, technoscientific guidance, social expectations, and labour organisation. Yet this coordination is not seamless: in making different sustainability demands workable in practice, certain forms of labour, knowledge, and responsibility are set apart and set aside. By focusing on the practices through which skill coordinates these demands, our approach reveals dynamics that remain hidden when policy focuses mostly on measurable outcomes, providing a basis for more socially just and inclusive sustainability interventions.}},
author = {{Dimitrievski, Ivanche and Jönsson, Håkan}},
issn = {{2000-1525}},
keywords = {{skills; Everyday Farming practices; Sustainable farming; Tinkering; In-Difference}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{08}},
number = {{2}},
publisher = {{Linkoping University Electronic Press}},
series = {{Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research}},
title = {{‘Farming is learned in the field, not in the classroom!’ – Enacting Sustainability as Social Organisation in Southeastern European Farming}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.3384/cu.2026.18.2}},
doi = {{10.3384/cu.2026.18.2}},
volume = {{18}},
year = {{2026}},
}