"Here, cows' bodies, movements and subjectivities are trained and manipulated in accordance with a persistent discourse of agricultural productivism"

Cows' subjectivities? Really?

Re-capturing bovine life: Robot–cow relationships, freedom and control in dairy farming

from ScienceDirect Publication: Journal of Rural Studies

Available online 26 February 2013
Publication year: 2013
Source:Journal of Rural Studies

Robotic milking machines are novel technologies that take over the labour of dairy farming and reduce the need for human–animal interactions. Replacing ‘conventional’ twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, it is claimed that robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. Such claims are certainly contested, but the installation of robotic milkers clearly establishes new forms of relationships between cows, technologies and dairy farmers. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with farmers and observational research on farms to examine relationships between representations of robotic milkers as a technology which gives cows freedom and autonomy, and practices and mechanisms which suggest that bovine life is re-captured and disciplined in important ways through the introduction of this technology. We focus on two issues. First, we explore changes in what it is to ‘be bovine’ in relation to milking robots, drawing on a combination of a discursive framing of cows' behaviour and ‘nature’ by dairy farmers and on-farm observation of cow-technology interaction. Second, we examine how such changes in bovinity might be articulated through conceptions of biopower which focus on knowledge of and intervention in the life of both the individual cow body and the herd. Such knowledge and intervention in the newly created sites of the robotic milking dairy are integral to these remodelled, disciplinary farm systems. Here, cows' bodies, movements and subjectivities are trained and manipulated in accordance with a persistent discourse of agricultural productivism. In discussing these issues, the paper seeks to show how particular representations of cows, the production of embodied bovine behaviours, technological interventions and micro-geographies contribute to a re-capturing and re-enclosure of bovine life which counters the liberatory discourses which are used to promote robotic milking.

Highlights

► The paper examines notions of bovine autonomy in robotic milking systems. ► Concepts of biopower in human–animal–technology relationships are developed. ► Manufacturers' claims and on-farm experiences of robotic milking are compared. ► The paper examines how bovine life is ‘recaptured’ in robotic milking systems.

Watkins and Miller

Things that didn't make it into the memo.

First, in something that Miller later identifies as the "alteration principle," he insists that in principle, any social fact could be changed by the "relevant" individuals, given the will and sufficient information about the situation. Miller seems unhappy this, though I'm not 100% clear on why. His idea seems to be something like a false consciousness argument: that it is possible for individuals to be systematically confused about what they want, and so prevented from acting to change collective practices that damage their interests. In contrast, I actually like this idea a lot as a way to express the essential mutability of social relations. Of course, one needs to be more explicit than (the ideologically tinged) Watkins of what's involved here: the "relevant individuals" are at the least going to have serious collective action problems (think the difference between individualistic and organized strategies by workers) and very likely going to have systematic conflicts of interest (e.g. the "relevant individuals" in anything involving work conditions are going to include employers).

Second, Watkins says this: "The practical or technological or therapeutic importance of social science largely consists in explaining, and thereby perhaps rendering politically manageable, the unintended and unfortunate consequences of the behavior of interacting individuals” (112-3). This strikes me as a remarkably clear statement of the ideal of "reformist liberal" social science. For one thing, it's pitched in terms of "unintended and unfortunate consequences" as opposed to objective conflicts. But even more interesting is the implicit equation of the "practical" consequences of social science with first technology, then therapy, then political manageability. Talk about a grab-bag of ideological metaphors. Politics is not about conflicting claims, but about "management" of problems that are implied to be akin either to "magneto trouble" (to use Keynes' phrase) or individual maladjustment to society.