Course number

G-ECON31 6A594 LE43 G-ECON31 6A594 LE82

Course title(and course International Agribusiness Studies
title inInternational Agribusiness Studies
English)Target year

Number of
1st year students or above credits

Instructor's
name, job title,and departmentof affiliation

2

Graduate School of Economics
Professor,HISANO SHUJI

Year/semesters 2024/First semester

Days
LectureMon.3,4andLanguage of instruction English
Class style (Face-to-face course)
every
otherweek
periods[Overview and purpose of the course]This course is designed also for a group of students who are supervised by the instructor and therefore
continuously attend the course over several years. A consistent and overarching theme of this course is how
to investigate and understand the power of business as a political actor, especially the role of multinational
corporations vis-a-vis the role of states and civil society actors. In 2019 and 2020, this course provided acomprehensive analysis of social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental issues surrounding specificagricultural products along the agri-food value chains (a global flow of the food from upstream todownstream across borders). In 2021, we turned our attention to one of the ongoing structural processes withprofound influences on agri-food systems and rural economies around the world: financialisation. In 2022, weread together articles on the political economy of healthy and sustainable food systems published inInternational Journal of Health Policy and Management as a special issue on Political Economy of FoodSystems. They include several systemic review articles using various methods of literature search, review,and analysis, while some others use narrative review methods to analyse policy making and governanceprocesses. Through reading these articles, we learned how to conduct qualitative literature reviews andnarrative analyses as well. In 2023, we again turned our eyes to a rather broader framework, or research
agenda, to explore the pressing issues that confront food systems and the emerging responses to them: fromthe contribution of food production to climate breakdown to the emergence of regionalised and regenerative
food systems; from the contribution of alternative proteins in dietary change to the potential of digital
agriculture in sustainability transition; from the persistence of food poverty to the development of urban foodsystems; etc.
Tackling these topics in the past years, what we kept in mind in our review and discussion was power
relations within and behind the process of agri-food business development and transformation; how powerfulbusiness actors are able to exert a direct and indirect influence on the process of international and national
policy making (agenda setting) and governance of agri-food systems.
In this semester, our focus will be on emerging agri-food technological innovations: datafication ofagriculture, such as precision agriculture, alternative proteins, and gene editing, especially attending tohistorical, political-economic, and cultural-ideational contexts in which novel technologies (and the scientificknowledge supporting and embodied in these particular technical forms) are designed, produced, and applied.
Our interest is not only in the content of technologies and impacts of corporate activities, but rather in thepower of discourses and narratives surrounding decontextualised , "futurism" and "techno-fix"orientation. Here, again, we will be looking into power relations within and behind the highly-politicalprocess of technology development that tend to be obscured and made invisible due to the seeming purity andneutrality of the data, and its promissory narratives (or imaginaries) .
Continue to International Agribusiness Studies (2)↓↓↓

International Agribusiness Studies (2)[Course objectives]
By reading the literature and actively participating in discussions, by the end of this course you should beable to have a deep understanding, theoretical conceptualisation and critical/reflective insights into the current
state of the global food system, the processes and mechanisms of food system governance and the role ofpowerful political and business actors: how and in what way they are able to exert their influence on foodsystems governance, including the governance of agri-food technologies; and if and how it is possible tochallenge such a hegemonic regime and bring the governance of food systems and the process of knowledge
production and applications more democratic and genuinely participatory.
[Course schedule and contents]
Textbook A: David Goodman (2023) Transforming Agriculture and Foodways: The Digital-MolecularConvergence. Bristol University Press.
Textbook B: Kelly Bronson (2022) The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their
Shared Politics of the Future. McGill-Queen s University Press.
[Week 1 - April 8] Guidance / A1. Technological Convergence and Change in Modern Food Systems[Week 2-3 - April 15] A2. Precision Agriculture: Big Data Analytics, Farm Support Platforms andConcentration in the AgTech Space / A3. Precision Agriculture: Adoption, Re-scripting , Farmer Identity,
Path Dependence and Appropriationism 4.0[Week 4-5 - May 13] A4. Alternative Proteins: Bio-mimicry, Structuring the New Protein Industry.
Promissory Narratives . and Substitutionism 4.0 / A5. The failed Promises of the Seed-ChemicalComplex, CRISPR and Gene Editing, and Regulatory Capture[Week 6-7 - May 27] A6. Between Physical Space and Digital Space: Changing Patterns of Food
Provisioning, COVID-19 and Platform Capitalism / A7. Conclusion and Postscript: Continuities in Changeand Lost Opportunities[Week 8-9 - June 10] B1. Facebook, Google, and … Monsanto? / B2. Revolutions, Disruptions, and theFuture of Farming[Week 10-11 - June 24] B3. Appropriate, Open, and Alternative / B4. The Immaculate Conception of Data
[Week 12-13 - July 8] B5. The Politics of Digital Farm Technologies / several book reviews[Week 14-15 - July 22] Wrap-up discussion
Basic rules in class- One or two students are assigned to prepare a summary presentation of book chapter(s) or journal papers,
including questions, reflections, and some points for discussion- Summary part of the presentation should not be detailed too much
- Handout (a summary, questions and discussion points) needs to be circulated via email (ias-kyotou@Continue to International Agribusiness Studies (3)↓↓↓

International Agribusiness Studies (3)googlegroups.com) 2-3 days beforehand- A student who will be assigned for the next class is appointed to be a facilitator, who introduces
presentation(s), manage time, collects, and organises questions and points for discussion, and facilitate
discussion- All the participants are required to actively join the discussion- Anybody can present anything additional but closely relevant to the chapter(s) with or without a handout[Course requirements]
No prerequisite knowledge or skill required other than English language ability sufficient to interact actively
in class.
[Evaluation methods and policy]
Grading will be carried out on a basis of active class participation (70%) and assignment presentation/report(30%).
[Textbooks]
David Goodman 『Transforming Agriculture and Foodways: The Digital-Molecular Convergence』（Bristol University Press, 2023）ISBN:978-1529231465
Kelly Bronson 『The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics ofthe Future』（McGill-Queen s University Press, 2022）ISBN:9780228011224
Reading materials will be made available in advance through the course mailing list and/or a cloud system (e.
g. Google Drive).
[References, etc.]（Reference books）
Recommended reading materials will be made available in advance as well as in class through the course
mailing list and/or a cloud system (e.g. Google Drive).
[Study outside of class (preparation and review)]
Students are required to read assigned book chapters for each class as well as other relevant reading materials
so that they will be able to actively participate in discussions.
（Other information (office hours, etc.)）
Please note that this course is designed for research masters and PhD students of the Graduate School ofEconomics, mainly those of East Asia Sustainable Economic Development Studies Course. Therefore, thestyle and structure of the classes could be different from those offered at the Business School.
The schedule of the classes is not yet fixed. Basically, the classes are offered on alternate Mondays, from 13:
30 to 16:30.
*Please visit KULASIS to find out about office hours.