Professor Michael Carolan

Prof. Dr. Professor Michael Carolan

Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean for Research, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA
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Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

23Years (2004-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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8 April 2019 in The Journal of Peasant Studies
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Journal Article
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Professor Michael CarolanProfessor Michael Carolan
Professor Michael Carolan
This paper draws from interviews with (1) US farmers who have adopted automated systems; (2) individuals employed by North American firms that engineer, manufacture, and/or repair these technologies; and (3) US farm laborers (immigrant and domestic) and representatives from farm labor organizations. The argument draws from the literature interrogating the fictional expectations that underlie capitalist reproduction, reading it through a distributed (ontological) lens. The framework questions whether concepts like ‘automation’ and ‘skill’ provide sufficient analytic and conceptual clarity to critically engage these platforms and suggests that we think about what these technologies do rather than fixate on what each is.

15 September 2008 in Sociologia Ruralis
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Journal Article
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Professor Michael CarolanProfessor Michael Carolan
Professor Michael Carolan

11 November 2017 in Sociologia Ruralis
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Journal Article
Open access
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Professor Michael CarolanProfessor Michael Carolan
Professor Michael Carolan
This article draws from data collected through interviews with the following groups: big data and/or precision farm equipment firm employees from numerous countries; commodity farmers in the USA who use big data; individuals from the US‐based Right to Repair movement; and farmers associated with Farm Hack from the USA and the UK. With this as the empirical backdrop, the author interrogates the concept of ‘access’ by way of the phenomena of justice, ontology, and claims making – emergent themes to come out of the qualitative data. This in turn allows the author to conceptually, analytically, and empirically unpack the concept into the following three categories: access, property, and sovereignty. A framework then emerges to talk about these socio‐technical assemblages in terms of what they do and the political ontologies they engender, recognising, for instance, that while access can afford individuals and groups benefits it can also detract from an individual's and/or group's ability to flourish. Being able to identify those practices of agro‐digital governance that afford sovereignty can inform policies and programmes by nurturing an understanding the worlds they make possible.

17 November 2016 in Sociologia Ruralis
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Journal Article
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Professor Michael CarolanProfessor Michael Carolan
Professor Michael Carolan

13 April 2020 in Agriculture and Human Values
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Journal Article
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Professor Michael CarolanProfessor Michael Carolan
Professor Michael Carolan