Ambiguities at Sites of Acceptance: Agrarian Neoliberalism and Herbicide Exposure in Argentina

Abstract

In this article, we study how dominant ideas on herbicide-dependent agriculture are reappropriated and recreated at different scales in farming towns of the Argentine Pampas. First, we analyze the discourses of national reach, to show how herbicide use is institutionally justified, promoted, and legitimized, while also being downplayed or minimized. Second, and based on our interviews with people who benefit from herbicide-dependent agriculture, we inspect how they interpret and reframe national actors' discourses. Our analysis shows ambivalences toward the risks of agrochemical exposure, a tendency to dilute them by pointing to people's quotidian coexistence with other environmental hazards, and a reinterpretation of the right to use agrochemicals in terms of national sovereignty and individual rights to prosperity. We also identify an understanding of the role of the state that overlapped with the typical neoliberal stance but also departed from it in significant ways. This study contributes to the understanding of “sites of acceptance” and to the environmental justice literature by focusing on understudied places, actors, and processes.