Agrarian technologies as socio‑technical hybrids. Food crop improvement and management of land and water in sub‑Saharan Africa 1

Abstract

Theories of technology generationThere is a large literature on technology generation, and there are many ways of characterising the main debates. For present purposes it will be convenient to distinguish between two broad sets of approaches : those of the "splitters" and those of the "lumpers".Splitters view technology and social action as separate fields. Learning new ways of manipulating the physical materials of life is (or can be) a‑social (how we acquire knowledge of the composition of ...