To weave networks: actor-network theory’s contributions to agroecological circuits of short commercialization

Abstract

The commercialization of food products in short circuits can be analyzed in the light of the
Actor-Network Theory, elaborated, among others, by Bruno Latour. A short marketing circuit
may seem to aggregate fewer actors because it is a chain where the intermediary between
the farmer and the consumer is reduced, but once we do not consider a hierarchy between
humans and non-humans, and we give agency to the Technologies, institutions and objects,
it is possible to conceive the existence of a dense chain. Thus, examples will be considered
in the São Paulo municipalities of Limeira and São Carlos of these circuits, analyzed from the
theory of Bruno Latour, thus pointing the contributions of this perspective to the agroecological
context, as well as an additional contribution to think about a new Interdisciplinary know-how
in agroecology.