Agriculture and Human Values https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10492-w DISCUSSION PIECE A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides Becky Mansfield1 · Marion Werner2 · Christian Berndt3 · Annie Shattuck4 · Ryan Galt5 · Bryan Williams6 · Lucía Argüelles7 · Fernando Rafael Barri8 · Marcia Ishii9 · Johana Kunin10 · Pablo Lapegna11 · Adam Romero12 · Andres Caicedo13 · Abhigya14 · María Soledad Castro-Vargas15 · Emily Marquez16 · Diana Ojeda17 · Fernando Ramirez18 · Anne Tittor19 Accepted: 8 July 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract The global pesticide complex has transformed over the past two decades, but social science research has not kept pace. The rise of an enormous generics sector, shifts in geographies of pesticide production, and dynamics of agrarian change have led to more pesticide use, expanding to farm systems that hitherto used few such inputs. Declining effectiveness due to pesticide resistance and anemic institutional support for non-chemical alternatives also have driven intensification in conventional systems. As an inter-disciplinary network of pesticide scholars, we seek to renew the social science research agenda on pesticides to better understand this suite of contemporary changes. To identify research priorities, challenges, and opportunities, we develop the pesticide complex as a heuristic device to highlight the reciprocal and iterative inter- actions among agricultural practice, the agrochemical industry, civil society-shaped regulatory actions, and contested knowledge of toxicity. Ultimately, collaborations among social scientists and across the social and biophysical sciences can illuminate recent transformations and their uneven socioecological effects. A reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the multifaceted nature of pesticides can identify the social and ecological constraints that drive pesticide use and support alternatives to chemically driven industrial agriculture. Keywords Pesticides · Global pesticide complex · Pesticide industry · Pesticide regulation · Pesticide toxicity · Pesticide social science research agenda Abbreviations R&D Research and Development AI Active ingredient UN United Nations DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane UNEP United Nations Environment Programme EPA Environmental Protection Agency US United States EU European Union WHO World Health Organization FAO Food and Agriculture Organization GM Genetically Modified HT Herbicide Tolerant Introduction IPR Intellectual Property Rights MT Metric Tons Synthetic pesticides are at the heart of food production in PAN Pesticide Action Network much of the world today. As conventional, industrial farm- POPs Persistent Organic Pollutants ing has expanded, pesticide use has increased dramatically (Schreinemachers & Tipraqsa 2012). Synthetic chemical input into the environment, of which pesticides make up the largest volume, has grown faster in the last 50 years than The authors of this paper are all part of the Pesticide Research any other single driver of global environmental change Network (PRN). The PRN was founded in 2021 as a research including greenhouse gas emissions (Bernhardt et al. 2017). collaborative that is interdisciplinary, international, and includes civil society and academic researchers. Globally, imports of formulated pesticides — including herbicides, fungicides/bactericides, insecticides/acaricides, Extended author information available on the last page of the article 13 B. Mansfield et al. and nematicides — nearly doubled from 2.5 million met- knowledge. In the 1970 and 1980 s, a robust social science ric tons (MT) in 2005 to 4.8 million MT in 2019 (Shattuck research agenda emerged in the wake of movements to ban et al. 2023). The drivers of these trends are complex and acutely toxic pesticides (e.g., Boardman 1986; Wright 1986; intersecting. Long dominated by large transnational corpo- Thrupp 1988). This agenda enhanced empirical understand- rations seated in the global North, recent years have seen ing of the linked social and environmental effects of pesti- both corporate consolidation and the emergence of complex cides while also contributing to the development of political supply chains driven in part by a generics revolution. By ecology and environmental justice research and advocacy 2018, the market share by sales of proprietary pesticides frameworks. Research consolidated around topics such as reached its lowest level ever, just 15% of sales compared the political economy of international pesticide regulation to 30% in 2000 (IHS Markit 2020a). Bolstered by manu- and trade, the Green Revolution and similar development facture of generics, China has become the world’s principal policies, and the deleterious health effects of acutely toxic exporter of pesticides (33% by volume), followed by India or other hazardous exposures on plantation workers, small (9%) (Stobbart and Rana 2022). This represents a massive farmers, and downstream and downwind communities. shift for a sector that was long dominated by the US, Japan, Case study research on pesticides and their role in agrar- and Western Europe, which together accounted for 75% of ian change continued, but by the early 2000s the broader global pesticide use and the bulk of production in the 1980s social science agenda on industrial agriculture was eclipsed (WHO and UNEP 1990). Today, the US and Germany each by attention to alternatives, including organic and fair trade represent only 7% of the volume of world exports (Stob- certification, agroecology, and urban farming (Galt 2014). bart and Rana 2022). Lower prices, high demand, and socio- The new social science research agenda that we develop ecological forms of lock-in drive intensified pesticide use in here responds to 21st century dynamics of “the global pesti- places long dependent on these inputs, while agrochemicals cide complex” (Galt 2008), a term that serves as a heuristic have become more widely accessible to farmers who previ- device to identify interactions among the pesticide indus- ously deployed few if any at all. try’s emerging global division of labor, the recursive effects With 1.8 billion people in the world engaged in agricul- of pesticide regulations, and changing paradigms of toxicity ture (Alavanja 2009), this intensification of agrochemical shaped by new understandings of chemical exposures (see use raises urgent questions about the myriad ways these Table 1). We proceed in three corresponding sections. In chemicals alter environments and social lives. A growing the second section, we introduce the global pesticide com- body of academic and non-academic literature demonstrates plex and begin to trace its dimensions through dynamics pesticides’ harms to ecological and human health and well- reshaping the agrochemical industry. In the third section, being (e.g., Rezende et al. 2021). The move to ban or restrict we consider how existing bans and regulations emerged older, more acutely toxic pesticides gave rise to next-gen- from research and advocacy and how they have generated eration compounds, but promises of their safety, too, have iterative effects, or what we call “regulatory afterlives,” in many cases been eroded by scientific research on toxi- that merit renewed attention. In the fourth section, we lay cants. Pesticide resistance remains a long-standing prob- out how changing paradigms of toxicity and the politics of lem, as weeds, insects and pathogens develop resistance evidence trouble regulatory action, shape the agrochemical especially to the most widely used chemicals. Yet a dearth industry, and demand expansive understandings of harm of new chemistries to replace compounds as they become grounded in lived experience. We conclude by calling for less effective has led to the revival of older compounds that reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the mul- are often more residual or more acutely toxic. In the face tifaceted nature of pesticides to help find alternatives to of these intertwined challenges, pitched battles over how chemically driven industrial agriculture. to regulate pesticides continue. The terrain of those con- tests is also shifting as some local jurisdictions restrict use based on new scientific findings yet to be acknowledged by The global pesticide complex and national regulators. Paradoxically, decades of such material, agrochemical industry social, and political challenges to the model of chemical- intensive agriculture have coincided with its consolidation In 2008, Galt introduced the “global pesticide complex” as and expansion. a concept to identify emerging patterns and dynamic inter- Social science research on pesticides has not kept pace actions between pesticide production, use, regulation, and with these remarkable changes in pesticide use, corporate socioecological effects. The term was defined as “encom- structure, supply chains, and the generic market revolution, passing all aspects of pesticides’ lifecycles from conception and the recursive interactions with environmental, labor, and to environmental fate” (Galt 2008, p. 786). Galt centered consumer movements; regulation; technology; and scientific the relationship between shifting political economies of 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides Table 1 Critical Social Science Research Agenda on Pesticides: Domains, Characteristics and Key Research Areas Domain Main Characteristics Key Research Areas INDUSTRY Industry consolidation Corporate strategies: Generics revolution, new multinationals and relationship to legacy and restructuring R&D firms; R&D and use of IPR, mergers and acquisitions and concentration, vertically integrated supply chains, outsourcing and contract manufacturing; articulations with place-based social hiearchies of difference Opportunities and threats Social and environmental implications of stacked-trait seed and chemical packages; of pest/weed resistance biopesticides as accumulation frontier or alternative to chemicals “Safe Use” approach to Real world exposure on farms, in households, and farming communities; exposure in end user hazards upstream production and distribution; see Knowledge of Toxicity REGULATION National bans Socio-ecological afterlives: old and new “circles of poison;“ hazards of chemical substi- tutes and their racialized burdens; policy and practice to support non-chemical alternatives Scalar shifts and Uneven geographies of Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions ratifications, implementa- interactions tion and real-world effects; effects of regulations in major markets on other jurisdictions; motivations and outcomes of restrictions at sub-national scales Corporate regulatory Unpack intra-state tensions (e.g., among/within Ministries of Agriculture, Health and capture Environment); shifts in industry-state relations over time and at different scales Anti-pesticide social Composition, motivations, challenges, successes; motivations of farmers who mobilize movements against these movements KNOWLEDGE OF Multiple paradigm shifts Situating knowledge of low-dose exposure, intergenerational effects, and more in politics TOXICITY challenging the threshold of pesticide regulation; biopolitics of concern shaped by race, gender, class etc. model Chemical cocktails Experiences and perceptions of pesticide users and exposed communities; community epidemiology; citizen science to gauge exposure in air, water and soil Politics of evidence and Biopolitics of exposure and impacts on regulation (e.g., max. residue limits); shift from lived experience proof of threshold exposure to violence via the how and why of exposure; social meaning of pesticides in particular contexts, including intimate relations among kin and community agrochemicals and export agri-food markets, shaped by that shape their decisions, environmental and social jus- interacting dynamics between industry and regulation, tice movements, material infrastructures, and the chemi- and he identified new relationships that diverged from the cal substances themselves. We exercise caution in doing extant understanding of the global political economy of so: the “global” is not universal, encompassing, general, or pesticides presented in Weir and Shapiro’s groundbreaking placeless (Hart 2018), and those who work on and live near book Circle of Poison (1981). The circle of poison laid bare farms are not mere objects of disembedded forces and syn- the transnational consequences of the US EPA’s ban on use thetic chemicals (Tuck 2009). Heterodox political economy of organochlorine pesticides, including DDT. Following along with science and technology studies are well suited the ban, US and other global North corporations continued to identify the relationships that materialize in and through to produce these chemicals and export them to the global pesticide production, on-farm use, chemical metabolism, South, particularly Latin America, where their continued and science and regulation, and the scales at which they do use harmed farmers, farmworkers, and farming communi- so (see Guthman 2019). In short, we offer the global pesti- ties. The “circle” was completed by the subsequent import cide complex as an analytical tool to examine connections of residue-laden foods into US and European markets, between the spheres of production, distribution, and use exposing northern consumers to these banned substances. that stretch unevenly across time and space; and in turn, to Prompted by “circle of poison” concerns and a wide range examine how those spheres are reshaped by the social and of environmental and consumer movements in numerous ecological dynamics of that unevenness. countries, governments implemented international and national regulations on the trade of pesticides and increased Mapping the global pesticide industry monitoring of residues, with recursive effects on the pesti- cide complex itself. Contemporary global industry dynamics are commonly Galt’s intervention sought to account for dynamic understood in terms of production networks that involve changes emerging from relationships among a range of relations of myriad corporate actors in complicated spa- actors, social forces, and ecological effects. Likewise, we tial and organizational divisions of labor. Whereas indus- adopt the global pesticide complex here to shift the analyti- try studies tend to focus attention on transnational legacy cal lens beyond the farm gate, highlighting compounding companies such as Bayer or Syngenta, our framing of the interactions among agrochemical companies, agricultural global pesticide complex highlights the extended network science, state regulatory bodies and the science struggles of chemical production, product formulation, distribution, 13 B. Mansfield et al. and use functionally coordinated among a range of firm and by pooling financial resources. An even greater challenge is non-firm actors. We suggest that researchers must engage the reconstruction of supply chains and corporate strategies with diverse nodes of the industry to open the black box of from the “bottom up.” Such “studying up” requires an inten- supply chains, systematically connecting upstream develop- sive, qualitative, case-study approach. To date, there has ments with those further downstream to better understand been little research tracing global supply chains upstream what is driving industry restructuring. from pesticide distribution to formulation to AI synthesis The generic market revolution, in particular, has had and production. Expert interviews and industry event eth- enormous implications for the global division of labor in nographies provide a good overview of key dynamics (e.g. pesticide production and distribution. Since 1994, the value national market and production system; corporate strate- of pesticides sold worldwide has doubled to more than gies and dynamics) and also contacts for further in-depth $60 billion today, while pesticide prices on average have research. “Studying up” may also include a conjunctural dropped as a result of organizational and locational changes “following-the-substance” approach by reconstructing the (IHS Markit 2020b). A first transformation concerns cor- commodity biographies of particular pesticides at critical porate restructuring at the global scale. A flurry of mergers historical moments (e.g. market introduction, patent expira- and acquisitions reduced the R&D-centered transnational tion, regulatory decisions, introduction of competing sub- legacy companies to only four: Syngenta Group (compris- stances etc.). Clearly, individual researchers can only tackle ing ChemChina-owned Syngenta and Adama, and the agri- a limited portion of this extensive undertaking; the ideal cultural activities of Sinochem), Corteva, Bayer (including scenario would be for such research to be part of a system- Monsanto), and BASF. Meanwhile, Chinese and Indian atic collaborative effort. Similar to research in other fields, companies have become increasingly important in the sec- these contributions can yield valuable empirical insights tor, above all in the generic market. In 2021, twelve of the that will eventually converge into a comprehensive body of twenty largest agrochemical companies (by sales) were knowledge. headquartered or were controlled by capital from China and Companies’ strategies for capital accumulation also need India (IHS Markit 2021, p. 3). to be studied for how they articulate regional and transre- Corporate restructuring in the wake of the generics revo- gional forms of social stratification, including race, caste, lution has resulted in an industry landscape characterized indigeneity, gender, and class (Hall 1980; Williams and Por- by far-flung supply chains, centering transport and logistics ter 2022). These place-based articulations of intersectional both as a cost and a potential source of vulnerability. An social inequality are bound up in every step of the pesticide important issue here concerns evolving organizational and supply chain. The global pesticide complex must be consid- spatial divisions of labor between production of the active ered through the lens of specific social hierarchies and the ingredient (AI) and formulation of the end-use product, in historical and extra-local dynamics (for example, of agricul- which AI is mixed with co-formulants (e.g., surfactants). tural credit and domestic and foreign investment) that repro- R&D-centered companies increasingly turn to China and duce, deepen, and transform these hierarchies (Aga 2021; India for production, sometimes in their own factories Lapegna and Kunin 2023). but more often engaging in contract manufacturing rela- In short, there is a critical need for research on the patterns tionships with a vast number of dedicated suppliers (IHS of production, trade, and use of both branded and generic Markit, various years; S&P Global 2023). Controlling and pesticides, the actors and relationships among them, and the managing these supply chains is a key challenge for the rationales and imperatives driving decision-makers. At the industry. Much more research is needed on corporate strate- same time, we suggest identifying vulnerabilities of supply gies to optimize production and distribution, for example in chains and distribution channels frequently exposed at their logistics and supply chain management or by locking farm- margins. From this perspective, what appear to be long-term ers and service contractors into proprietary seed-pesticide strategic decisions further cementing global domination by platforms (Bronson and Sengers 2022; Werner et al. 2022). omnipotent and fully-in-control corporations may in fact be Methodologically, such research would ideally involve a a series of short-term fixes against unwelcome interruptions combination of a “top-down” analysis of the industry with of smoothly functioning pesticide markets. Social science a “bottom-up” reconstruction of supply chains. Given the frameworks and methods are well suited to study these dis- complexity of the task, this would require a collaborative, turbances and their linked social and environmental effects. interdisciplinary effort. Top-down analysis can start with The next section turns to one such disturbance: pesticide analysis of publicly available trade and use data (e.g., Shat- resistance. tuck et al. 2023), public online industry and market web- sites, and proprietary market research. The latter can come at a prohibitively high cost that may have to be shouldered 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides Economy-nature dynamics: pesticide resistance Regulatory vulnerability The more a chemical pesticide is used, the more likely the The global pesticide industry exists in a recursive relation- target organism (insect, weed, pathogen) is to develop resis- ship with national and international regulatory frameworks tance to that chemical (Gould et al. 2018). This challenge to that restrict or promote agrochemicals. We address the the pesticide industry is at once longstanding and worsen- regulatory landscape and novel industry-regulation inter- ing. The introduction of herbicide-tolerant genetically-mod- actions in greater detail in a later section. Here we point ified (HT-GM) seed packages, for example, created ideal out that the pesticide industry is keenly aware of the regula- conditions for weed resistance to glyphosate (Binimelis et tory and legal vulnerability of agrochemical markets (e.g. al. 2009), the first herbicide to be packaged with HT-GM Stobbart 2021; Stobbart and Rana 2022). We highlight two seeds. Plant selection took place over greater land areas and ways that it responds to state action through supply chain for longer periods of time than any other herbicide class and investment strategies, especially in light of the sorts of (Heap and Duke 2018), quickly eroding glyphosate’s cel- shifts in industry practice and discourse discussed above. In ebrated effectiveness. so doing, we call for much greater social science investiga- The principal response from the pesticide industry to tion of how pesticide restrictions reshape patterns of uneven the challenges posed by evolutionary resistance is to enlist development. crop science to attempt to contain these disturbances by First is the shifting geography of the industry as agro- seeking new technological fixes that still rely upon agro- chemical companies respond to pesticide regulation, along chemicals (Guthman 2019). This interaction creates new with fiscal and trade policies, when deciding where to syn- market opportunities for branded and generic producers to thesize and formulate their products and where to locate new shift or expand their chemical portfolios, which then drives investments. Official, sanctioned trade is just one way that what entomologist Robert van den Bosch famously dubbed highly hazardous chemicals enter markets; they also may the “pesticide treadmill” that locks farmers into pesticide be produced within a country through joint ventures, sub- dependence (1989 [1978]). For example, in the case of sidiaries, or state-owned companies. Foreign direct invest- herbicides, firms now combine older, more acutely toxic ment, for example, may be driven by the need to acquire chemicals such as 2,4-D, atrazine, and dicamba into new a domestic firm with pesticide registrations in a country “multistacked” HT-GM seed packages. Corteva and BASF where legacy registrations are maintained and new ones recently announced a licensing deal that allows for the are hard to obtain (Castro-Vargas and Werner 2022). And development of soybeans with stacked gene traits tolerant while many of the “lead firms” are multinationals headquar- of four herbicide modes of action (Birkett 2022). As compa- tered in the global North, a growing number are headquar- nies seek to turn challenges into opportunities, these shifts tered in emerging economies, particularly China (e.g., Red have important but poorly understood social and ecologi- Sun, Rainbow) and India (e.g., UPL). In addition to these cal effects for chemical industry workers, farm workers, and legal routes, distributors also may respond to official bans farming communities. by engaging in illicit pesticide trade, some of which may Much more social science research is needed on these include products that are purposefully mislabeled. multiple aspects of growing pest and weed resistance, Second, regulatory costs also condition industry invest- including how agrochemical firms are responding to declin- ments in innovation, for example in genetic modification of ing chemical effectiveness, ways crop and weed science seeds or, increasingly, biological pesticides (Clapp 2021; shore up the industry, and the uneven social, economic, and Shattuck 2021a). The cost to commercialize a new AI has ecological effects of these responses. Social science can also increased to more than US$250 billion (Phillips McDou- illuminate strategies used by farmers to “step off” the pes- gall 2016), in large part due to data requirements of EU ticide treadmill through agroecological methods (Warner regulatory agencies. Rising R&D costs have driven indus- 2007; Deguine et al. 2009; Watts and Williamson 2015) as try consolidation, and can help explain some of the shifts well as industry efforts to capitalize on such efforts through identified in the previous section. For example, with the new biologically derived inputs (Marrone 2007; Qiu 2015). spread of novel gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, In short, nature’s “liveliness” coexists with the lethal effects costs of GM seed development have decreased, especially of pesticides on non-target human and non-human organ- relative to those of novel pesticide chemistries. Investing in isms and in turn reshapes the pesticide complex (Argüelles multi-stacked seeds and biological pesticides are not only and March 2021; and see the third and fourth sections). responses to declining effectiveness but also may reflect a more permissive regulatory environment. 13 B. Mansfield et al. Chemical safety and real-world use exposure demands attention to the lived and differentiated experiences of agricultural labor, households, and com- The paradox of pesticides is that their proponents must munities (Wright 1990; Mera-Orcés 2001; Schwartz et al. assure the world of their safety even as they are used for 2015; Stein and Luna 2021). their ability to harm living organisms. Indeed, agriculture A related knowledge gap concerns chemical hazards for has served as a sink for the petrochemical industry’s toxic those who labor in pesticide synthesis and formulation and wastes since the 19th century (Romero 2022). A recent sys- the communities where these plants are sited, aspects often tematic review of research on unintentional acute pesticide overlooked in a literature that focuses mainly on agrarian poisoning estimated that 385 million cases occur annually livelihood impacts and consumption. Synthesis and formu- world-wide, including around 11,000 fatalities, and pro- lation of agrochemicals expose industrial workers and their jected that globally as many as 44% of farmers experienced communities to toxic chemical substances across the sup- some form of pesticide poisoning every year (Boedeker et ply chain. Pesticide production, transport, and storage led to al. 2020). Acute poisonings only scratch the surface of pes- some of the most devastating industrial accidents of the late ticides’ effects, however. Pesticides transform social and 20th century, including the ICMESA toxic cloud release in environmental relationships in complex ways that cannot Seveso, Italy, in 1976, the Union Carbide methyl isocyanate be replicated in a laboratory, or conveyed by a list of AIs gas leak in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and the Sandoz agro- and their toxicological outcomes. More deeply, pesticides chemical warehouse leak into the Rhine in Switzerland in can and should be understood as relationships that can only 1986 (Bertomeu-Sánchez 2019). These tragedies mobilized be fully apprehended through attention to embodied experi- environmental movements and motivated new regulations. ence, and the ways that inequality and structural violence There is evidence of recent accidents at pesticide production (often through processes that extend far beyond the site of plants in China (e.g., Cao et al. 2018; He et al. 2014), but application or exposure) mediate these experiences. In the less is known about these events or any regulatory actions fourth section we address a host of issues around toxicity in their wake. and the politics of knowledge. Here we attend specifically to the question of how pesticides are used in real-world situ- ations and how that differs from the modes of use described Tracing a dynamic regulatory environment by companies. Decades of research on so-called “safe use” educa- The suite of recent changes described above (including new tion, the primary form of risk management promoted by supply chain geographies, the shift to generics, and related the agrochemical industry, found that knowledge and use harms for workers and communities) come on the heels of of personal protective equipment does not prevent low- decades of regulation, the outcomes of which themselves level exposures because real-world use does not match the dynamically reshape the global pesticide complex. In the presumed ideal (Tomenson and Matthews 2009; Shattuck decades following Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), 2021b). Industry representatives often use an ideal-world environmental movements successfully pressured govern- scenario of the rational, educated pesticide user to shift ments to introduce regulations protecting human and eco- responsibility – and blame – to farmers and farmworkers logical health from pesticide exposures in manufacturing, (Galt 2013). Critical social scientists are well-positioned to application, and food consumption. Scholars and activists challenge the ways real-world use is treated as an artifact of would soon expose the limits of these national-scale reg- poor decisions made by poor farmers (Ríos-González et al. ulations in the context of a global agri-food system, most 2013; Stein and Luna 2021). Research is needed on ways notably in Circle of Poison (Weir and Shapiro 1981). As pesticide companies, distributors, and private extension ser- described above, the book traced both pesticide flows and vices influence the conditions of pesticide application, for the regulatory loopholes that reflected and reinforced the example through market capture or a hands-off approach to world’s neo-colonial and post-colonial divides. International after-sale use. This requires sensitivity to the highly uneven development agencies began promoting pesticide use glob- distribution of risk. Ethnic minorities, workers racialized as ally in the late 1950s without a standard set of regulatory “non-white”, migrants, and other marginalized workers are guidelines or frameworks for their use (Jansen and Dubois often more likely to do the work of pesticide application 2014). Growing awareness of the transnational dimension (e.g., Schwartz et al. 2015). While large agribusinesses tend of pesticides led to the formation of the Pesticide Action to hire more men to apply pesticides, women and children Network (PAN) in 1982, legislation in numerous countries largely undertake care work – such as washing pesticide- restricting exports or imports, and a UN resolution on noti- laden clothes and containers – that exposes them in invisi- fication of hazardous exports. bilized ways. Thus, understanding the effects of pesticide 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides Civil society organizations campaigned for the rest of raise broader questions about what “bans” and “restrictions” the century to achieve binding, multilateral regulations on really are, both theoretically and empirically. pesticide use and trade. As agrochemical firms increased One key concern centers on what replaces a chemical if their exports of substances now banned in the US and West- it is restricted or banned, especially if non-chemical alterna- ern Europe, PAN, Oxfam, and other groups advocated for tives to pest control are not directly promoted. DDT and other inclusion of a Prior Informed Consent (PIC) process in organochlorine pesticides offer salient examples. In the US transnational frameworks whereby exporters would share Mississippi delta region, plantation owners secured exemp- information on hazardous pesticides with importers. FAO tions for the continued usage of DDT after early restrictions and UNEP incorporated PIC procedures into voluntary and the 1972 national ban; the political power of plantation codes, and EU member states implemented a separate, interests was based on the racialized disenfranchisement binding procedure (Jansen and Dubois 2014). Overcoming of Black southerners (many of whom were smallholding industry opposition, the Rotterdam Convention (which came farmers and farmworkers) (Woods 2017; Williams 2018). into force in 2004) requires exporters to inform importing Moreover, the use of acutely toxic organophosphates and nations of existing bans or restrictions on PIC-listed chemi- other organochlorine insecticides, which already had been cals, which importing countries can then refuse (Jansen and increasing as insects evolved resistance to DDT, rose further Dubois 2014). Civil society advocacy eventually yielded a as the DDT ban was fully implemented (Wright 1990; Davis process to ban the trade of some hazardous substances alto- 2014). In the 1980s, Wright found similar dynamics in Mex- gether. Coming into force the same year as Rotterdam, the ico as farmers switched from banned organochlorines to Stockholm Convention prohibits trade of some persistent lower-residue organophosphate and carbamate insecticides organic pollutants (POPs), including sixteen pesticides by like parathion and aldicarb to avoid US export shipments 2022. being rejected for illegal residues (Wright 1986). Contrary The Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions are the out- to the earlier “circle of poison” thesis, few of these highly comes of tremendous struggles by diverse, transnational toxic substances were imported from the US, but were pro- coalitions of civil society groups and some allies in gov- duced in Mexico under import-substitution policies. As on ernment in the face of fierce opposition from the pesticide cotton plantations in the Mississippi delta, the switch from industry and its government supporters. If social science has organochlorines to organophosphates put Mexican farm- paid modest attention to the conditions that led to these and workers at much greater risk since these insecticides are other pesticide regulations, even less research has been done more acutely toxic; indeed, many would eventually also be on their “afterlives,” or what happens in the wake of their banned in over 125 countries (PAN 2022) and included in adoption. As with the pesticide industry, however, infor- the Rotterdam Convention. mation about regulation is similarly dispersed and patchy; In short, concern for the collateral effects or unintended innovative methods are needed to gather, share, and repre- consequences of national bans has since grown to include the sent information on the regulatory landscape. fundamental question of what replaces banned substances, and how the burden of adapting to bans is distributed. At The afterlives of pesticide bans the global level, civil society movements have sought to prevent a pattern of chemical input-substitution (e.g., Watts We call for systematic attention to the socio-ecological and Williamson 2015). They have successfully introduced afterlives of pesticide bans, or the outcomes and unin- language, for example in the Stockholm Convention, on the tended consequences of pesticide restrictions that re-shape need to support countries in replacing listed chemicals not the pesticide complex and the social and spatial hierarchies with another chemical but with “ecosystem-based alterna- of exposure and risk at its heart. Key questions are about tives”. Policymakers have often approached the question how chemical companies, farms large and small, regula- of pesticide use from an individual decision-making per- tors, activists, and others respond to restrictions and espe- spective. Yet, the complexity of pesticide use – especially cially to bans, and bans’ myriad effects and variation over in the context of bans and restrictions -- calls for a more space and time. Research should elucidate how restrictions relational perspective that can grasp different agencies, both and bans have been implemented in ratifying countries: to human and non-human (Guthman 2019; Müller 2021; see what degree and under what social, political, and economic also Robbins 2007). Farmers’ ability to shift to sustainable conditions these rules are implemented. Research should pest management methods depends upon social investments also address the effects for non-ratifying countries, as well in training and appropriate technology, farmer income sup- as what happens if civil society groups are less mobilized port during transition times, and changes in input supply around pesticide issues over time. Concerns such as these channels and consumer expectations. Research is needed to figure out how bans work in practice and over time, and 13 B. Mansfield et al. to untangle how farmers successfully reduce their pesticide Yunnan province put a halt to energy-intensive mining for use in their wake. yellow phosphorus for production of glyphosate. Combined with supply shocks from declining US glyphosate produc- Scales, patterns, and connections across regulatory tion after flooding along the Gulf Coast, prices of generic jurisdictions glyphosate tripled over the course of 2021 and early 2022 (Li 2022). Lawsuits can also shape supply chain geography, A key need is for research on interactions across differ- for example as Bayer responds to its spectacular losses in ent jurisdictions and at different scales. Not only are there the US courts over glyphosate by moving to end sales of explicitly international efforts like the Rotterdam and Stock- Roundup in the US household market, while maintaining holm conventions, but the regulatory standards of the EU’s the agricultural market (Hals et al. 2021). European Food and Safety Administration and the US Environmental Protection Agency have implications well Corporate capture of national and global regulation beyond their borders. For one, their regulatory frameworks are sometimes adopted by other countries. The agrochemi- Restrictions on pesticides, however, are just one dimension cal industry in Costa Rica, for example, has sought to ease of state regulation. Indeed, states often focus policy and registration requirements by authorizing pesticides already resources towards pesticide promotion among farmers and registered in a “reference country” such as the US for use in protection of the agrochemical industry. State support of Costa Rica, effectively displacing this state regulatory func- pesticides was central to the Green Revolution and related tion (Castro-Vargas and Werner 2022). In addition, restric- development projects beginning in the 1940s. Couched tions such as the EU’s maximum residue limits (MRLs) on in terms of states’ commitments to food self-sufficiency imports aim to protect consumers but leave farmers, farm- while offering technological fixes to defer peasant move- workers, and communities vulnerable, especially in global ment demands for comprehensive land redistribution, the South domestic markets. Existing research shows that publicly funded Green Revolution also paved the way for when exporting countries’ pesticide regulations and/or their developing countries’ future consumption of agrochemical enforcement are weak, there is more intensive pesticide use inputs (Cullather 2010; McMichael 2013; Patel 2013). After for domestic consumption and less intensive use for exports the 1980s debt crisis, many states were forced into neolib- (Arbona 1998; Williamson 2003; Barling and Lang 2005; eral reforms, which included cutting agricultural subsidies Galt 2009, 2014; Barri and Wahren 2013). and extension services. Corporate actors filled the gap. At the same time, citizens’ concern about weak or absent Companies supplied seed and pesticide packages to farmers protections—including in the US and Europe—is precipi- under contract, while state extension agents were replaced tating not only alternative food movements (e.g., organ- by pesticide vendors. Emblematic is the so-called “new ics) but also a large number of campaigns for regulations Green Revolution for Africa,” promoted by multinational to be enacted at other scales, including by municipalities corporations and philanthropic capital, particularly the Bill and states or provinces. Such sub-national restrictions have and Melinda Gates Foundation (Moseley et al. 2017; Boafo been enacted not only in the US and across Europe, but also and Lyons 2022). A key research need is to study the role of in countries of the global South such as Argentina (Palmi- these regulatory shifts on the pesticide complex, including sano 2018; Arancibia and Motta 2019; Schmidt et al. 2022). the ability of the chemical industry to capture the regulatory Much remains unknown about this shift to local-level regu- process at multiple scales, not least through the “revolving lation, including its extent and effectiveness, barriers (e.g., door” between industry and regulatory agencies (Meghani state preemption), who and what are actually protected, the and Kuzma 2011). political ramifications, and wider repercussions for commu- At the same time, regulatory capture itself must be nities most harmed by pesticide exposure. unpacked. As Jansen notes, “while the claim that the indus- In an era of supply chain capitalism, the geography of pes- try attempts to influence the regulatory process may well ticide production is also shaped by knock-on effects of regu- stand, this does not explain why regulatory regimes take the lations in places that concentrate upstream activities. When particular shape that they do” (2008, p. 576). Neither the China implemented new “blue sky” policies, for example, state nor capital are uniform actors; for example, Ministries to regulate its highly polluting pesticide manufacturing sec- of Environment, Health, and Agriculture are often at logger- tor, the resulting reorganization and increase in agrochemi- heads over pesticide regulations (e.g., Hetherington 2020), cal prices created opportunities for new generic producers while firms and farmers’ associations may be divided by in India operating under more permissive conditions (Zhang competitive pressures and broader political loyalties. More- et al. 2011; Chow 2018; Oliveira et al. 2020). More recently, over, competition between R&D multinationals and largely in 2021, China’s cap on industrial energy consumption in domestic generic sectors historically played out in contests 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides over requirements for pesticide registration (Jansen 2017). value regimes over market ones, and demanding a fairer But industry restructuring, including growth of generic sec- share of profits from market relations (Barri and Wahren tors in middle-income countries, and a dearth of patented 2013; Lapegna 2016). Industrial workers in the agrochemi- new chemicals are contributing to efforts to loosen require- cal industry also fight for a fairer share of the profits and ments for registration of generic substances in places such rents accumulated through supply chains. Residents and as Colombia (Valbuena et al. 2021), Brazil (Oliveira et al. workers whose health is seriously affected by pesticide 2020) and Costa Rica (Castro-Vargas and Werner 2022). exposure wage successful public campaigns against Mon- In this context, there are multiple areas for fruitful santo and other global players (e.g., Arancibia and Motta research on state-industry relations, including on the scope 2019). Many agricultural producers, especially family oper- of such relations both within countries and in international ations, are critical of the chemical treadmill on which they agencies such as the UN FAO. A 2020 Letter of Intent find themselves (Galt 2014). In many cases, mid-size farm- signed between the FAO and the leading pesticide indus- ers may not see viable alternatives to pesticide-dependent try group, CropLife International, has caused much concern agriculture, and they can be ambiguous about pesticide use among civil society groups over regulatory capture at the and exposure (Lapegna and Kunin 2023). A key response UN agency. An open question is how and why there are by pro-capital representatives in the global North is to mar- shifts in these relations over time, such that regulatory bod- ginalize and delegitimize unwelcome contestation. Such ies become more or less collaborative with industry. More othering regularly involves representations of a backward, needs to be known about how networks of structural privi- unreliable global South: in the shape of the wayward (Chi- lege and cultural capital influence strictness of enforcement. nese) generic producer, the irresponsible state that is unwill- There are also questions about who bears the burden of ing to regulate, the uneducated unruly farmer or peasant deregulatory approaches, i.e., when responsibilities for pro- who applies otherwise safe pesticides wrongly, or agents tecting health and environment are turned over to individual engaged in criminal activities (e.g., pesticide smuggling). workers, farmers, communities, and consumers. Compara- Research is needed, therefore, to understand the land- tive, cross-country work would be very helpful here. scape of anti-pesticide social movements and their goals, motivations, and challenges, as well as how some farmers Social movements and struggles over social may also mobilize against regulations and in support of con- reproduction ventional agriculture (van der Ploeg 2020; Müller 2021). Key questions remain as to the consequences of such social Regulatory regimes are shaped by civil society broadly movements. Seen through the lens of the global pesticide defined. Whether the state prioritizes concerns for safety complex, this includes not only the extent of their success, and health — and for whom — is largely determined by the but also how such challenges shape the terms of engage- ebb and flow of social movements and organizations that ment for farmers, communities, pesticide companies, and make such demands and marshal coalitions to support them others, which are, in turn, remade by these contests. (e.g., Barri 2010; Schurman and Munro 2010; Arancibia and Motta 2019). For example, PAN (introduced above for its work on the Rotterdam Convention) brings together scien- Integrative approaches to toxicity and the tists, farmers, and other stakeholders in its various regional politics of knowledge networks to follow pesticide regulation over time (including its definitive list of national bans, PAN 2022), contest regu- There has been an enormous paradigm shift in scientific latory capture, and demand reforms in the face of regulatory knowledge since the 2000s as scientists learn more about failures. However, less is known about the specific politics the mechanisms through which chemicals act biologically, these diverse movements articulate, how grounded these such as endocrine disruption, epigenetics, and alteration of campaigns are in concerns of chemical workers or farm- the microbiome. This new scientific paradigm, which shows ing communities versus consumers, and how local cam- more intricate links between exposure and harm than previ- paigns reverberate in other locations, shaping regulations ously assumed, also faces organized campaigns of denial, elsewhere. particularly in efforts to undermine regulation (Mansfield Anti-pesticide movements are part of diverse struggles 2021). In this context, an important role for social scientists against alienation and dispossession. Often, they form part is to collaborate with other scientists to improve the body of larger environmental and environmental justice, liveli- of knowledge, for example regarding how the industry’s hood, and health movements. For example, smallholders and restructuring discussed above might alter the landscape of peasants reclaim their land and their livelihoods, struggling sociospatial health disparities or socioecological dynamics, over re-production, advancing non-market coordination and such as implications for pollinators (Sponsler et al. 2019). 13 B. Mansfield et al. While it might seem that scientific findings should be fallacy of this fundamental tenet. For many chemicals there able to resolve debates about activist “fearmongering” is either no threshold of safety or there are greater effects at vs. corporate “deceit”, such questions cannot be entirely lower levels; this is especially true for endocrine-disrupting resolved by science because they are also fundamentally chemicals. New generation pesticides, many of which are questions about scientific authority and expertise, what not acutely toxic, may nonetheless have genotoxic, carci- counts as evidence, and which actors have the power to nogenic, endocrine disrupting, or other deleterious effects shape policy. A robust literature from science studies, soci- which can be difficult to determine with certainty over a bio- ology, and geography on a range of chemical substances has logically and politically relevant timeframe (Mesnage et al. changed the way social scientists approach the question of 2017; Mostafalou and Abdollahi 2017). Non-threshold pol- toxicity (Murphy 2006; Vogel 2013; Shapiro 2015; Cord- lutants are now part of the fabric of life and produce harms ner 2016; Liboiron 2021). Not only have these fields begun that are often illegible to scientists and regulators in both the to “open the black box of the body” – to see bodies and short and long term. environments as radically porous extensions of one another One fundamental challenge to the dominant paradigm (Guthman and Mansfield 2013) – but a growing chorus of of toxicity is the potential time lags between exposure and scholars has also emphasized the need to see the chemical negative effects. Many chemicals, including many pesti- itself as relational: its materiality and modes of action are cides, cause an array of health problems over the lifespan shaped by its existence in mixtures, ecosystems, bodies, and even intergenerationally, making pesticide exposure a and complex socio-natures (Romero et al. 2017). Rethink- reproductive justice issue. One example is DDT, which con- ing pesticides along these lines alters our understanding of tinues to be used for vector control in some areas of Asia, toxicity and evidence by emphasizing lived experiences of Latin America, and Africa. Despite concern based on animal pesticides in everyday life. Toxicity, as a social and environ- studies, it was not known to cause cancer in humans until mental process of harm, is defined by the highly context- 2015 when a case-control study found that women whose dependent social structures that shape the use and effects mothers were exposed to DDT while pregnant in the 1960s of particular compounds (Liboiron et al. 2018). Multiscalar were four times more likely to develop breast cancer (Cohn structural forces of racism, colonialism, and geographically et al. 2015). uneven development shape the variegated toxicities, harms, The volatile combination of new paradigms and new and benefits of pesticides. compounds leads not only to expected scientific uncertainty, but also to widespread debates about good science and the Paradigms of toxicity and the role of science forms of evidence that should be considered in regulatory decision-making (Mansfield 2021). Glyphosate is a good Because the struggle to define chemical safety has been example. Claims of the compound’s safety, meaning lack ongoing for more than a century (Whorton 1974), research of acute toxicity, drove increasing use, including as pre-har- is needed on the paradigms of toxicity that underpin present vest and post-harvest crop treatments (Werner et al. 2022). day regulatory frameworks. The EU follows a hazard-based To facilitate these uses, US regulators have repeatedly model for chemicals regulation, which focuses on the poten- increased tolerance levels of allowed residues on food and tial of a chemical to cause harm. In sharp contrast, nearly animal feed, by as much as 2,000-fold (Benbrook 2016). all other countries, including the US, adopt a risk-based Whereas the World Health Organization has declared that approach that requires evidence of both hazard and exposure glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans, the US dis- (Vogel 2013; Cordner 2016; Liboiron 2021). Both frame- putes this conclusion. These differences are based on claims works reflect the broader epistemology of modern chemi- about what counts as “good science,” including reliance on cal regulations, which reduce complex toxic environments evidence from proprietary versus public sources, inclusion to assessments of molecule-by-molecule evidence of harm of co-formulants in assays, and the definition of exposure (Hepler-Smith 2019). Furthermore, the traditional focus is itself (i.e., dietary versus occupational) (Benbrook 2019). on acute toxicity, cancer, and teratogenesis, and the foun- Different paradigms of toxicity and regulation put the dational assumption is that there is some threshold below onus of proof on different groups of people. A hazard-based which a chemical exposure is safe, i.e., “the dose makes the approach puts a greater burden of proof on manufacturers of poison.” Institutions such as the US EPA still rely heavily on agrochemicals to prove their products are safe; a risk-based this threshold model of harm, which gives a right to pollute approach puts more burden on under-resourced rural work- as long as exposures stay below that purported threshold. ers, socio-environmental organizations, and the scientific Over the past several decades, the avalanche of para- community to prove harm. Both models involve unequal digm-shifting studies in toxicology, epidemiology, epi- social costs. Social scientific research is necessary to under- genetics, microbiomics, and so forth have demonstrated the stand the logics of regulatory science and the conditions 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides under which different logics are embraced and contested users provide crucial insight that is missed otherwise. How during regulatory processes (Harrison 2011). More research do people who variably “work with, transform or acciden- is needed on what actually happens in influential agencies tally ingest” (Richardson and Weszkalnys 2014) pesticides such as the EPA and WHO, as well as on how knowledge at different nodes of supply chains experience agrochemi- of low-dose exposure, intergenerational effects, and so forth cal exposure and how do they make themselves heard? are situated in these politics of pesticide regulation. Also This requires a mixed methods approach and can benefit needed is a better understanding of the ongoing biopolitics from collaborations between biophysical and social scien- of pesticides and their regulation, including the effects about tists. For example, community or popular epidemiology, a which people are most concerned and the gender, race, eth- method that relies on household surveys and examines the nicity, ability, and age dynamics of these concerns. socio-environmental and economic situation of the affected population as well as their working and living conditions, is Industry restructuring, cocktails of chemicals, and an important tool to understand realities of pesticide expo- regulatory uncertainty sure among different social groups (Tognoni 1997; Breilh et al. 2005). Where aerial application of pesticides is broadly A key concern for health and environmental wellbeing is used by farmers and plantation managers, people living the proliferation of new formulations of pesticides with and working nearby bear the burden of increasing pesticide broadly illegible effects as of yet. The proliferation of these exposure, often with unknown and understudied long-term formulations, in which an active ingredient is mixed with effects (Domínguez and Sabatino 2010). Citizen science different combinations of “inert” ingredients, is driven by initiatives to “catch” pesticide drift can make the cocktail several factors discussed above: the rise of the generics sec- of exposures in farmworker communities legible (Marquez tor, pests’ growing resistance to existing pesticides, and the et al. 2020). Interviews with rural workers can illuminate lack of innovation of new AIs. Developing new formula- what chemicals are being used, how, and in what combi- tions using mixes of AIs is one way to try to address the nations, and low-cost screening tests in the field can indi- problem of resistance. cate how widespread exposures may be (Shattuck 2021b). Formulations of pesticides are rarely subjected to envi- These approaches can be especially effective if combined ronmental and health evaluation, which instead focuses on with environmental monitoring of water and soil contami- a single AI. The environmental, social, and health effects nation. Studies involving community partnerships can also of chemical cocktails and transnational implications for the elucidate how toxicity is experienced differently based on pesticide complex are all open questions. Co-formulants can gender, race, and social marginalization, and what popula- include harmful surfactants such as fluorinated chemicals tions have been deemed worth “sacrificing” in the name of (PFAS) (known as “forever chemicals” because they do not agricultural production and why. break down in the environment), which are associated with a wide range of health and developmental problems (Fenton Politics of evidence et al. 2021). Moreover, different combinations of surfac- tants, adjuvants, and active ingredients can be more toxic As the standard paradigm of toxicity erodes, chemical cor- than individual ingredients alone. The few studies on cock- porations—and those aligned with them—have responded tail effects – of either combinations of active ingredients or with a strong defense of pesticides’ safety and necessity for their formulations – show synergistic damage (e.g., Jaeger addressing global food security. To do so, they have con- et al. 1999; Nørgaard and Cedergreen 2010; Lukowicz et ducted their own studies on the safety of individual chemi- al. 2018). A research challenge is that data on the products cals, informally and formally influencing what counts as being used in agriculture are often missing, and even if such “good science” (e.g., Jansen 2008; Benbrook 2019). Resi- information is available, surfactants and adjuvants are often due standards, for example, illustrate how scientific princi- marked as “trade secrets” and thus not listed in pesticide ples can hide political decisions about who and what counts. ingredients. This can make it nearly impossible to trace International maximum residue limits are established by the harmful exposures or even estimate the scale of potentially Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues based on serious problems. “average daily intake,” a method subject to much criticism In this context, research is needed on how workers, because it focuses regulatory attention on consumption but farmers, and communities confront this changing land- fails to account for bioaccumulation, occupational and com- scape of pesticides. Because long term cohort studies, the munity exposure, and variations in body size (Wargo 1998; gold standard in epidemiology, are almost impossible to Johnson 2018). conduct in most of the world, social scientific approaches Pesticide workers and other exposed community mem- that document the experiences and perceptions of pesticide bers across the world are structurally disadvantaged 13 B. Mansfield et al. vis-a-vis industrial farming and agrochemical companies, gendered perception of the risks of pesticide exposure (e.g., and very often lack the scientific and legal literacy to make Mera-Orcés 2001; Evia Bertullo 2018; Kunin and Lucero their evidence legible within narrow regulatory metrics. 2020), and that local cultures and social class shape the sub- When evidence does exist, this might pertain only to a cer- jectivities of pesticide users (e.g., Galt 2013). The role of tain population (Navas 2022). Even if it is possible to isolate lived experience, and variation across experiences, is cen- a discrete pesticide compound in the body, it may have non- tral to the politics of evidence regarding pesticides’ harms. discrete effects because of a range of other life conditions Highlighting experience also means recognizing that (Liboiron 2021). For example, prior exposures can condi- these compounds support various kinds of livelihoods: tion the effects of subsequent exposures (Nash 2008) and they are part of the fabric of life for many people, which long-term effects of pesticide use are confounded by lack helps explain pesticides’ ubiquity. Pesticides are entangled of access to health care, poor health surveillance, and the in discourses of race, caste, and modernity (Luna 2018; general health stressors that come with being poor and rural Aga 2019; Williams 2021). They can be experienced as (Shattuck 2021b). Thus, while it is difficult if not impos- a vector for prosperity and progress (Lapegna and Kunin sible to trace harm directly from exposure, it is no stretch 2023) or as a way of achieving greater social status (Aga to imagine that the ubiquity of exposure represents large- 2019; Choudhury and Aga 2019). Agrochemicals can allow scale slow violence (Nixon 2011). Questions of minimum women to manage farms alone while their partners migrate thresholds will always be uncertain; asking instead about for work (Hu and Rahman 2016). As rural wage rates have violence — about the “how and why” of such widespread risen across much of the world, herbicides especially have and shifting exposures, and the very real fears and uncer- also become an economic necessity (Haggblade et al. 2017). tainties they generate — shifts attention from individualized And economically enabling effects of agrochemicals can outcomes to wider sets of relations at politically relevant positively alter social determinants of health in the imme- scales (Liboiron 2021). diate term even as their likelihood to undermine long-term In sum, innovative research is needed on the epistemol- health is widely recognized by users. ogy of toxicants: to understand both what chemicals do (as The effects of pesticides are highly differentiated even molecules, mixtures, and agents in biological organisms at the local scale. The same chemical compound that rep- and landscapes) and the politics of how we come to know resents profitability for a large farm owner can simultane- them. Research is needed on how the matter of the chemical ously mean sickness or even death for farm workers, and comes to matter, and how that changes as it moves along the extend ecological destruction and environmental dispos- commodity chain, through circuits of capital, in and out of session to neighboring and downstream communities. In different social relations, and informed by situated cultural the Colombian Caribbean, for example, glyphosate usage understandings of risks and harms. extends colonial dispossession, and the harms of glyphosate are mediated by and intertwined with gendered and racial Lived experience violence (Berman-Arévalo and Ojeda 2020). The gendered, and often patriarchal, dynamics of agrarian production and How agrochemicals intersect with agrarian change and with rural land access can condition and differentially situate the social lives, identities, race, and gender is not predictable. It effects and experiences of chemicals in ways that resist easy does not lend itself to easy normative claims in the immedi- universal claims. ate term, especially as it also means that those most affected We need more social scientific and humanistic under- might be resistant to making change (Stein and Luna 2021; standing of the material tangibility of individual chemicals Senanayake 2022). Increasing pest pressure, market liber- and the varied work they do in the world. We also need alization, promotion of agrochemicals, poorly functioning more understanding of the social meanings of pesticides extension systems and lack of public spending on alter- (and their harms) in different contexts, including in intimate natives can leave smallholders little choice but to rely on social relationships, such as among kin and community agrichemicals (Andersson and Isgren 2021; Aga 2019). (Kunin and Lucero 2020; Leguizamón 2020). Economic pressures, labor shortages, and cultural change can intersect to intensify the pesticide treadmill (Luna 2020). All this implies that agrarian conditions matter, as Conclusion: engaging with pesticides as does the broader social life of agrochemicals. multifaceted research objects As we have alluded, the burgeoning social science inter- est in the epistemology of toxicity and pesticide science is A new critical social science research agenda must account also raising key questions about how pesticides are expe- for pesticides as multifaceted research objects: as central rienced. Studies have shown, for instance, that there is a pillars for the present practice of conventional agriculture, 13 A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides sources of pollution and harm, tools of violence, opportuni- from the research margins to the centers of pesticide reg- ties to lower burdens of farm work and accumulate rural ulatory implementation. Such collective research efforts capital, biocides that harness and erode susceptibility, barri- coordinated between social scientists and biophysical and ers towards more sustainable farming futures, and more. The health scientists might have greater power in these regula- agenda outlined above highlights the need for innovations tory settings. We offer this research agenda, written by a that identify and unpack the recursive, interacting relation- mix of social scientists from different disciplines and parts ships between a dynamic, changing agrochemical industry, of the world, along with civil society-based and academic regulatory actions shaped by societal struggles over the biophysical scientists, as a step forward in these directions. environment and human health, and shifting paradigms of toxicity. This is what we mean by the global pesticide com- Acknowledgements This paper emerged from a workshop in Novem- ber 2021 called Global Glyphosate: New Challenges in Regulating plex as a heuristic: the agenda we have laid out seeks to Pervasive Chemicals in the Anthropocene. We are grateful to the Uni- parse relationships and interactions within and across these versity at Buffalo’s Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and the domains of industry, regulation, and knowledge of toxic- Community for Global Health Equity for supporting the workshop. ity. Such an approach can enable researchers to identify the Research was supported by US National Science Foundation (Grant #BCS2026088 - The Generic Herbicide Industry) and Swiss National evolving inequalities of today’s chemical geographies and Science Foundation (Grant #204766 - Making Herbicide Markets). We to support efforts to find alternatives to chemically driven are grateful to Caitlyn Sears and Gizem Orgev for research support industrial agriculture. and to Aniket Aga and Simone Müller for comments on earlier drafts. Research with communities on pesticides must avoid what indigenous studies scholar Eve Tuck calls “damage- Funding Open access funding provided by University of Zurich. centered research” (2009). A damage-centered approach Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons defines these communities singularly through their chemi- Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, cal exposures and harms; it reflects a theory of change that, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, like litigation, rests upon proving damage to advocate for as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the remedies. But this reductionist approach fails to account for source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this the multifaceted nature of pesticides themselves, the envi- article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless ronments in which they act, or the people who produce, indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not use, and otherwise come into contact with them. A “desire- included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended based” research framework (Tuck 2009) instead embraces use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright complex and conflicting relationships between pesticide holder. 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Authors and Affiliations Becky Mansfield1 · Marion Werner2 · Christian Berndt3 · Annie Shattuck4 · Ryan Galt5 · Bryan Williams6 · Lucía Argüelles7 · Fernando Rafael Barri8 · Marcia Ishii9 · Johana Kunin10 · Pablo Lapegna11 · Adam Romero12 · Andres Caicedo13 · Abhigya14 · María Soledad Castro-Vargas15 · Emily Marquez16 · Diana Ojeda17 · Fernando Ramirez18 · Anne Tittor19 10 Christian Berndt Escuela IDAES, Universidad Nacional de San Martín & christian.berndt@geo.uzh.ch Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Campus Miguelete - Edificio de Ciencias Sociales, Av. 25 de 1 Department of Geography, Ohio State University, 1036 Mayo 1021, San Martín, Buenos Aires B1650HMI, Argentina Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 11 Department of Sociology and Latin American & Caribbean 43214, USA Studies Institute, University of Georgia, Baldwin Hall, 2 Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, SUNY. 105 Athens, GA 30602-1611, USA Wilkeson Quad, Buffalo, NY 14261, USA 12 School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of 3 Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Washington Bothell, Box 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Winterthurerstrasse 190, Zurich CH-8057, Switzerland Bothell, WA 98011-8246, USA 4 13 Department of Geography, Indiana University-Bloomington, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University 701 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA of California, 2729 McGee Avenue, Berkeley, 5 California 94703, USA Department of Human Ecology & Agricultural Sustainability 14 Institute, University of California, Davis. 1309 Hart Hall, Indian Institute of Technology, Block 23, House Number One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616, USA 180, Lodhi Colony, New Delhi, India 6 15 Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University, Environmental Science and Technology Institute (ICTA), P.O. Box 2159, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA Autonomous University of Barcelona, Edifici ICTA-ICP, 7 Campus de la UAB, Barcelona 08193, Spain Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and Estudis 16 d’Economia i Empresa, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Pesticide Action Network North America, 2029 University (UOC), Research Hub UOC. Rambla de Poble Nou 156, Ave #200, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA Barcelona 08018, Spain 17 Universidad de los Andes, Calle 18A No 0-03 Este. Edificio 8 Cátedra de Problemática Ambiental, Facultad de Ciencias PU, La Candelaria, Bogotá, Colombia Exactas Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de 18 Central American Institute of Studies on Toxic Substances, Córdoba, Av. Vélez Sarsfield 299, Córdoba National University of Costa Rica at Heredia, IRET-UNA, CP 5000, Argentina Campus Omar Dengo, Apdo, Heredia 86-3000, Costa Rica 9 Pesticide Action Network North America, 2029 University 19 Institute of Sociology, University of Jena, Carl-Zeiß-Str 3, Ave #200, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA 07743 Jena, Germany 13