Johana Kunin

Moral ambiguities, power and non-human actors in Argentine farming

Johana is our most recent colleague, who has come to Uppsala from Argentina to work with the Formas funded-research project Prosperity, Plants, and Poison: Ambivalences over Pesticide Use in Contemporary Argentina. She will pursue her academic work across Uppsala University and UNSAM, the Argentine State University.

For the last 13 years, Johana has been working as an anthropologist focusing on agricultural issues. With her new Formas-project she places the focus on the prosperous farmers who decide to use pesticides in the Pampas region of Argentina.

- Argentina depends on rural exports to earn dollars and pay our external debt. About 99 % of the soy Argentina exports is based on GMOs (genetically modified organisms). But GMOs require pesticides to thrive. This is the hegemonic production model in the country. Nevertheless, these products are the subject of significant global controversy. In this project, I examine how farmers respond to claims linking pesticides to cancer and other health conditions, including skin and respiratory diseases, spontaneous abortions, and fetal malformations.

Many environmental studies focus on the pesticides’ effects on vulnerable workers, who, due to poverty and class conditions, live near polluted areas.

-In this project I am collaborating with Professor Pablo Lapegna from the University of Georgia in the US. We have shifted focus from the victims to the men who decide to use pesticides and profit from them. In a sense, they can be framed as the local “winners” of the model. However, they operate primarily as intermediary actors, while the main benefits accrue to large multinational companies. These farmers live in the rural areas with their families and breathe the same air they decide to spray.

Paradoxical coexistence

Johana examines the coexistence of wealth and hazards, often described as “paradoxical”. She highlights its limited treatment in the literature. Her project investigates how these farmers reconcile the economic benefits of GMO-based agriculture with the personal and communal risks.

- A second question concerns the relationship to non-humans. There are many non-human agents in this setting: the soy plants grown for export, the weeds farmers try to eradicate, the chemicals used to do so, and the wind that carries toxic substances into towns and onto agroecological fields. The climate is also playing an increasingly important role, as it is becoming more extreme due to global warming. These farmers are not poor peasants. Many are university-educated or work closely with engineers. They want to control nature through science, chemical products, and very expensive machinery. Yet they often conclude that such control over nature is difficult to achieve.

Over the years, Johana has worked with researchers from many different disciplines. She clearly sees that anthropology has an important role in addressing the complexities of pesticide-dependent agriculture.

- If we want to transition from pesticide-dependent GMO-crops to another model, we need to know how these people think. If you only have bio-data from the fields, or only the perspective of the victims of this model, we don’t know what the actors with relative power need to change. Anthropology provides a deep understanding by listening without judging, which is essential for opening public discussion and developing working policies.

Trapped in a model

Johana describes that these farmers are often depicted as caricatures, who are doing harm to themselves and their community because of their greed for money.

-Yes, it is true they get prosperous by it. But they are enmeshed in global chains of practice and knowledge, grounded simultaneously in local and international historical contexts. Most soy is exported to feed livestock in China and other countries. Export revenues help pay Argentina’s massive external debt. There is a lot at stake, which makes the transition difficult. Removing pesticides risks productivity. In that sense, Argentina is trapped in the model. My goal is to grasp the insider perspective, which is key to fostering genuine dialogue. Activists often portray farmers as the “enemy,” provoking defensiveness. Meaningful policy solutions emerge from truly appreciating others’ perspectives. Anthropology equips me to approach viewpoints without judgment, allowing me to engage productively with those whose views I might contest.

One research method Johana uses is giving participants cameras to photograph their everyday lives.

-This is productive when participants are defensive. The camera opens a different channel of conversation. We discuss what they chose to photograph and why.

Living in contradictions

Johana sees that her informants express ambiguity about the hazards of the chemicals.

- Thirty years ago, these guys insisted the products were completely safe. They still say so publicly, but in the kind of private conversations that you can have as an anthropologist, they express doubt. It’s not necessarily that they are changing; rather, they are living in contradiction.

For Johana, contradiction is analytically valuable.

- We tend to believe that if someone has the facts, they will make the “right” decisions. But here it is more useful to understand how they manage the contradiction of participating in a system that generates prosperity, yet may harm them and their communities. Moral ambiguity is present in many areas of our lives, and most of us are not as “rational” as we tend to believe. Ethnography of contradictions can benefit anthropology as well as fields dealing with negotiated hazards, such as vaccine debates or HIV prevention. It says a lot about the human condition, says Johana.

Text: Jennie Sjödin, January 2026