Embracing the social sciences, arts, and humanities in inter-disciplinary precision dairy research: opening-up conversations beyond adoption and techno-optimism
Rose, D.C., Sharpe, J. and Charlton, G.L. (2026) Embracing the social sciences, arts, and humanities in inter-disciplinary precision dairy research: opening-up conversations beyond adoption and techno-optimism. Frontiers in Animal Science, 7. ISSN 2673-6225
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Abstract
Precision technologies in dairy farming are widely hailed as offering the opportunity to revolutionise modes of production, helping to create more with less. Promissory narratives of precision dairy technology continue to dominate, with an overwhelmingly positive view of technofixes in scientific, policy, and popular debates. When the social sciences and humanities are called on to play a role in nominally inter-disciplinary investigations of precision livestock technologies, many studies continue to focus on reasons for initial farmer adoption using superficial methodologies and appear tokenistically to involve social scientists from a narrow set of disciplines, late in the day. However, there is a growing wave of social science and creative arts-based studies focusing on precision livestock technologies, including in dairy systems, which offer something different. These studies do not focus purely on reasons for initial (non-) adoption of precision dairy technologies, which tend to miss critical debates around the opportunities and risks of change. Our arguments are based around three key concepts – time, place, ‘more-than-human’ – plus over-arching themes of justice and creative inter-disciplinarity – as a basis for encouraging precision dairy researchers to expand focus areas beyond adoption and techno-optimism. Inter-disciplinary and hybrid scholarship from across the animal sciences, social sciences, and humanities address different topics and offer innovative ways of including human and non-human stakeholders. We showcase and celebrate some of this work and call for its early and sustained integration in future inter-disciplinary collaborations.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Keywords: | digital livestock farming, precision agriculture (PA), precision dairy farming, precision dairy farming technology, social science & humanities |
| Divisions: | Research Centres > Animal Science Research Centre > Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research Group Research Centres > Centre for Social Science > Engaging for Change (E4C) |
| Depositing User: | Mrs Susan Howe |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Sep 2026 15:38 |
| Last Modified: | 07 Sep 2026 15:38 |
| URI: | https://hau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/18412 |
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