This week I want to take a moment to provide updates from the previous week, reflect on where I am so far, and look towards where I am going in the next several weeks.
First, I changed my framing question to In what ways does new technology adoption further or inhibit sustainable development? My previous question assumed that new technology adoption can act to further sustainable development, but this is not necessarily the case. It made more sense to say “further or inhibit” as it better encompasses the complexity of sustainable development.
Next, this week we began thinking of the major actors for our situated context. After listing all of the actors I could think of, I realized just how little I knew of my specific contexts. I know very, very little of rice agriculture in California and even less of rice agriculture in Northern India. I have an idea of how various actors might relate, but I don’t actually know who these actors are. This made me realize just how much research I will need to do in the upcoming weeks. It is a daunting task. It also has me reconsidering having a comparative capstone. Perhaps it would be better to focus solely on Californian agriculture and only use Northern India as a point of comparison when I talk about the implications of my research.
Moving forward, I am going to focus on researching Californian agriculture. Once I get a better sense of this situated context, then I will reassess including Northern India as a point of comparison. For now, I will dive into the actors driving change in California rice agriculture and begin trying to look for available data.