Virosis and socio-technical assemblies: learning trajectories and technical reconfiguration in citrus farming in Misiones.

Abstract

This article analyses the transformation of citrus production in the province of Misiones based on the impact of viruses as disruptive events that reconfigured technical knowledge and agricultural practices. Through an ethnographic approach and from the perspective of the anthropology of technology and social studies of science and technology, it reconstructs how these non-human agents (viruses) triggered processes of technical innovation, institutional negotiations and situated learning. Within this framework, the emergence of new objects and procedures—such as the certification of plant materials, the use of micrografting, and thermotherapy—is examined, which introduced more standardised and centralised forms of control over plant life. Within these transformations, rootstocks became established as a particularly relevant technical object, as they articulate laboratory practices, regulatory frameworks, agronomic knowledge and farmers' experiences, becoming a privileged point of observation of the tensions between local autonomy and global demands.

Based on this process, the article discusses the dichotomies between technical knowledge and local agricultural knowledge, showing how citrus farming practices develop in networks of knowledge co-production, in environments structured by technical traditions, ecological contingencies and institutional frameworks in tension. In this context, it is argued that viruses should not only be understood as phytosanitary threats, but also as catalysts for a broader reconfiguration of the technical, productive and social order of citrus farming in Misiones.