Knowing to transform : three ways for agricultural economists to observe Italy 1900-1940

Abstract

Knowing to transform describes how Italian agricultural economists collected information about the economy of Italy, how these practices of observation contributed to the development of the theoretical tenets of agricultural economists, and in particular to the analysis of family farms. Finally, this work discusses how observation entred the political debate on agricultural policies before and during the Fascist regime. This work introduces the concept of "stakeholder statistics", and stresses the two way relation between the observer and the observed that in the context of this project can be considered in terms of coproduction of observational knowledge.