Actor-networks and “practices” of development: impact of a weather information system in West Bengal

The urgent need for inclusive and sustainable agriculture has seen transition towards holistic, situated and participatory approaches to agricultural development such as agroecology. In this paper we use observations drawn from an ethnographic action research project to examine the implications of such approaches on ICT design and implementation strategy. We suggest that ICTs designed for sustainable agriculture need to shift their emphasis from packaging and transmitting information towards facilitating communication and sharing of practice, incorporating diverse knowledge paradigms and collective, social and situated forms of knowing and learning.