Michael Carolan — Colorado State University ecosystem for US agrifood AI sociology (labour, recognition, (Dis)Ableism)

NA-US (Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO; research reach international)

Content

The Carolan CSU ecosystem is the corpus’s second-most-substantive US analytical cluster for agrifood AI, and is structurally complementary to the Sullivan-Guthman-Fairbairn-Mitchell UCSC cluster. Anchored at Colorado State University Sociology (Carolan as Professor; Co-Director of the Food Systems Institute), with cross-cluster reach to AI-LEAF (a USDA-NIFA AI Institute — institutional proximity but analytical distinction), the cluster’s analytical position is sociological (the recognition dimension, the labour-and-disability dimension, the productive-affective politics of digital agriculture) rather than ethnographic (which is the UCSC cluster’s position).

This is an ecosystem unit (per METHOD #6 four-layer pattern, Pillaud / Neethirajan / Mozilla precedent) — the cluster is load-bearing across multiple analytical voices, and reading them as a single ecosystem makes the cluster’s analytical position load-bearing for the corpus.

Four-layer ecosystem mapping (per METHOD #6)

Layer 1 — Direct collaborators. The cluster’s core members:

• Michael Carolan (Professor of Sociology; Co-Director, Food Systems Institute, Colorado State University). 300+ peer-reviewed publications. The corpus’s most-substantive US-based sociological critical voice on digital agriculture. Per corpus hygiene (substantive analytical contribution over citation volume): Carolan’s work is included because he engages substantively with the labour, recognition, and disability dimensions of agrifood AI deployment — dimensions that mainstream agrifood AI reports (USDA AI Strategy, the AI Institutes’ communications, vendor marketing, investment pitches) systematically avoid.
• CSU Food Systems Institute members — interdisciplinary food systems research hub at Colorado State University. Co-Director position for Carolan.
• CSU Sociology Department graduate students and post-docs — institutional training pipeline.
• AI-LEAF Institute adjacency — AI-LEAF is a USDA-NIFA AI Institute with CSU as a partner. Carolan’s Food Systems Institute is institutionally adjacent to AI-LEAF’s CSU partner work but analytically distinct — Carolan’s work is critical-sociological, AI-LEAF’s CSU work is technical / applied.

Layer 2 — Institutional partners. The cluster’s institutional anchors:

• Colorado State University — Fort Collins, CO. Land-grant university (one of the 1862 institutions).
• CSU Food Systems Institute — interdisciplinary food systems research hub; Co-Director for Carolan.
• AI-LEAF Institute — USDA-NIFA AI Institute; partner with CSU. Adjacent (not overlapping) with Carolan’s critical-sociological work.
• Agriculture and Human Values (Springer) — Carolan 2024 publication venue.
• Sociologia Ruralis (Wiley) — Carolan 2023 publication venue.
• New Media & Society (SAGE) — Carolan 2023 publication venue.

Layer 3 — Industry / vendor counterparts. The cluster’s analytical posture is against the dominant agrifood AI industry framings:

• Vendor productivity-and-efficiency framings (Bayer, John Deere, Indigo Ag, AGCO) — Carolan’s “perilous promise of productivity” (NMS 2023) is the political-economy critique of vendor productivity claims.
• Federal agencies (USDA AI Strategy) — workforce-readiness-and-ethics framings; Carolan’s work does not engage in the workforce-readiness-and-ethics framing but does not duplicate it.
• Academic research institutes (AgAID, AIIRA, AIFARMS, AI-LEAF) — adopt-adapt-amplify / digital-twin / autonomous-farming framings; Carolan’s work is institutionally adjacent to AI-LEAF but analytically distinct.
• Land-grant deployment (Cooperative Extension) — people-trust-coordination framings.

Layer 4 — Framework positions. The cluster’s analytical framings are the load-bearing intellectual contribution:

• (Dis)Ableism / labour / recognition — Carolan’s most distinctive analytical contribution. “Agriculture 4.0 at the intersectionality of (Dis)Ableism, labor, and recognition” (Agriculture and Human Values 2024) is the substantive paper that names how digital agriculture’s recognition structures systematically exclude disabled workers, farmworkers with limited formal documentation, and care work. The (Dis)Ableism framing is structurally distinctive — most agrifood AI critical work does not engage with disability.
• Happy objects and cruel quests — “Digital agriculture killjoy: Happy objects and cruel quests” (Sociologia Ruralis 2023). Carolan names what he calls the “happy objects” framing of AI / robotics / data tools — the affective politics of digital agriculture — and the “cruel quests” that follow when these framings meet labour realities on farms.
• Perilous promise of productivity — “The perilous promise of productivity: Affective politics” (New Media & Society 2023). The political-economy critique of productivity claims in digital agriculture. The framing is substantive — it names the political economy of productivity claims without rejecting agrifood AI per se. (Per the Carolan unit: “Carolan’s framing of ‘the perilous promise of productivity’ is a political-economy critique, not a rejection of agrifood AI per se. Worth knowing because his work can be misread as anti-technology when it is anti-uncritical-adoption.”)

Three substantive papers

Paper 1: Who and what gets recognized in digital agriculture: Agriculture 4.0 at the intersectionality of (Dis)Ableism, labor, and recognition — Carolan’s most substantive recent US-engaged work. Engages with how digital agriculture’s recognition structures (what counts, what is measured, whose work is visible) systematically exclude disabled workers, farmworkers with limited formal documentation, and care work. The (Dis)Ableism framing is structurally distinctive — most agrifood AI analytical work does not engage with disability. (Agriculture and Human Values, 2024, doi:10.1007/s10460-024-10560-9.)

Paper 2: Digital agriculture killjoy: Happy objects and cruel quests — A substantive critique of the affective politics of digital agriculture — what Carolan calls the “happy objects” framing of AI / robotics / data tools, and the “cruel quests” that follow when these framings meet labour realities on farms. (Sociologia Ruralis, 2023, doi:10.1111/soru.12398.)

Paper 3: The perilous promise of productivity: Affective politics — Engages with the productivity framing that dominates agrifood AI discourse. The “perilous promise” framing is substantive — it names the political economy of productivity claims in digital agriculture. (New Media & Society, 2023, doi:10.1177/14614448231174521.)

Comparison with Sullivan-Guthman-Fairbairn-Mitchell UCSC cluster

The two clusters are complementary. Carolan’s broader sociological analytical level + UCSC cluster’s deeper empirical-ethnographic level. Together they cover more of the US analytical critical-voice landscape than either alone.

What the cluster does NOT do

• No IDSov engagement. The Carolan CSU cluster does not engage with Indigenous Data Sovereignty frameworks (CARE Principles, IEEE 2890-2025, OCAP, NISR); IDSov is a parallel critical-voice cluster (Cornell Atkinson IDSov cluster; UCSC cluster does not engage IDSov substantively either).
• No labour-organisation engagement. Carolan’s work is sociological-analytical; he does not engage UFCW / NFU / CIW / UFW as labour-side institutional voices. The labour-organisation engagement is the proposed units/ufcw-nfu-clc-canada-labour-producers.md layer.
• No regional comparative scope. Carolan’s work is US-anchored; the labour-organisation / IDSov / labour-policy layers are international. The two clusters are complementary on labour, complementary on US scope, but not overlapping.

What this unit is doing in the taxonomy

Anchors the US sociological analytical cluster cell — an ecosystem unit per METHOD #6, paralleling the Pillaud (French agritech) / Neethirajan (Dalhousie) / Mozilla (open-source internet) ecosystem units. Distinct from:

• Sullivan-Guthman-Fairbairn-Mitchell UCSC cluster (units/sullivan-guthman-fairbairn-mitchell-ucsc-cluster.md) — parallel US ethnographic critical-voice ecosystem; complementary not overlapping.
• Cornell Atkinson IDSov cluster (units/cornell-atkinson-idsov-cluster.md) — IDSov framework + climate-cooperatives; structurally parallel critical-voice pattern.
• IPES-Food / FIAN / ETC Group — international critical voices with policy-framework posture; structurally adjacent but US-anchored sociology is the Carolan CSU cluster’s distinctive contribution.

Why it matters for talks

• Carolan is the canonical US-based critical-voice researcher for agrifood AI sociology. Talks that need substantive critical analytical content (academic, policy, or critical-civil-society audiences) should reference Carolan’s framing.
• The (Dis)Ableism framing is structurally distinctive. Most agrifood AI critique focuses on smallholder / Indigenous / data-sovereignty concerns; Carolan adds labour and disability dimensions that are genuinely distinct.
• Carolan’s CSU position connects him institutionally to the AI-LEAF cluster; the proximity is worth knowing for talks that pair technical and critical framings.
• Ecosystem unit, not single-actor unit. The cluster’s analytical position is not the position of any single member; it is the position of the cluster. Reading the cluster together makes the analytical position load-bearing the way Pillaud / Neethirajan / Mozilla / Sullivan-Guthman-Fairbairn-Mitchell ecosystem units do.

Critical context

• Carolan is not a researcher who deploys AI. He is a critical analyst. Treating his work as a counterweight to vendor / institute framings is appropriate; treating his work as a substitute for substantive technical work is not.
• The 300+ publications indicator includes a wide range of topics — food systems generally, not just digital agriculture. The digital agriculture subset is substantive but is a portion of broader work.
• Carolan’s framing of “the perilous promise of productivity” is a political-economy critique, not a rejection of agrifood AI per se. Worth knowing because his work can be misread as anti-technology when it is anti-uncritical-adoption.
• Carolan’s positionality: he is US-based but his work engages substantively with global food systems. The “US-based” classification in this unit is institutional-location; his analytical reach is broader.
• The cluster does not count Carolan’s work toward the v4 taxonomy’s actor-type: academic quota in the same way as the AI Institutes — Carolan’s claim-type: claim rather than example reflects that his work is analytical rather than deployment-describing.
• AI-LEAF adjacency is institutionally real but analytically distinct. The proximity is worth knowing for talks that pair technical (AI-LEAF) and critical (Carolan) framings; it does not mean Carolan is part of AI-LEAF.