#461: Entangled Learning: Farmers, Phones, and the Politics of Informal Agricultural Learning in Rural Jamaica

This study examines how smallholder farmers in rural Jamaica engage with mobile phones and digital platforms as part of ‘informal’ learning apparatuses. Drawing on Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism, it conceptualizes learning as a dynamic, relational process shaped by entangled human and non-human agencies. Based on interviews and observations with 18 farmers, the analysis explores how mobile devices, algorithms, social networks, ecological feedback, and experiential knowledge co-produce authority and shape learning. Central to this process are agential cuts—material discursive boundary-making practices through which farmers distinguish between valid/invalid and traditional/non-traditional knowledge. Farmers actively sift, interpret, and reconfigure knowledge through iterative intra-actions with platforms, people, and place. The findings challenge binary framings of digital learning as either human-centered or technologically deterministic, revealing instead the recursive and negotiated nature of learning. This research offers critical insights for developing inclusive and context-responsive agricultural mLearning interventions.