Abstract

Professional extension seldom gets the opportunity to establish a relaxed dialogue with individual farmers during field walks even when the objective is to enhance skills, know-how and competence in soil cultivation. Never the less personal experiences and practical knowledge play an important role in the everyday work at farm level. Especially within ecological agriculture the concept of the living soil is of outmost importance as it may be the key motivation of farming. In Sweden farmers and consumers have played a powerful role in the development of ecological agriculture. What kind of understanding is the basis of these societal processes? The thesis summarizes and discusses results of thirty-six qualitative research interviews with farmers and consumers in Sweden carried out during 2001. The research objectives is to develop a better understanding of existential and societal aspects of ways of understanding soil and agriculture to make a contribution to communicative action due to agricultural issues. Seventy-four ways of understanding soil were identified and put into seven categories of description. And fifty-four ways of understanding agriculture were identified and put into sex categories of description. Relationships between the two groups of categories were elucidated. The analysis was made from theoretical frames of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Jürgen Habermas. The subjective characteristics of rationalism are essential and show the necessity of choosing the human subject as a point of departure in scientific work. To match the life world and the system in a reasonable way communicative action is needed. Results of the study show possibilities to widen the concept of communicative action through agrarian language-games where inter-subjective action includes natural resources in an agricultural body. Taking existential aspects of agriculture seriously it is also necessary to take theological perspectives into consideration.