Soilless Farming, Capital and Technology: A Sociological Inquiry on Transformation of Agriculture

Date

2026-6-26

Author

Akkaya, Buse

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This thesis, arguing that hydroponic technologies cannot be comprehended as merely technical objects, sociologically examines soilless agricultural productions. Thereby, rather than simply approaching it as a neutral tool, this work places soilless farming within the broader trajectory of capitalist agriculture, both accounting for the structural context that have given rise to its emerge and its operational rationale. A qualitative document analysis is employed, initiated by scanning the news archives of Vertical Farm Daily, covering from 2020 to 2026. This corpus, initially drawn from over 4,000 news items, is subsequently expanded through the sources and organizational websites encountered in this process. The analysis is built upon two layers. The first deals with the question of structure, that is, why hydroponics is rising at this particular moment and what are the qualities of the context it is embedded in. Drawing on the notion of risk society, elaborated by Beck as well as the structural barriers that historically constrained agriculture's full subsumption under capitalist relations, emphasized by Marx and Kautsky on their reflection on ground-rent and Mann and Dickinson, this thesis argues that hydroponics stems from an attempt to render the agriculture an industry proper. The second layer concern the question of operation and articulation, that is, how soilless farming operates within and advances through that same structure, through which strategies. Here the analysis draws on Goodman et al.’s differentiation between substitutionism and appropriationism. The thesis extends beyond the original formulation to account that hydroponics reorganizes agricultural production in an advanced appropriationist manner.

Subject Keywords

hydroponics, soilless farming, agrarian capital, transformation of agriculture, risk society

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/119697

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis