Inherently social in nature, agriculture has long attracted the attention of sociologists, while its complexity makes interdisciplinary research an essential approach. Since multiple objectives—including food security, green transformation, and farmers’ income growth—are closely interconnected, agricultural issues are no longer merely questions of production, but comprehensive issues that cut across natural processes, technological systems, and social relations. To grasp the holistic nature of agricultural studies, sociology must work in concert with other disciplines.

In terms of its disciplinary orientation, sociology has always sought to understand social facts in their totality. Yet as disciplinary divisions have deepened, this holistic vision has been substantially weakened, with society increasingly parsed into separate domains such as economics, politics, and culture. Faced with a reality in which social boundaries are becoming ever more blurred, such compartmentalized approaches have growing difficulty responding to sociology’s concern with totality.

By contrast, understanding “society” through the lens of “things” offers a possible route back to holistic comprehension: beginning with concrete “things,” tracing how diverse elements are intertwined and generated in practice, and thereby reconstructing an understanding of society through relations. “Things” serve not only as empirical entry points into society, but also as an analytical path toward totality, calling for an interdisciplinary approach that begins with “things.”

The concept of the “cropscape,” which has emerged in recent years in the fields of agricultural history and the history of science and technology, exemplifies precisely this methodological turn. The term first appeared in Moving Crops and the Scales of History (2023) by British historian of science and technology Francesca Bray and her collaborators. By focusing on crops as dynamic actors within historical processes, the book challenges Eurocentric and modernist narratives and reshapes historical narrative through the central perspective of the “cropscape.”

Bray defines the “cropscape” as an assemblage formed around crops, comprising all the heterogeneous elements and actors that converge at specific places and times for the cultivation and production of crops, including “plants, people, weather, markets, ideas, desires, and histories.” From this perspective, crops are no longer passive objects of production. Instead, they become key nodes linking different dimensions, allowing previously scattered questions to be reorganized within a shared analytical framework.

The core of “cropscape” studies lies in reconstructing a holistic understanding of agriculture through the mediation of “things.” Crops are not passive carriers connecting different domains, but mediators that transform the relations among them: They bear the constraints of natural processes while also altering those relations once they enter technological systems and market mechanisms. In this sense, crops not only connect different dimensions, but also reorganize the relations among them within concrete processes. By tracing the transformative trajectory of crops from production to circulation and consumption, previously divided economic and social processes can be reconnected, framing agriculture not as a mere productive activity, but as a dynamic process traversing multiple social systems.

When crops are situated within the relational networks of climate, technology, logistics, policy, and other elements, it becomes clear that agriculture is not driven by any single factor, but unfolds through the synergistic effects of multiple forces. From this perspective, agriculture is no longer an aggregation of discrete domains, but a process organized around concrete “things.” This mode of understanding allows questions previously dispersed across different disciplines to be brought together within a single analytical framework.

Interdisciplinary exploration beginning with “things” prompts sociology to reconsider its own fundamental concepts. When “society” is reduced to the sum of human relations, many processes fall outside its analytical field of vision. Beginning with “things,” by contrast, reveals that society is continuously formed through the interweaving of nature, technology, and diverse non-human elements. In this sense, the concept of the “cropscape” not only inspires an interdisciplinary approach, but also sheds light on how “society” can be understood in a world of constantly shifting boundaries. This, in turn, invites reflection on the ways humans relate to nature, technology, and concrete “things,” and, ultimately, on the future in which we wish to dwell.

Wu Xiaomian is an associate professor from the Department of Sociology at Fuzhou University.