Melina Campos Ortiz

ABSTRACT SUBMITTED: Throughout 2025, I followed the “social life” of an alternative pesticide-use indicator in Costa Rica. This endeavour led me to expected settings: I worked alongside the scientists who developed the indicator, along with a wide array of stakeholders, to craft a high-stakes proposal to reduce pesticide use in the country. Following the indicator also led me into unexpected spaces: I interviewed farmers in the epicentre of pesticide-driven water contamination and became acquainted with activists opposing changes to potable water regulations. I further collaborated with a group of public health scholars to facilitate a workshop on narrative practices related to agrochemicals.

Through these encounters, I gathered key data to address my research question on the politics of alternative pesticide calculations in Costa Rica. Besides, my fieldwork allowed me to reflect on the challenges of remote participant observation and the possibilities it opens up for different forms of ethnographic engagement; to examine how some anti-pesticide activism relies on notions of purity that limit change; and to analyze how ignoring chemicals’ entanglements can weaken efforts to change regulations. Moreover, it allowed me to witness how pesticide-use indicators are more than policy tools but tell powerful stories about living and dying in the Anthropocene.