Plant Pathology and the Qualitative Social Sciences: Toward an Interdisciplinary Dialogue

This article attends to recent calls from plant pathology to advance toward interdisciplinary approaches. It argues for the importance of qualitative social science as a catalyst for new research and strategies to foreground the societal relevance of plant diseases. Through a narrative review and thematic analysis, the article first identifies how the social dimensions of plant disease have been incorporated within plant pathology in studies addressing the economic impacts of plant disease, its socio-historical importance and technology adoption. Second, it examines the qualitative social science literature identified in the review, organizing its contributions to the study of plant diseases into four categories.: i) institutions, ii) actors, iii) social processes, iv) relational approaches. Based on these findings, the article discusses the need for interdisciplinary dialogue to situate plant disease more prominently in current societal debates on the transformation of food systems. However, as the article argues, achieving this will require a renewed understanding of interdisciplinarity in plant pathology — one that sees it as a negotiated process of building shared concerns around plant diseases. In this process, learning from and accepting differences between disciplines become essential for creating open and robust interfaces through which scientists from diverse fields can work together to study and address plant disease.