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a b s t r a c tTechnography has recently been proposed as an interdisciplinary methodology for the detailed study of the use of skills, tools, knowledge and techniques in everyday life. This paper argues that technography is a useful methodological approach for the integrative study of social-technical configurations. Technography focuses on how teams or networks of farmers, technicians and engineers, amongst other actors, solve problems. The key characteristics of the technographic approach are discussed, using examples drawn from agricultural production. The concept of performance helps to distinguish technography from some common agronomic as well as social science approaches to technological change. We conclude that technography, which is basically a methodology, needs to be complemented with a social analysis of concrete political, economic and cultural processes that co-evolve with technological change.

Food safety is a widely recognized concern in Vietnam. Public officials, companies and consumers find different ways to address risks of pesticide residues and bacterial contamination related to the use of fresh vegetables in daily diets. The response of the government to these food safety risks includes the modernization and regulation of the food retail system. However, reforms that aim to offer a controlled and predictable provision of fresh vegetables through supermarkets seem to contrast with the daily consumer practices in a dynamic city as Hanoi; over 95% of vegetables is still being purchased at long-established open-air markets, importantly the informal and unhygienic street markets. Using a practices theory approach, this paper aims to explain this persistence of street-market shopping for vegetables. Detailed accounts of consumer practices, case studies at different retailing sites and daily logbooks of consumers demonstrate that the way consumers cope with food safety risks is largely shaped by the temporal and spatial constraints of their daily shopping practices. We identified how vegetable shopping is either enjoyed as social interaction within the local community or is regarded a time-consuming activity that conflicts with other activities in everyday life. Our findings indicate how these constraints constitute a reinforcing mechanism for the persistence of uncontrolled and unhygienic street markets. To make policy responses to food safety risks both more realistic and effective, it is essential to connect to and accommodate the daily realities of consumers managing time and space in a modernizing city rather than to impose an ideal, typical market exclusively driven by the wish to control food safety risks.

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