Ronan Le Velly

Bio: Ronan Le Velly is an academic researcher from University of Montpellier. The author has contributed to research in topics: Supply chain & Food systems. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 38 publications receiving 542 citations. Previous affiliations of Ronan Le Velly include SupAgro & University of Nantes.

Citizenship and Consumption: Mobilisation in Alternative Food Systems in France

Abstract: Contemporary alternative food movement implement various means of action, which were previously developed by movements that were striving to construct citizenship through consumption. Drawing on the results of in-depth ethnographic studies, this article analyses the main fields of action of three French organisations: consumer education, implementation of alternative forms of trade and consumer mobilisation in protest campaigns. It shows that these actions require the movement to build representations of consumers, highlight their potential power within the framework of regulations and provide them with various tools to make the right choice. The article also presents the difficulties these organisations face in articulating political action and economic engagement. Consumption remains an important means for recruiting and mobilising individuals. Yet neither individuals nor movements can entirely overlook certain consumerist modes of functioning that stem from the current features of the agro-food system and the irreducible nature of the freedom of choice

Le commerce équitable : des échanges marchands contre et dans le marché

Abstract: L’article expose le projet et les pratiques du commerce equitable en s’appuyant sur la description qu’offre Max Weber de l’opposition entre rationalite formelle et rationalite materielle. Les promoteurs du commerce equitable partagent l’ambition d’une rationalisation materielle du marche (paiement d’un « prix juste », travail avec des « petits producteurs », connaissance des « producteurs derriere les produits »). Mais, des lors qu’ils s’efforcent egalement de developper leurs ventes et acceptent de se confronter a la concurrence, des tensions se font sentir. L’observation de differentes filieres de commerce equitable montre alors, en accord avec l’analyse de M. Weber, combien l’application de la rationalite materielle est de plus en plus difficile au fur et a mesure de la participation croissante a l’ordre marchand.

La notion d’encastrement : une sociologie des échanges marchands

Abstract: Tous les marches sont encastres. Les echanges marchands se realisent dans un contexte enchevetre de relations interpersonnelles, de regles formelles, d’outils et de representations collectives. Ces conditions d’encastrement a la fois contraignent et permettent les transactions marchandes. Elles ne constituent donc pas seulement le decor normatif ou est prise la decision mais le socle, les ressources mobilisees continuellement lors de l’action. La notion d’encastrement invite a une sociologie des echanges marchands.

Les circuits courts entre alternative et hybridation

Abstract: L'argument que nous souhaitons defendre dans ce texte est qu'une pensee du " grand partage " entre les circuits longs-conventionnels, d'un cote, et les circuits courts-alternatifs, de l'autre, n'est pas totalement satisfaisante principalement parce qu'elle ne recouvre pas totalement la realite des pratiques (Goodman, 2004). Il nous semble au contraire preferable d'interpreter les decalages, en termes de modalite de fonctionnement et de developpement, apportes par les circuits courts, en specifiant au contraire la maniere dont ceux-ci s'articulent, dans la pratique, avec des dispositifs des filieres longues. Autrement dit, on assiste bien moins a des formes de ruptures entre long et court qu'a des formes d'articulation tres variees et specifiques en fonction des differentes trajectoires des acteurs. Pour illustrer l'interet d'une telle approche, nous nous interesserons precisement a deux aspects du fonctionnement des circuits courts : la facon dont les prix sont determines et la nature des relations etablies entre producteurs et consommateurs. Pour ces deux points, il apparaitra que les circuits courts relevent bien souvent plus d'une alternative-hybridation que d'une alternative-rupture (Ilbery et Maye, 2006).

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

Abstract: This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Bruno Latour, The pasteurization of France , trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. 273, £23.95. - Georges Canguilhem, Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences , trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, The MIT Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. xi, 160, £17.95.

Abstract: BRUNO LATOUR, The pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law, Cambridge, Mass., and London, Harvard University Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. 273, £23.95. GEORGES CANGUILHEM, Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, The MIT Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. xi, 160, £17.95. Bruno Latour has written a wonderfully funny book about himself. It is difficult, however, to summarize a text committed to the view that \"Nothing is, by itself, either reducible or irreducible to anything else\", (p. 158). In Latour's opinion, the common view that sociologists of knowledge and scientists are opposed is incorrect. Both groups, according to Latour, are the authors of identical mistakes: reductionism and, relatedly, attempting to conjoin (in the instance of the sociologist) science and society, or (in the instance of the scientist) keeping them apart. For Latour, there are only forces or resistances which different groups encounter and attempt to conquer by forming alliances. These groups, however, are not simply the actors of conventional sociology. They include, for example, microbes, the discovery of the Pasteurians, with which they have populated our world and which we must now take notice of in any encounter or war in which we engage. War is a fundamental metaphor for Latour, since in a war or a battle clashes of armies are later called the \"victory\" of a Napoleon or a Kutuzov. Likewise, he argues, the Pasteurization of France can be viewed as a battle, with its field and its myriad contestants, in which opposing sides attempted to mould and coerce various forces of resistance. Strangely, he points out, the outcome of this huge battle, the labour and struggle of these masses, we attribute to the scientific genius of Pasteur. Pasteur's genius, however, says Latour, lay not in science (for this could be yet another way of making science and society distinct) but as strategist. Pasteur was able to cross disciplinary lines, recruiting allies to laboratory science by persuading them that they were recruiting him. This was possible because, like the armies in battle, they had already done the work of the general. Thus Pasteur's microbiology, which might conventionally be seen as a whole new science, can also be construed as a brilliant reformulation of all that preceded it and made it possible. Hygienists seized on the work of the Pasteurians and the two rapidly became powerful allies because \"The time that they [the hygienists] had made was now working for them\" (p. 52). French physicians, on the other hand, resisted recruitment, since for them it meant enslavement. Finally, however, they recruited the Pasteurians to their enterprise. Pasteurian public health was turned into a triumph of medicine. It is impossible to read this book and not substitute Latour for Pasteur. At the head of his own army, increasingly enlarged by the recruitment of allies, Latour now presents us, in his own language, with something we have made, or at least made possible. The cynic might say, using the old jibe against sociologists, that Latour has explained to us in his own language everything we knew anyway. Retorting thus, however, would be to unselfconsciously make an ally of Latour and miss the point by a narrow margin that might as well be a million miles. Latour says all this much more clearly (and certainly more wittily) than any review. Read it, but beware; in spite of Latour's strictures about irreducibility, the text is not what it seems. This is a recruitment brochure: Bruno needs you. Among the many historians whom Latour convicts by quotation of mistaking the general for the army, Pasteur for all the forces at work in French society, is Georges Canguilhem. Latour uses two quotes from Canguilhem, both taken from the original French version of Ideology and rationality in the life sciences, first published in 1977. Reading Canguilhem after Latour induces a feeling akin to culture shock. Astonishingly, Canguilhem seems almost Anglo-American. Anyone familiar with Canguilhem's epistemological universe would hardly be surprised to discover that Latour finds in it perspectives different from his own. After all, Canguilhem remains committed to the epistemologically distinct entity science or, better still, sciences. Likewise he employs distinctions between science and ideology, as in Spencerian ideology and Darwinian science, which will seem familiar, possibly jaded to English-reading eyes. His text is liberally seeded with unLatourian expressions, including injunctions to distinguish \"between ideology and science\" (p. 39), lamentations that eighteenth-century medicine \"squandered its energy in the erection of systems\" (p. 53), rejoicing that physiology \"liberated itself' from classical anatomy (p. 54), and regret that \"Stahl's influence ... seriously impeded experimental

A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

Abstract: Historians and social scientists analyzing the contemporary world unfortunately have too little contact and hence miss some of the ways that their interests overlap and the research of one field might benefit another. I am, therefore, extremely grateful that the Journal of Consumer Research has invited me to share with its readers an overview of my recent research on the political and social impact of the flourishing of mass consumption on twentieth-century America. What follows is a summary of my major arguments, enough to entice you, I hope, to read A Consumers' Republic (Cohen 2003), in which I elaborate on these themes. Although this essay is by necessity schematic, the book itself is filled with extensive historical evidence and is heavily illustrated with period images. In tracing the growing importance of mass consumption to the American economy, polity, culture, and social landscape from the 1920s to the present, I in many ways establish the historical context for your research into contemporary consumer behavior and markets. I hope you will …

Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice, and Politics

Abstract: Part 1 1 Introducing Alternative Food Networks, Fair Trade Circuits and The Politics Of Food 2 Coming Home To Eat? Reflexive Localism and Just Food 3 Bridging Production and Consumption: Alternative Food Networks as Shared Knowledge Practice Part 2: Alternative Food Provisioning In Britain And Western Europe: Introduction And Antecedents 4 Rural Europe Redux? The New Territoriality and Rural Development 5 Into the Mainstream: The Politics Of Quality 6 Changing Paradigms? Food Security Debates and Grassroots Food Re-Localization Movements in Britain and Western Europe Part 3: Alternative Food Movements In The US: Formative Years, Mainstreaming, Civic Governance And Knowing Sustainability 7 Broken Promises? US Alternative Food Movements, Origins and Debates 8 Resisting Mainstreaming, Maintaining Alterity 9 Sustainable Agriculture as Knowing and Growing Part 4: Globalizing Alternative Food Movements: The Cultural Material Politics of Fair Trade 10 The Shifting Cultural Politics of Fair Trade: From Transparent to Virtual Livelihoods 11 The Price and Practices of Quality: The Shifting Materialities of Fair Trade Networks 12 The Practices and Politics of a Globalized AFN: Whither the Possibilities and Problematics of Fair Trade? 13 Concluding Thoughts

A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

Abstract: H and social scientists analyzing the contemporary world unfortunately have too little contact and hence miss some of the ways that their interests overlap and the research of one field might benefit another. I am, therefore, extremely grateful that the Journal of Consumer Research has invited me to share with its readers an overview of my recent research on the political and social impact of the flourishing of mass consumption on twentieth-century America. What follows is a summary of my major arguments, enough to entice you, I hope, to read A Consumers’ Republic (Cohen 2003), in which I elaborate on these themes. Although this essay is by necessity schematic, the book itself is filled with extensive historical evidence and is heavily illustrated with period images. In tracing the growing importance of mass consumption to the American economy, polity, culture, and social landscape from the 1920s to the present, I in many ways establish the historical context for your research into contemporary consumer behavior and markets. I hope you will discover illuminating and fruitful connections between your work and my own. The United States came out of World War II deeply determined to prolong and enhance the economic recovery brought on by the war, lest the crippling depression of the 1930s return. Ensuring a prosperous peacetime would require making new kinds of products and selling them to different kinds of markets. Although military production would persist, and expand greatly with the cold war, its critical partner in delivering prosperity was the mass con-