The moral economy of grades and standards
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that grades and standards are part of the moral economy of the modern world, and that they both set norms for behavior and standardize (create uniformity).
About: This article is published in Journal of Rural Studies.The article was published on 2000-07-01. It has received 313 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Generally Accepted Auditing Standards & Standardization.
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Book•
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this article, the authors make claims for "innovative innovation" concerning the purposes and ways of designing new technologies and practices, or new practices in relation to existing techniques, indicating a need for a shift in the governance of research and innovation to achieve a sustainable future.
Abstract: Over the past decade, the transition towards sustainable agriculture has been a central theme in the work of many organisations. Ensuring that any transition that might be taking place does lead to more sustainability is a major challenge for societies in general and for agro-food systems in particular. In this context the relations between agronomic science, agricultural technologies, and public or private expectations are at stake. This leads to claims for "innovative innovation" concerning the purposes and ways of designing new technologies and practices, or new practices in relation to existing techniques. In fact, these claims indicate a need for a shift in the governance of research and innovation to achieve a sustainable future.
45 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine two examples of environmental governance led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs): forestry certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and fishery certification by MSC.
Abstract: This article examines two examples of environmental governance led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs): forestry certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and fishery certification by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). We use interviews with a range of actors in each certification network in the UK and the USA to examine how FSC and MSC use both space and science in similar (but not identical) ways. Drawing on diverse literature from geography, science and technology studies and political science, we show how certifications are spatialized differently on land (forests) and on water (ocean fisheries) and how certification units can be defined as socionatural hybrids, rather than tied to traditional territorial concerns and political boundaries, thus emphasizing the complexity and variation within putatively global governance. We also show how, without the benefit of governmental backing, NGOs seek credibility and legitimation particularly through diverse alliances with scientific authority. However, such attempts are not straightforward and NGO-led governance often continues to reflect the traditional geographies and uncertainties of environmental government.
45 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how carbon markets have entered the world of financial accounting and explore how the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in 2005 provided the opportunity for g...
Abstract: In this paper we explore how carbon markets have entered the world of financial accounting. The advent of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in 2005 provided the opportunity for g...
45 citations
Additional excerpts
...(Burchell et al., 1980: 5)....
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TL;DR: The role of standards in contemporary environmental governance is critically reassessed by examining how they are involved in the upscaling or down-scaling of markets as mentioned in this paper, and the authors suggest that policy instruments like standards need to challenge existing neoliberal market relations rather than simply follow them.
44 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...Standards have come to the fore in particular in food and agricultural policy (Busch, 2000, Henson and Humphrey, 2009) where corporate interests have a key role in securing food safety (Marsden et al., 2009)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the interaction of three regulatory networks and their influence over sustainable shrimp aquaculture in East Kalimantan, and show that while government and nongovernment organization (NGO) regulatory networks have focused on the standardization of best practices, it is artisanal trade networks, controlled by local patrons, that hold most influence over production.
Abstract: Taking related concepts of friction and a simplified value chain analysis, this article focuses on interaction of three regulatory networks and their influence over sustainable shrimp aquaculture in East Kalimantan. The results show that while government and nongovernment organization (NGO) regulatory networks have focused on the standardization of best practices, it is artisanal trade networks, controlled by local patrons (or ponggawa), that hold most influence over production. By exploring the influence of these ponggawa over production and trade we demonstrate how patronage is key to regulating the conduct of farmers and constitutes a vital, but poorly understood element in the shrimp value chain. We conclude that while ponggawa hold a central position in these value chains they remain systematically ignored by state and NGO-market-led regulatory networks. As a result, many of the frictions inherent to local–global interconnections of shrimp aquaculture limit any externally led attempt to create change.
43 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...The goal of global certification networks is to standardize differences in farmer practices (Busch 2000) and to improve (albeit externally defined) ‘‘deficiencies that need to be rectified’’ (Li 2007, 7)....
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...Standards, and their verification through certification, have therefore transformed the global agrifood system by defining a moral economy that regulates ‘‘people and things that do not conform to the accepted definitions of good and bad’’ (Busch 2000, 274)....
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References
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present La Volonté de Savoir, the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality, which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as human sciences, the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the "other" in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
Abstract: This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
15,794 citations
"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper
...As Foucault (1977) has suggested, some, perhaps most, of these relations of power are benign....
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Book•
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Abstract: What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.
8,858 citations
"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper
...On the one hand, the social studies of science has been much in#uenced through the Actor Network Theory developed by Latour (1987, 1993) and Callon (Callon, 1991; Callon and Latour, 1992; Callon et al., 1986) among others (e.g., Law, 1994)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1987
TL;DR: In this article, the quandary of the fact-builder is explored in the context of science and technology in a laboratory setting, and the model of diffusion versus translation is discussed.
Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction Opening Pandora's Black Box PART I FROM WEARER TO STRONGER RHETORIC Chapter I Literature Part A: Controversies Part B: When controversies flare up the literature becomes technical Part C: Writing texts that withstand the assaults of a hostile environment Conclusion: Numbers, more numbers Chapter 2 Laboratories Part A: From texts to things: A showdown Part B: Building up counter-laboratories Part C: Appealing (to) nature PART II FROM WEAR POINTS TO STRONGHOLDS Chapter 3 Machines Introduction: The quandary of the fact-builder Part A: Translating interests Part B: Keeping the interested groups in line Part C: The model of diffusion versus the model of translation Chapter 4 Insiders Out Part A: Interesting others in the laboratories Part B: Counting allies and resources PART III FROM SHORT TO LONGER NETWORKS Chapter 5 Tribunals of Reason Part A: The trials of rationality Part B: Sociologics Part C: Who needs hard facts? Chapter 6 Centres of calculation Prologue: The domestication of the savage mind Part A: Action at a distance Part B: Centres of calculation Part C: Metrologies Appendix 1
8,173 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1962
TL;DR: In the classic bestseller, Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the classic bestseller, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism--the organization of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market--as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. Beginning with a discussion of principles of a liberal society, Friedman applies them to such constantly pressing problems as monetary policy, discrimination, education, income distribution, welfare, and poverty. "Milton Friedman is one of the nation's outstanding economists, distinguished for remarkable analytical powers and technical virtuosity. He is unfailingly enlightening, independent, courageous, penetrating, and above all, stimulating."-Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek "It is a rare professor who greatly alters the thinking of his professional colleagues. It's an even rarer one who helps transform the world. Friedman has done both."-Stephen Chapman, Chicago Tribune
7,026 citations
6,926 citations
"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper
...On the one hand, the social studies of science has been much in#uenced through the Actor Network Theory developed by Latour (1987, 1993) and Callon (Callon, 1991; Callon and Latour, 1992; Callon et al., 1986) among others (e.g., Law, 1994)....
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...…of Edmund Stone: Mathematical Instruments are the means by which those noble sciences, geometry and philosophy, are render'd 8As both Rouse (1987) and Latour (1987) have noted, the illusion of universality is constructed by a set of speci"c events and actions that are always local in character....
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