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.
Citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors used a socology of knowledge approach to understand how different governance arrangements may facilitate or constrain the unfolding of a circular economy transition in waste flows in the UK and China.
Abstract: Wastes, like other materials, have become increasingly global in their flows. The circular economy (CE) is a multi-level sustainability transition linked to the global trade in waste. China has long been a key trading partner for the West’s waste materials. However, its rethinking of the quality of traded recyclable materials has triggered a crisis in the global governance of waste flows. We utilise a Sociology of Knowledge approach to undertake comparative work to better understand how different governance arrangements may facilitate or constrain the unfolding of a CE transition. The UK and China were selected as models of liberal and authoritarian environmental governance respectively. A mixed-method approach was pursued using qualitative interviews with key stakeholders and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from secondary sources. Thematic analysis is organised around: perceptions of the circular economy, meanings of standards, and perspectives on trade and materials.
32 citations
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...Standards have come to the fore 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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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: The authors examined how powerful players in the produce industry organized a strategic approach to governing leafy greens production in California and highlighted serious concerns regarding participation and transparency in the creation of food safety standards.
Abstract: In 2006, an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 associated with California spinach resulted in widespread illness across the United States. The magnitude of the outbreak and the resulting media attention demanded a change in the governance of leafy green produce. Drawing from more than 130 personal interviews, this paper critically examines how powerful players in the produce industry organized a strategic approach to governing leafy greens production in California. Networks are used to explore the evolution of new industry-led food safety standards and how they directly conflicted with and overpowered environmental agendas. This paper highlights serious concerns regarding participation and transparency in the creation of food safety standards, identifying patterns of winners and losers and suggesting ways in which we might foster more democratic approaches to food governance. Although a new faculty member at Michigan State, I am very familiar with the work of Lawrence Busch and others from the Michigan State University (MSU) School of Agrifood Governance and Technoscience. Their work has provided substantial insight for agrifood scholars, helping us to understand and grapple with the increasing changes in food systems and food governance. My work remains heavily influenced by Busch and others’ ideas about science (Busch 2000a, 2002, 2007), actor-network theory (Busch 2000b; Busch and Juska 1997; Gouveia and Juska 2002), and the role of private standards in food governance (Busch 2000a, 2003; Busch and Bain 2004; Hatanaka and Busch 2008; Juska et al. 2000; Konefal, Mascarenhas, and Hatanaka 2005). This work has guided and shaped my research in California exploring new food safety standards developed and put forth by the produce industry. The work of the MSU School has raised important concerns about current trends in food governance that are clearly illustrated in the present paper. This paper not only affirms these concerns but further exposes the
32 citations
01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how standards makers appeal to technoscientific norms and values to establish both credibility for their standards and their authority in constructing them, and demonstrate the value that science and technology studies can bring to bear in understanding agrifood governance.
Abstract: Agrifood scholars working within a political economy framework increasingly draw upon the concept of governance to analyze the regulation of global agricultural and food systems. An important limitation of this approach is that it fails to explain how governance strategies are legitimated. Drawing on three diverse cases that span three continents, our paper examines how standards makers appeal to technoscientific norms and values to establish both credibility for their standards and their authority in constructing them. These cases explore the development and implementation of a standard requiring complete elimination of a tart cherry insect pest in the United States; the process of establishing and maintaining red meat hygiene standards in the processing and retail sectors of South Africa; and the role of GLOBALGAP standards for pesticide residues in protecting worker health and safety in the Chilean fresh fruit export sector. These cases illustrate how appeals to technoscience mask controversy and vested interests and allow actors to exclude, conceal, and mystify possible alternatives; and they demonstrate the value that science and technology studies can bring to bear in understanding agrifood governance.
31 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the distinguishing characteristics of special quality markets, and particularly the role of new social movements in their construction, are now being extended to the marketing of basic food commodities, rather than a return to the commodity economy, therefore, we are witnessing a struggle to incorporate the values associated with fair trade, organics, and sustainability as benchmarks for global commodity trade in food, feed, fuels, and forestry products.
Abstract: The explosive growth of food commodity markets in the wake of massive, sustained demand from the ‘emerging economies’ might seem to mark a rupture with the niche quality markets which many authors have identified as the dominant tendencies in agrofood since the 1980s and a return to the mass markets of yesteryear. In this paper it is argued, however, that the distinguishing characteristics of special quality markets, and particularly the role of new social movements in their construction, are now being extended to the marketing of basic food commodities. Rather than a return to the commodity economy, therefore, we are witnessing a struggle to incorporate the values associated with fair trade, organics, and sustainability as benchmarks for global commodity trade in food, feed, fuels, and forestry products. I illustrate these tendencies through a discussion of the fair trade and responsible soy movements, representing the niche quality and the resurgent commodity markets, respectively, illustrating not only...
31 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...I will argue, however, that instead of the commodity logic imposing itself once again, the global food and nonfood chains are increasingly taking on the dynamic of quality markets, spelling perhaps an end to commodity markets as they were constructed in earlier phases of the consolidation of the international food system (Busch, 2000)....
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...…the commodity logic imposing itself once again, the global food and nonfood chains are increasingly taking on the dynamic of quality markets, spelling perhaps an end to commodity markets as they were constructed in earlier phases of the consolidation of the international food system (Busch, 2000)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored how ethical food can be a driver of destination attractiveness and how it is possible to take advantage of this issue for particular tourist destinations, and they explained ethical food as a destination attraction through the case of Slow Food.
Abstract: In recent years, the topic of ethical food has assumed increasing importance in international academic debate. Despite there being some studies carried out on this topic, there is limited literature on the role ethical food plays in the tourism sector and, specifically, in tourist destination attractiveness. This paper explores how ethical food can be a driver of destination attractiveness and how it is possible to take advantage of this issue for particular tourist destinations. In this paper, ethical food as a destination attraction is explained through the case of Slow Food. Results show that ethical food has a very important role to play in the future of destination attractiveness thanks to special events and projects concerning ethical food, which also contribute to the sustainability of a destination. Finally, strategies to exploit the potential of this ethical food so as to develop tourist destination attractiveness are drawn.
31 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
..., herbs from Kenya, conservation packages from Canada, soy sauce from India) [48]; poor collaboration and information sharing among local organic food supply chain partners [49] that make their supply chains complex to design and manage; the limited availability of ethical products in supermarkets: the problem of “food miles” and the complicated logistics required to provide a wide choice to consumers in developed countries [50]; rapid progress in the technologies applied to food production and conservation [25] that results in insufficient information to consumers; lack of knowledge of these products by consumers; high costs due to various factors including higher animal welfare standards and the internalization of costs normally externalized by conventional foods [51], and the “productionist paradigm” applied to food production practices during the last sixty years which actively militates against the producer taking heed of ethical concerns [52]....
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...This relationship invokes more than just branding [23, 24] in that ethical food is supported by state-sanctioned certification systems, resulting in important social relationships between customers and food [25]....
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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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