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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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide greater conceptual clarity to the blur between the state, agri-food firms, and universities and their respective responsibilities to the public since the globalization of the agrifood system and the emergence of private forms of governance signal the decline of the state's legal and regulatory influence on corporate firms.
Abstract: The complexities of the global agri-food system and the singular importance of food as a primary good elevate the need to explore what corporate social responsibility (CSR) might mean for agri-food firms Although CSR refers to voluntary actions on the part of capitalist firms to exceed legal and regulatory requirements, those requirements are important because they set the institutional foundation for what a firm must do to earn the CSR label In the case of CSR for agri-food firms, the institutional context includes the regulatory state as well as the publicly supported agricultural and food research and development that tends to be done at universities The purpose of this paper is to provide greater conceptual clarity to the blur between the state, agri-food firms, and universities and their respective responsibilities to the public Since the globalization of the agri-food system and the emergence of private forms of governance signal the decline of the state's legal and regulatory influence on corporate firms, we pay particularly close attention to the ethical challenges that have surrounded university–agribusiness collaborations—initiatives, which conjoin the moral concerns associated with each respective institution while also raising new questions in their own right Although the university would ideally play a critical participatory role in this process by virtue of its public commitments, as we explain, the historical relationship between the university and agri-food firms has complicated the university's potential standing as an independent arbiter Upon examining each of these issues in greater detail, we conclude the paper with a blueprint for how universities can enhance their ethical leadership when engaging with agri-food firms
8 citations
TL;DR: In the bison industry, a paradox has emerged in which the ideal of bison restoration has become increasingly disconnected from the management practices that orient and coordinate the lives of private ranches.
Abstract: In the bison industry, a paradox has emerged in which the ideal of bison restoration has become increasingly disconnected from the management practices that orient and coordinate the lives of bison on private ranches. Although the industry has spurred the growth and reintroduction of the species, it has not been able to restore it in a theoretically significant way that approximates historic bison populations. This article examines the economic, cultural, and material variables that have generated this paradox. While considerable diversity remains within the industry, economic crises, consumer expectations and governmental regulations have reduced the influence of alternative practices and perspectives. Representations of the bison industry should acknowledge these contradictory forces to facilitate better understanding of the costs and benefits of these developments.
8 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...Such standards are created for several reasons human and animal health, economic efficiency and in response to ethical concerns (Busch 2000)....
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...As Busch (2000) notes, this is indeed a moral economy....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the role of quality grades or standards in the supply chain using the case of the vegetable industry in Southern Philippines was examined and a model was employed which showed that grading provides information that lower search cost of buyers.
Abstract: This paper examines the role of quality grades or standards in the supply chain using the case of the vegetable industry in Southern Philippines. A model is employed which shows that grading provides information that lower search cost of buyers. When standards are inadequate, information is distorted which results to asymmetric price transmission. Data show that majority of farmers surveyed grade their vegetables to get better prices and minimize transaction cost. Primary data analysis was supplemented with secondary data analysis by estimating a price asymmetry model. Results show that price transmission is symmetric for cabbage and asymmetric for onion. Asymmetry in price transmission implies that marketing information are not effectively transmitted in the food chain and that establishing quality grades is necessary to improve efficiency in the supply chain.
8 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...However, even when standards are in place, the ambiguity inherent in standards can be exploited (Busch 2000)....
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01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In economics, markets are a wide range of organisations and institutions making markets functioning (e.g., enterprises, market places, information on price, legal guaranties) on the one hand, and on the other hand it is reduced to abstract mechanisms (supply and demand model) as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: If there is something difficult to understand within economics it is markets 1 . While prices, producers, consumers, and even the state as regulatory authority, are economic agencies and subject of behavioural theories, something as a theory of markets and even a theory of commodities does not consistently exist. The word "market" covers a wide range of organisations and institutions making markets functioning (e.g.: enterprises, market places, information on price, legal guaranties) on the one hand, and on the other hand it is reduced to abstract mechanisms (supply and demand model). Property rights, law and institutions in general are seen as mere timeless constraints for conformity. While they are not for economics (except for institutional economics), markets are objects of research for History, Law, Anthropology and Sociology. Economic sociology is occupying this vacant theoretical space. It has developed with the critique of neoclassical theory as a starting point, and principally the critique of the inconsistency of its central notion of market, while instead the markets are relational or transactional spheres. Variety within markets is denied by the essential hypothesis of the perfect competition, willing the agents anonymous and omniscient. The ways opened by Chamberlin with the representation of markets as local monopolies, by Coase with the existence of costs of using markets (transaction costs), by Austrian economics with markets as processes of discovery of efficient designs, or by evolutionary economics interested in the way market structuring influences innovation, were broadly regarded as
8 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...In the food and agriculture sector, as studied by Busch, Hatanaka & Bain (2005), various actors are increasingly using tierce-party-certification (TPC), including quality scheme under state control and private ones....
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...Cultural and moral dimensions of quality are stressed by sociologists (e.g. Busch, 2000), but it is still generally considered as orthogonal to the economic quantitative features which are prices, although prices have no sense except to reflect qualitative scarcities....
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01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this article, a qualitative study of the Kentucky wine industry was conducted to investigate how Kentucky wine producers use cultural associations to manage their brands, communicate with multiple stakeholder groups in varying contexts, determine the structure of the industry, analyze how the industry's organization affects stakeholder communication, and identify the most pressing challenges affecting the industry.
Abstract: OF DISSERTATION FROM GRAPES TO WINE TO BRANDS TO CULTURE: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF KENTUCKY WINERIES AND KENTUCKY WINE PRODUCERS The Kentucky wine industry has grown from six wineries in 1999 to more than sixty wineries as of 2013. However, the industry has reached a crucial point in its development as funds allotted from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement ended in 2014. As a result, Kentucky wine producers must navigate the demands of local, regional, national, and international wine markets without the same amount of economic support provided in the early stages of the industry’s development. The purpose of this study was to investigate (1) how Kentucky wine producers use cultural associations to manage their brands, (2) communicate with multiple stakeholder groups in varying contexts, (3) determine the structure of the industry, (3) analyze how the industry’s organization affects stakeholder communication, and (4) identify the most pressing challenges affecting the industry. A conceptual framework was constructed in order to answer the following research questions: (a) what are the cultural meanings produced through the communicative interactions of Kentucky wine industry producers and stakeholders, especially consumers? And (b) how do Kentucky wine industry businesses use brand management to position themselves in wine markets? A qualitative study involving participant observation, website analysis, and interviews was conducted. Analysis revealed similarities between the Kentucky wine industry and Bourdieu’s description of a field of cultural production. Cultural associations were determined by local geography, local culture, and individual winemaker life experiences. Cultural associations were integrated into brand management strategies with interpersonal communication, particularly wine tastings and winery events, as the primary channels of stakeholder interaction. Websites were used as a channel for information dissemination. Future brand management concerns involve the establishment of a Kentucky terroir, availability and quality of local grapes, and the cultivation of partnerships with other state alcohol industries and state universities. Implications suggest that the cultural production of wine functions in the same manner as the aesthetic fields of art and literature. Also, wine is a postmodern product in an industry demonstrating postmodern communication. The study expands the use of Rothenbuhler’s ritual communication and demonstrates the value of secondary texts for identifying the cultural position of a phenomenon as Oriard predicted.
8 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...…and food behaviors are cultivated, and in this case, the “local” aspect of food, and its relationship to a community, and to ideas of local foods that may include freshness, quality, economic attractiveness, and environmental awareness are considered when purchasing a local product (Busch, 2000)....
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...Normative agricultural and food behaviors are cultivated, and in this case, the “local” aspect of food, and its relationship to a community, and to ideas of local foods that may include freshness, quality, economic attractiveness, and environmental awareness are considered when purchasing a local product (Busch, 2000)....
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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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