scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

The moral economy of grades and standards

01 Jul 2000-Journal of Rural Studies (Pergamon)-Vol. 16, Iss: 3, pp 273-283
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
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the power to govern is a function of the structural power of agrifood corporations, particularly retail food corporations in our case, and that the perceived legitimacy of food corporations as political actors are two crucial conditions for the emergence and diffusion of private food regulation.
Abstract: This paper investigates the creation and consequences of private regulation in global food governance. It points to the power to govern and the authority to govern as the two crucial conditions for the emergence and diffusion of private food regulation. More specifically, the paper argues that the power to govern is a function of the structural power of agrifood corporations, particularly retail food corporations in our case. The authority to govern is a function of the perceived legitimacy of retail food corporations as political actors. By linking power and authority to the material and ideational structures existing in the global political economy of food, this paper analyses the processes that serve to create, maintain and reproduce private regulation in food governance. With its analysis, the paper aims to contribute to the theoretical and empirical debates on private authority, private regulation and the challenges for sustainability in the global food system.

141 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the moral and ethical questions are articulated through notions of space and time, using case study material from the chicken and sugar industries, and the way that ethical and moral issues are expressed through the dimensions of time and space (via notions of remembering and forgetting) and space, connecting and disconnecting) and via notions of visibility and invisibility.
Abstract: This paper uses the concept of ‘moral economy’ to challenge the conventional view that defines morality and the market as oppositional terms. Drawing on evidence from life history interviews with key actors in the British food industry, the paper outlines how moral and ethical questions are articulated through notions of space and time. Using case study material from the chicken and sugar industries, the paper examines the way that ethical and moral issues are expressed through the dimensions of time (via notions of remembering and forgetting) and space (via notions of connecting and disconnecting) and via notions of visibility and invisibility. The paper concludes by examining how our understanding of the moral economies of food can be advanced through the adoption of a relational view of geographical scale and temporal connection, contrasting the attribution of individual blame with a politics of collective responsibility.

141 citations


Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."

  • ...Towards a reflexive politics of localism Journal of Rural Studies 21 359–71 Freidberg S 2003 Editorial: not all sweetness and light: new cultural geographies of food Social and Cultural Geography 4 3–6 Freidberg S 2004 French beans and food scares: culture and commerce in an anxious age Oxford University Press, New York Gatens M and Lloyd G 1999 Collective imaginings: Spinoza, past and present Routledge, London Goodman D 2003 The quality ‘turn’ and alternative food practices: reflections and agenda Journal of Rural Studies 19 1–7 Granovetter M 1985 Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness American Journal of Sociology 91 481–510 Hinrichs C 2000 Embeddedness and local food systems: notes on two types of direct agricultural market Journal of Rural Studies 16 295–303 Hollander G M 2003 Re-naturalizing sugar: narratives of place, production and consumption Social and Cultural Geography 4 59–74 Jackson P, Lowe M, Miller D and Mort F eds 2000 Commercial cultures: economies, practices, spaces Berg, Oxford Jackson P, Russell P and Ward N 2006 Mobilising the commodity chain concept in the politics of food and farming Journal of Rural Studies 22 129–41 Jackson P, Russell P and Ward N 2007 The appropriation of ‘alternative’ discourses by ‘mainstream’ food producers in Maye D, Holloway L and Kneafsey M eds Alternative food geographies: representation and practice Elsevier, Amsterdam 309–30 Kaiser M and Lien M E eds 2006 Ethics and the politics of food Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen Kirwan J 2004 Alternative strategies in the UK agro-food system: interrogating the alterity of farmers’ markets Sociologia Ruralis 44 395–415 Lash S and Urry J 1994 Economies of signs and space Sage, London Lawrence F 2004 Not on the label Penguin Books, London Lawson V 2007 Geographies of care and responsibility Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97 1– 11 Lee R 2000 Shelter from the storm?...

    [...]

  • ...One exception has been the work of Lawrence Busch (2000), who has employed the concept of moral economy in his analysis of the normative dimensions of grades and standards for food (see also Thompson 1996)....

    [...]

  • ...Cases of deliberate concealment were rarely discussed by our interviewees but have featured strongly in recent media accounts, such as those reported by Felicity Lawrence (2004) and Joanna Blythman (2006)....

    [...]

  • ...One exception has been the work of Lawrence Busch (2000), who has employed the concept of moral economy in his analysis of the normative dimensions of grades and standards for food (see also Thompson 1996). Morgan et al. (2006, 5) also use the concept in their study of place, power and provenance in the food chain, arguing that a moral economy perspective could significantly enrich the agri-food literature. Finally, Le Heron and Hayward (2002) have traced the articulation of moral values in the development and marketing of breakfast cereals, while Trentmann (2007) uses the language of moral economy to provide an historical perspective on the ambivalent consumer politics of food in the modern world....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Using conventions analysis and commodity network analysis, this article examined the political ecology of one such market intervention, and found that the certification of the environmental and social characteristics of a product's production process is emerging as a significant transnational, nongovernmental, market-based approach to environmental regulation and development.
Abstract: The certification of the environmental and social characteristics of a product's production process is emerging as a significant transnational, nongovernmental, market-based approach to environmental regulation and development. Using conventions analysis and commodity network analysis, this article examines the political ecology of one such market intervention. After only a decade, environmental certification of forests has spread to cover a significant portion of the world's logged forests, major wood retailers increasingly require it, and international environmental organizations strongly support it. In Mexico, where 12 percent of the wood harvest is certified, certification requires forest managers to make substantial improvements to the social and environmental aspects of forest management. Actors in the Mexican wood commodity network include forest villagers, forest managers, wood processors, government regulators, and transnational wood retailers. These actors express an array of environmen...

131 citations


Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."

  • ...Conventions analysis helps break down the arbitrary divide between the analysis of economic versus social behavior; it helps make sense of the observation that grades, standards, and certification programs are part of the moral economy of the modern world (Busch 2000)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine convention theory applications in the Anglophone literature on agro-food studies through the review of 51 relevant contributions, highlighting how CT has helped explain different modes of organization and coordination of agrofood operations in different places, and how it has provided new venues of approaching quality.

112 citations


Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."

  • ...This has led to efforts to examine how multiple justifications are used by actors 13 simultaneously, as opposed to selective engagement in a single world (see, i.a., Busch, 2000; Rosin, 2008; Truninger, 2011)....

    [...]

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
20 Jun 1978-Telos
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....

    [...]

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)....

    [...]

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

Journal ArticleDOI

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)....

    [...]

  • ...…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....

    [...]