Reading Summaries (9): Anti-Genetic Engineering Movement in the U.S. and Britain

During the second half of the 1990s, European activists opposed to the use of genetic engineering (GE) in the food supply. Unlike European activists were gained significant achievement in the anti-GE movement, U.S. activists were gained little traction. Why was the European/Britain anti-biotech movement so effective, while the U.S. campaign was not? For this reason, the author addresses the comparative analysis of anti-biotechnology activism in the United States and Britain. Their analysis draws on both primary and secondary data sources: in-depth interviews, extensive media coverage, trade journals, public opinion survey data, newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly articles on the British supermarket sector, and detailed field notes from an in-depth study of six British supermarkets in the mid-1990s (p. 168-169). Using the Global Community Chains (GCC) literature, they show how the GCC for food was a critical factor that enabled anti-GE activists and exploring the different outcomes of these two very similar social movements.

Reading Summaries (8): Local Embeddedness of Farmers Market

The first article is coming from Feagan & Morris (2009) entitled “Consumer quest for embeddedness: a case study of the Brantford Farmers’ Market.” This research examines consumer motivations for shopping at the Brantford Farmers’ Market in south-central Ontario, Canada. The authors use the concept of embeddedness (social, spatial and natural spheres) to understand and organize the sets of values tied to consumer motivations at FMs. Social embeddedness is a value associated with ‘economies of regard,' trust, social interaction, and responsibility. Natural embeddedness contains consumer desires for food associated with more ecologically values like organic production and sustainable farming methods. Spatial embeddedness includes a group of motivations associated with the desire to buy food produced locally and more directly linked.

Reading Summaries (7): Locating Potential Resistance in the Weaknesses of the Global Food System

This article describes how power is negotiated in the food and agriculture arena. The other important question is what kinds of alternatives are possible in the agri-food system which dominated by global corporations? Using commodity systems analysis and theories of the firm, the authors provide a picture of the structure of the world food system through the rise of food chain clusters and food retailing. The connection between structures, space, time and resistance are used to understand the colonization of our world by the logic of the same system (global capitalism). The compression of space and the speed-up of time are essential components of accumulation in the modern era. It governs economic and political transactions to the centralization of control that we see in the agri-food system. These centralized networks described in the food chain clusters; Figure 1: The Cargill/Monsanto food chain cluster, Figure 2: The Con Agra food chain cluster, Figure 3: The Novartis/Archer Daniels Midland food chain cluster. All of the clusters are represents the situation in 1999.

Reading Summaries (6): Farm size and job quality in California & Wisconsin

This paper is describing the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. The idea of research starting from the “gap” among scholar’s research focus where the full-time agricultural labor force in nonindustrial farming settings has been almost entirely ignored by sociologists of agriculture (Buttel, 1983). Most research in this field often addresses hired labor issues in polarized terms (family farms vs. factory farms) or only criticizing the labor relations on large-scale farms. In fact, there are many factors that shape job quality for hired workers, for example; labor policies, labor market conditions, racist anti-immigrant sentiment, and the exploitative dynamics of capitalism. For this reasons, the author’s focus is mainly on the role of farm size in shaping job quality.

 

Data conducted from two independently case studies which offer a different setting (organic fruit and vegetable production in California and dairy farming in Wisconsin). California is producing half of the nation’s high-value fresh fruits and vegetables. Most jobs on California organic farms are seasonal, temporary positions, and farmworkers face ergonomic and mechanical hazards. Of the total agricultural workforce, 95 % are foreign-born, primarily from Mexico, and anywhere from 50 to 90 % lack legal authorization. In contrast, Wisconsin’s farming sector mostly of small-scale dairy farms, year-round, full-time positions, which can be a boon for workers. However, most of those jobs are far from ideal (the 10 Dirty Jobs that Nobody Wants) due to the low wages, late shifts, extreme temperatures, and repeated exposure to manure. Wisconsin dairy farmers hire immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who now constitute 40 % of the state’s dairy farm workforce

Reading Summaries (5): Corporate cooptation of organic and fair trade standards

Article by Jaffee & Howard (2010) examining the dynamics of the organics and fair trade, focusing on a ‘‘corporate countermovement’’ in increasing corporatization and renegotiating the standards of new market sectors (organics) by the comparative analysis. The question of this observation is how does capital respond to social movements and rewrite the rules of the game in an increasingly globalized agri-food system?

 

In the U.S, organic food system has a transformation to an industry worth more than $19 billion a year. In the mid1990s, corporate participation in organics sector increased dramatically approached 1% of total U.S. food sales. In fact, 14 of the 20 largest food processors in North America have acquired organic brands or versions. By the late 1990s, more than 40 certifiers were operating at the state or regional level. Moreover, throughout the process of centralizing state authority over the meaning of organic, sales of certified organic foods in the U.S. increased with an average 20% annual growth almost every year since 1990. 

Reading Summaries (4): Race, Culture, and Practice

Objectives of Henson & Munsey’s (2014) article is to correlate changes in residential segregation dynamics over a 50-year period with the social processes of isolation (black isolation from white and white isolation from black) in Birmingham, Alabama. On the other word, this study illustrated the spatial distribution of cultural attitudes and the relationality of space and the effect of segregation on that relationality. According to Cultural Capital approach from Bourdieu, Space is made up of the material flow of money and people/bodies. The processes and flows produce and reproduce racialized spaces (racial isolation and economic accumulation) in the real world. 

Cultural Capital, particularly in racial capitals or spatialized social structure in Birmingham, are developed by the three primary positions of the structure; the first is wealthy White, the second is middle-class and low-income Whites and the third position is Black. Internalization of this social position (that shapes the behavior of particular social agents) is known as Habitus concept. It operates in fields in which agents of differing social position use their capital to struggling over a particular resource (p. 999). Using urban geography methods (Geographic Information System/GIS analysis of segregation, participant observation in the alternative food meetings, and In-depth interview with leaders or important actors in the food movement, civic, and business leader) the study shows that the dominant habitus in Birmingham’s local food and agriculture movement is racialized White, which they dominate the philanthropic and non-profit sector in Birmingham.

 

It was interesting to analyze the dialectical relationship between habitus and space in the context of social and spatial segregation. Different to Green et. al article before which focuses on the resiliency of black farmer’s livelihood system in southern America (power relation approach), Henson & Munsey’s are more concentrate on the relationship between space, culture, and practice in the urban movement/community context. This article is excellence because they can deliver a detailed visualization about social segregation in the urban areas during a long period/processes. Reading this paper is a great exercise to understand “community structure” in the different lenses (post-modern theory and urban geography).

original article:

Race, Culture, and Practice: Segregation and Local Food in Birmingham, Alabama

Zachary Henson & Genevieve Munsey (2014)

picture: here

Reading Summaries (3): Technoscience in Agriculture

The country-based case studies of commodity systems are the interesting approach to the contemporary research of global agrifood system. From Tanaka’s et. al (2010) and MSU-SAGT contributions, We also learn that the power of nation-state in the liberal market is not only arisen from the economic, politics, and capital force but also from knowledge and technology (knowledge-based economy). Just as the power of knowledge diffusion requires a better understanding of the knowledge-based networks (OECD, 1996) so that ANT and CSA approach are very helpful to trace linkages from one dimension to another.

Tanaka & Juska’s (2010) article illustrated the early phase of the Michigan State University School of Agrifood, Governance, and Technoscience (MSU-SAGT) featured research in the 1990s. This paper is similar to Bonano’s article (2009) about the history of the Missouri School but had had different emphasis and approach to the MSU-SAGT field research. MSU-SAGT is one of the best practices for research combination and implementation of Commodity System Analysis (CSA), which delineated by Friedland (1984), and Actor Network Theory (ATN), which described by Latour (1987), in the case study of rapeseed market globalization (Canada, Japan, US, Europian, China, and India). This paper not only discusses and systematically examine the significant change of the rapeseed commodity system but also provided a critical understanding of governance as the process and mechanism of the network and power distribution among actors. 

By the “simple” methodology that so-called “follow the actor,” their research following a given actor (a commodity in CSA and technoscience product in ANT) and analyze the transformation process, including human and nonhuman interaction. The purposes of this approach are to open the rules of the game and the invisible hand within actors network by investigating and examining their power relation. MSU-SAGT also emphasized the critical role of technoscience politics (interdependence of technologies and scientific knowledge) by comparing the networks, actors, and symmetry that change over time and differ across space.  Meanwhile ANT, as a research tool, focuses on the processes and practices of scientist, technicians, and engineers that constituted the capacity of technoscience in the agrifood system, CSA focus to follow a given commodity from production to consumption and investigate how economic and political activities have become increasingly globalized.

 

Original Article: 

 

Technoscience in Agriculture:

Reflections on the Contributions of the MSU School of Sociology of Food and Agriculture

Keiko Tanaka & Arunas Juska

 

Reading Summaries (1): Agricultural Development and Black Farmers in the American South

“From the past to the present” paper’s exploring the history and social change processes of black farmers’ livelihood system in the south of America, especially those in the Mississippi Delta region. Green at.al was analyzing through the structural/power relation approach to describe the inequality and limited access in pursuing more sustainable livelihoods. Just as the means of production and labor control are important factors, so the resiliency of black farmer’s livelihood system in southern America is influenced by the structural condition in which they embedded. In the context of power relations, black farmers have traditionally been at a disadvantage and defined as being less worthy than white farmers by their class, gender, race, ethnicity, and ownership. By the slavery, tenancy, sharecropping, and the crop-lien system, the elite white continued control over labor in the past. This fact reminds us that the land ownership is the most valuable resource for the sustainable livelihood.

However, we must also consider to the complexities faced by the specific structure of agriculture, family farming, and farmers’ group. For instance, black producers faced more challenges to their livelihoods system during the capital-intensive system in agriculture (1920-1970). A variety of discrimination preventing them to participating in and access to government agricultural program. On the other hand, the state has not provided an adequate protection and assistance for black producers. This structural forms of discrimination illustrate the challenges they have faced over the generation. To survive and achieve greater livelihood security and sustainability, then they have had to mobilize and organizing efforts from the grassroots (self-help associations, cooperatives, and alliance with civil rights initiatives). In short, exploring the history of black farmers in Mississippi allow us to more clearly articulate structural constraints on livelihood system and create an alternative strategy - community-based cooperatives, poor people’s cooperatives, Rural Coalition and so on - to overcome these challenges.

In my opinion (please correct me if I am wrong), Green et.al. analysis on the black producers in Mississippi and the “commodity systems analysis” by William H. Friedland, illustrated the early phase of the Missouri School featured research. In this period  (the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s) the Missouri School applying and emphasis on the structure of agriculture, migrant agricultural labor, and quality of life in rural communities. After this period, Heffernan and his group shifted their focus to the capital concentration in agri-food commodities (Bonanno, 2009). At this point, I understand why Bonanno said that the Missouri School had brought a tradition and ideas rooted in the heartland of the United States to the global forum.

source of picture: click here

source of reading/article :

From the Past to the Present: 

Agricultural Development and Black Farmers in the American South

John J. Green, Eleanor M. Green, and Anna M. Kleiner

click here

- yanu prasetyo -