Worlds of Food Place, Power, and Provenance in the Food Chain Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch 1 CONTENTS List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations x xi xiii Introduction 1 1. Networks, Conventions, and Regions: Theorizing ‘Worlds of Food’ 7 2. The Regulatory World of Agri-food: Politics, Power, and Conventions 26 3. Geographies of Agri-food 53 4. Localized Quality in Tuscany 89 5. California: The Parallel Worlds of Rival Agri-food Paradigms 109 6. The Commodity World in Wales 143 7. Beyond the Placeless Foodscape: Place, Power, and Provenance 166 References Index 198 217 1 Networks, Conventions, and Regions: Theorizing ‘Worlds of Food’ Introduction Food is a long-standing productive activity which carries a number of diVerent production and consumption attributes. However, much of the recent literature focuses on a limited number of such attributes—namely, the transformation of the food chain and, more in general, of production sites. In particular, much attention has been paid to globalization, the growing power of transnational corporations and their relentless exploitation of nature. In this chapter we argue that this kind of focus is not alone suYcient to account for the growing complexity of contemporary agri-food geography. Growing concerns about food safety and nutrition are leading many consumers in advanced capitalist countries to demand quality products that are embedded in regional ecologies and cultures. This is creating an alternative geography of food, based on ecological food chains and on a new attention to places and natures, that, as we will see in Ch. 3, reveals a very diVerent mosaic of productivity—one that contrasts in important respects with the dominant distribution of productive activities so apparent in the global food sector (Gilg and Battershill, 1998; Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1998). Our aim is to develop an analytical approach that can aid our understanding of this new agri-food geography and can introduce a greater appreciation of the complexity of the contemporary food sector. To this end, we begin by considering work on the globalization of the food sector and by showing that recent analyses have usefully uncovered some of the key motive forces driving this process—most notably the desire by industrial capitals both to ‘outXank’ the biological systems and to disembed food from a traditional regional cultural context of production and consumption. After considering the recent assertion of regionalized quality (which can be seen as a response to the outXanking manœuvres inherent in industrialization), we examine approaches such as political economy, actor–network theory, and conventions theory that have made signiWcant in-roads into agri-food studies and have revealed diVering aspects of the modern food system. In doing so, we highlight what we consider the main limitation of these approaches: i.e. their 8 Networks, Conventions, and Regions tendency to conceptualize the contemporary agri-food geography in terms of binary oppositions—such as, for example, conventional v. alternative, and global v. local. In order to begin to overcome such binary thinking, in the last part of the chapter we analyse and expand Storper’s theory of productive worlds. We feel this theory helps to engage with the varied outcomes that now exist in the contemporary food sector and can therefore highlight the implications of diVerent productive systems on diVering spaces and places. However, we also suggest that Storper’s theory needs some modiWcation if it is to be made applicable to the analysis of the contemporary food sector. In particular, we highlight two aspects that require further work: one, the key role that nature plays in the production and consumption of food; two, the activities of political institutions situated at diVering levels of the polity—including regions, nation-states, and international organizations. We attempt to integrate these two features into Storper’s general approach in order to conjure up diVering worlds of food. The notion of worlds of food that emerges from this analysis will guide the discussion in later chapters. A Bifurcated Food Sector? For some time now it has been widely believed that the agri-food system is globalized. As a consequence, much recent research (see e.g. Goodman, 1991; Goodman and Redclift, 1991; Goodman and Watts, 1994; 1997; Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson, 1987; McMichael, 1994; Whatmore, 1994) has taken as its main focus how processes of globalization come to be driven by the reshaping of food production processes according to patterns of capital accumulation. In many respects, the globalization of the food system follows the same course as globalization in other economic sectors, that is, production chains are increasingly orchestrated across long distances by a few largescale economic actors, usually transnational corporations (Dicken, 1998). In other important respects, however, the development of the food system follows its own course due to some speciWc characteristics of food production, notably its close association with a natural resource base and cultural variation in consumption practices (Goodman and Watts, 1994). In our view, the globalization of the food sector is uniquely constrained by nature and culture: food production requires the transformation of natural entities into edible form, while the act of eating itself is a profoundly cultural exercise, with diets and eating habits varying in line with broader cultural formations. These two key aspects necessarily tie food chains to given spatial formations. In other words, food chains never fully escape ecology and culture. Thus, in order to understand the development of the agri-food sector it is necessary to consider how forces promoting globalization interact with natures and cultures that are spatially ‘Wxed’ in some way. In the following pages we consider Networks, Conventions, and Regions 9 the ‘Wxity’ of nature and culture and show how the interaction between mobile and Wxed resources underpins the new geography of food. Nature Food is necessarily a mix of the organic and the inorganic (Fine, 1994; Fine and Leopold, 1993) or the natural and the social (FitzSimmons and Goodman, 1998; Goodman, 1999; Murdoch, 1994). Thus, biology plays a crucial role in mediating social processes of industrialization and places constraints upon the extraction of proWt or value from the food sector (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). In short, nature acts to localize or regionalize food production processes. Of course, to maximize productivity gains continued eVorts are made by producers and manufacturers to reduce the importance of nature. We can cite just one example here: seasonality. The Italian food historian Montanari (1996: 161) emphasizes just how much producers and consumers have traditionally seen seasonality as an aZiction. He says: ‘symbiosis with nature and dependence upon her rhythms was once practically complete, but this is not to say that such a state of aVairs was desirable; indeed, at times it was identiWed as a form of slavery’. This was especially true for the poorer sections of society, where consumption of foods such as grains and legumes was the norm precisely because these foods could be easily conserved. Access to fresh and perishable foods—such as vegetables, meat and Wsh—was the luxury of an elite few. Thus, ‘the desire to overcome the seasonality of products and the dependence on nature and region was acute, though the methods for doing so were expensive (and prestigious); they required wealth and power’ (p. 162). Montanari therefore concludes that it is ‘doubtful whether we can attribute either a happy symbiosis with nature or an enthusiastic love for the seasonality of food to ‘‘traditional’’ food culture’ (p. 163). As we now know, food production processes have moved a long way from any such symbiotic state of aVairs. Since the mid-nineteenth century, food has been subject to what the French food historian Flandrin (1999: 435) calls a ‘never-ending Industrial Revolution’. One main purpose of this ‘revolution’ has been to undercut nature’s restrictive powers, notably attachments to seasonality. Food preservation techniques were reWned from the mid-nineteenth century onwards while new technologies such as refrigeration were introduced in the early years of the twentieth century. As the American food writer Levenstein (1999) puts it, ‘producers and processors developed a host of new methods for growing, raising, preserving, precooking, and packaging foods’. The reWnement of such methods intensiWed during the post-war period, with over four hundred new additives and preservatives developed during the 1950s alone. As a consequence, the molecular structure of food was transformed, opening the way to yet further modiWcation in later decades (Capatti, 1999). 10 Networks, Conventions, and Regions At the same time, the struggle against seasonality meant that food was increasingly transported over greater and greater distances in order to ensure year-round availability. The decreasing cost of transportation (the cost of sea and air transport progressively fell throughout the twentieth century—see Millstone and Lang, 2003) meant that retailers could put in place a ‘permanent dietary summer’ in which seasonality was forever banished. As Montanari (1996: 163) observes, the result has been that in fortunate parts of the world such as western Europe and the US ‘the dream has been realised . . . Wnally we can live for the moment (just like Adam and Eve before the fall) without worrying about conserving or stockpiling. Fresh seasonal food is a luxury that only now . . . can be served at the tables of many’. The example of seasonality shows that as nature is squeezed out of the production process, so global linkages are increasingly consolidated, making the food system an intrinsic part of globalized commodity production. A great deal of work in agri-food studies therefore concerns itself with how multinational companies, research and development agencies, and state actors combine to push the globalization process in the food sector in ways that ease any natural restrictions (Bonanno et al., 1994; Friedland et al., 1991; HeVernan and Constance, 1994; Lowe, Marsden, and Whatmore, 1994; Raynolds et al., 1993). Yet, while recent work on the globalization of food has concerned itself with a restructuring of the food sector in line with the demands of internationalized agri-food industries, it is also recognized that production processes are still mediated and sometimes refracted by regional and local speciWcities (Arce and Marsden, 1993; Goodman and Watts, 1997; Marsden and Arce, 1995; Marsden et al., 1996; Page, 1996; Ward and Almås, 1997). This local refraction of global processes seems to be intrinsic to the industrialization of the food sector, in part because the various mixtures between the organic and inorganic are hard to detach from space and place. Referring to agriculture, Page (1996: 382) says that industrialization continues to be ‘conditioned by the natural basis of production, as well as by the social relations that often follow closely in the wake of natural diVerence, resulting in distinctive processes of economic and spatial growth’. He then argues that these peculiar features mean ‘patterns of uneven development in agriculture are not solely the outcome of industrial dynamics, but are produced through the complex articulation of these processes with diverse sets of places’ (p. 389). Moreover, ‘embedded local conditions have important eVects upon agriculture, often serving as powerful barriers to industrial transformation’. In short, contemporary food chains are not as ‘disembedded’ from local natures as a superWcial reading of the globalization literature might indicate. However, the role of nature should not simply be conWned to that of a ‘residue’, one that is likely to be gradually displaced by the development of new technologies (such as genetic modiWcation). Rather, nature displays what Beck (1992) has termed ‘boomerang’ qualities, that is, it has a habit Networks, Conventions, and Regions 11 of bouncing back in the wake of human modiWcation. The most notable example of nature’s boomerang quality in the food sector is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), where a seeming domestication of various natural entities suddenly gave rise to a terrifying new actor (a prion protein) that causes irreversible destruction to the human brain and, ultimately, human life. As this case importantly illustrates, the food sector can attempt to ‘outXank’ nature but these outXanking manœuvres can bring problems in their wake (Goodman, 1999). The health scares associated with BSE—and other illnesses such as salmonella, and E. coli poisoning—have resulted in an enhanced consumer sensitivity to the ways and means of food production and processing (GriYths and Wallace, 1998). In turn, this sensitivity has put pressure on producers and processors to ensure that their foods are safe and nutritious. Again, this has tended to highlight the status of nature in food (Murdoch and Miele, 1999). Perhaps even more signiWcantly (at least from the standpoint of the analysis being elaborated here), such pressures have promoted a reembedding of food production processes in local contexts, in part because locally sourced food is often assumed to be of a higher quality (i.e. ‘safer’) than industrial (placeless) food (Nygard and Storstad, 1998). As a consequence, a sizeable and growing minority of consumers are currently turning to local and regional food products in the hope that these will oVer protection against industrialization’s excesses. Fernandez-Armesto (2001: 250) summarizes this trend at the end of his history of food when he says: ‘an artisanal reaction is already underway. Local revulsion from pressure to accept the products of standardised taste has stimulated revivals of traditional cuisines. . . . In prosperous markets the emphasis is shifting from cheapness to quality, rarity and esteem for artisanal methods. . . . The future will be much more like the past than the pundits of futurology have foretold.’ This localization of food is of course taking place in the context of globalization. Thus, we can discern a complex interaction between spatial scales as diVering productive activities and products become set in varied spatial contexts. Some foods are ‘global’ (Mars Bars, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s burgers and so on), other are ‘local’ (lardo di Colonnata, saltmarsh lamb), while yet others combine both the local and the global (Parmigiano Reggiano, Parma ham, Aberdeen Angus beef). The result is an increasingly fragmented and diVerentiated food market. Culture For some time it seemed as though the forces of standardization and industrialization would succeed in engineering a homogeneous food culture in which spatial variation became of decreasing signiWcance. In line with this view, one commentator has recently claimed that ‘the ‘‘variety’’ you can see on entering a supermarket is only apparent, since the basic components are often 12 Networks, Conventions, and Regions the same. The only diVerence is in packaging and in the addition of Xavouring and colouring. Fresh fruit and vegetables are of standard size and colour, and the varieties on sale are very limited in number’ (Boge 2001: 15; emphasis added). Yet, as we argued above, it seems that modern consumers can no longer rely so readily upon these industrialized food goods. As Beck (2001: 269) puts it, ‘many things that were once considered universally certain and safe and vouched for by every conceivable authority turn . . . out to be deadly’. Beck suggests that, in this uncertain consumption context, many consumers become more ‘reXexive’ in their relationships with food and other commodities. One consequence of this more reXexive attitude is a concern for provenance, that is, the place of production. In part, as we suggested above, this is due to the fact that the ecological conditions implicated in production processes can be more easily discerned if provenance is known. Yet, there is also a cultural dimension to this; local food is likely to be produced in line with long-standing traditions, that is, by artisanal rather than industrial processes. Moreover, such foods will probably be embedded in long-standing cultures of consumption in which the qualities of the product accord with local notions of taste. In the wake of contemporary food scares, these local cultures of consumption have been revalued. In part, the enhanced value of such cultures derives from their precarious status: they seem to be continually threatened by the diVusion of standardized and globalized food products. Moreover, these ‘alternative’ food cultures oVer means of resisting the further standardization of food. As the Italian Slow Food organisation (www.slowfood.com, accessed 16 May 2005) puts it, industrialization and standardization in the food chain can best be challenged by a rediscovery of ‘the richness and aromas of local cuisines. . . . Let us rediscover the Xavours and savours of regional cooking and banish the degrading eVects of Fast Food. . . . That is what real culture is all about: developing taste rather than demeaning it.’ In other words, it is not only nature that plays a key role in safeguarding the health and nutrition of the food we eat; long-standing food cultures also play this role. Groups such as Slow Food, which are committed to combating the standardizing impulses of globalized food chains, emphasize the need to rediscover and protect geographical diversity as a good in itself. Slow Food undertakes a whole range of activities that are aimed at strengthening markets for local and regional food products (i.e. products that have a clear connection to local systems of production and consumption—what the French call terroir). In this regard, Slow Food eVectively voices implicit and explicit criticisms of the ‘massiWcation of taste’. These criticisms are mainly articulated culturally. Slow Food sees food as an important feature of the quality of life. As the Slow Food Manifesto puts it, its aim is to promulgate a new ‘philosophy of taste’ and its guiding principle is ‘conviviality and the right to taste and pleasure’. The pleasurability of food is derived from the aesthetic and cultural aspects of production, processing, and consumption. All these activities Networks, Conventions, and Regions 13 are considered ‘artful’; they require skill and care and evolve by building on the knowledges of the past to meet the new social needs of contemporary consumers. In sum, Slow Food and other proponents of local and regional foods aim to challenge the diVusion of a fast food culture by asserting alternative cultures of food. Starting from the acknowledgement that food is imbued with symbolic meanings, and that patterns of food consumption have evolved over time according to the gradual evolution of tastes, these groups promote the values of typical products and regional cuisines because they are thought to reXect cultural ‘arts of living’. As a leading Slow Food activist (Capatti, 1999: 4) puts it, ‘food is a cultural heritage and should be consumed as such’. Thus, for Slow Food a cultural appreciation of food requires an appreciation of the temporal Xow of food from the past into the present into the future. ‘Slow food’, in Capatti’s view (p. 5), ‘is profoundly linked to the values of the past. The preservation of typical products, the protection of species from genetic manipulation, the cultivation of memory and taste education—these are all aspects of this passion of ours for time.’ The increasing cultural value attached to local and regional foods can also be discerned in the number of new brand names or trademarks that are now appearing. In France, for instance, large numbers of agricultural products (including cheese, wine, olive oil, haricot beans, and potatoes—see Barjolle and Sylvander, 1999) are receiving the country’s prestigious appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) classiWcation a mark that reXects the local provenance and quality of the product. Following the success of the French scheme, a similar approach was adopted at the European level. In 1993 the European Community put in place legislation to protect regional and traditional foodstuVs (Council Regulation (EEC) No. 2081/92, OYcial Journal L208, 24 July 1992, p. 128). This legislation codiWes deWnitions for products with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). A PDO or PGI is deWned as the name of a region or a speciWc place followed by the letters ‘PDO/PGI’, which refer to an agricultural product or foodstuV originating in that region or place. For a PDO the ‘quality or other characteristics of the product are essentially or exclusively due to a particular geographical environment with its inherent natural and human components and whose production, processing, and preparation take place in the geographical area’. A PGI possesses ‘a quality or reputation which may be attributed to the geographical environment with its inherent natural and/or human components’. In other words, it is the intimate intermingling of localized natures and cultures that gives PDO and PGI products their distinctive character. In many respects, the emergence of these quality ‘marks’ can be seen as an attempt to tie particular qualities inherent in the product to particular qualities inherent in the spatial context of production (organizational, cultural, and ecological qualities). We should note, however, that the development of 14 Networks, Conventions, and Regions AOCs, PDOs, and PGIs is highly uneven across space; while these have long existed in certain countries—France and Italy, for example—they are almost completely absent in others (by 2001 there were well over 500 products registered as PDOs and PGIs but most of these were to be found in southern Europe—between them, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain accounted for more than 75 per cent of the total). The uneven distribution of quality certiWcation schemes reXects the uneven distribution of surviving quality production schemes. In the European context we then witness a signiWcant cultural diVerence between the south and the north (Parrott et al., 2002). In much of southern Europe the association among terroir, tradition, and quality is taken as selfevident. In northern Europe, however, such associations are much weaker. For example, in the UK, with the exception of a few regional dishes (such as Yorkshire pudding, Lancashire hotpot, and Cornish pasties), there is no widespread tradition of associating foods with region of origin (Mason and Brown, 1999). British cheeses may bear place names (Cheshire, Caerphilly, etc.) but, almost without exception, these are used to describe a type of cheese, rather than its place of origin or a culture of production. Vestiges of geographical association remain for only a few products—Scottish beef and Welsh lamb, for example, have both maintained their traditional reputations as superior products. With these (and a few similar) exceptions, the UK has become a ‘placeless foodscape’ (Ilbery and Kneafsey, 2000: 319), dominated by nationally recognizable and homogenous brand names. Theorizing Worlds of Food The preceding section highlights the need to attend to the regional variations found within agri-food geography. If we concentrate our attention solely upon globalizing tendencies, we will see merely those regions that are ‘hotspots’ in the globalized food production system (e.g. North Carolina’s hog industry or East Anglia’s grain production), places where industrialized production has become concentrated into larger and larger units (Whatmore, 1994) and where local ecologies and consumption cultures tend to reXect the standardized nature of industrial food production. The emerging concern with the ‘embeddedness’ of food production and consumption in regionalized nature-cultures should force us to draw another map, one which highlights those areas that have not been fully incorporated into the industrial model of production and that have retained the ecological and cultural conditions necessary for ‘quality’ production. However, diVerent theories have provided diVerent responses to this new complexity. Some have tended to argue that the emergence of new regional food cultures does little to inhibit globalization of food; others have taken these cultures more seriously. In Networks, Conventions, and Regions 15 what follows we assess a number of inXuential theoretical perspectives and their engagement with the new geography of food. The Political Economy of Commodity Chains As we have already noted, a great deal of attention has been paid in agri-food studies to processes of globalization in the food sector. Analysts have shown, in often wonderful detail, how linkages are established between diVering parts of the food industry and how diVering spatial areas are incorporated into those linkages. In general, the most eVective theoretical approach in this endeavour has been political economy. While it is not easy to characterize the political economy approach—as it comes in a variety of forms and displays a variety of emphases,1 it can be said that this tends to portray globalization as merely the latest stage in the development of the capitalist space economy. As Bonanno (1994: 253) puts it, ‘capitalist development has abandoned its multinational phase to enter a transnational phase’ in which ‘the association of economic activities, identity and loyalty of conglomerates with a particular country are decreasingly visible’. In the process of this broad shift to transnationalization, agriculture and food production come to be integrated into a set of transectoral production processes. Political economy has been widely employed to think through the consequences of this integration (see Bonanno et al., 1994; Fine, 1994; Friedland et al., 1991; McMichael, 1994; Marsden, 1988). One particularly inXuential variant has examined the construction of food commodity chains. The investigation of commodity chains or networks in the food sector has strong theoretical roots. The Wrst examples of agri-food commodity chain analysis appeared during an early round of Marxist theorizing on the sector. The political economy of food chains identiWed an increasingly rapid destruction of traditional agricultural production forms (e.g. family farms) as the imposition of capitalist relations fuelled a process of industrialization (de Janvry, 1981). This process appeared to be ‘disembedding’ food production processes from pre-existing (‘pre-industrial’) economic, social, and spatial connections. For instance, work conducted in the United States by Friedland, Barton, and Thomas (1981) discerned diVerential rates of capitalist penetration in the agri-food sector (which varies, the authors argue, according to the commodity in question) but concluded that the process is well advanced across the food sector as a whole. Within each commodity chain, diVering mixtures of technical, natural, and economic resources are integrated so that a number of distinctive industrial structures (of which agriculture is a diminishing part) are evident. The notion of ‘commodity chain’ is used because it shows how diVerent commodity sectors are organized and highlights the complex sets 1 For a useful overview, see Buttel, Larson, and Gillespie (1990). 16 Networks, Conventions, and Regions of relationships that are necessarily invoked within each organizational segment. The political economy of commodity chains was tailored to the sets of relations that are typically constructed around diVerent agri-food commodities. Friedland (1984) summarizes the research foci of the early studies as: the labour process; grower and labour organizations; the organization and application of science and technology; and distribution and marketing. As this list indicates, the commodity system approach deals largely with the economic and social dimensions of industrialization (see Buttel, Larson, and Gillespie, 1990). Friedland (2001: 84) has recently admitted that commodity system analysts frequently take as their main concern ‘agricultural mechanisation and its social consequences’. They therefore tend to focus upon industrial rationalization of the chains and the way this conWgures production relations at the local level. More recently, another aspect of commodity chain activity, one that implies a renewed signiWcance for the spatial distribution of resources, has come to the attention of food sector analysts; this is the environmental or natural components that are often so central to food chain construction processes (both in terms of production—e.g. seasonality, perishability, pollution—and consumption—e.g. quality, health, safety). In their early work, Friedland, Barton, and Thomas (1981) noted that the speciWc character of agri-food chains is often determined (at least to some extent) by the natural properties of the commodity itself (e.g. the perishability of lettuce and tomatoes). This insight is taken further by Goodman, Sorj, and Wilkinson (1987), who point out that the consolidation of capitalist enterprises in the food sector goes hand in hand with a need to replace and substitute natural processes as part of an eVort progressively to squeeze biological constraints out of the production process (see also Goodman and Redclift, 1991). Goodman, Sorj and Wilkinson also argue that an expansion and lengthening of food networks tend to result from the progressive industrialization of food so that food products come to be transported over longer and longer distances. This lengthening of food chains increases their socio-technical complexity and leads to the emergence of global commodity chains. It appeared from this work on commodity chains as though natural resources were of diminishing signiWcance in the food sector—ultimately nature would be ‘outXanked’ by processes of appropriationism and substitutionism. Yet, Goodman (1999) has asserted that this prediction has proved only partially true: while technologies such as genetic modiWcation do continue the outXanking procedures identiWed in earlier stages of food sector development, other trends give nature a new-found signiWcance. This can be discerned, Goodman suggests, in the popularity of organic foods, which are held to retain key natural qualities, and in the consumption of typical and traditional foods, which are believed to carry cultural qualities long embedded in traditional cuisines. The increasing popularity of these food types, he Networks, Conventions, and Regions 17 argues, challenges the instrumental rationalities of the industrialized food sector and implies the need for more ‘embedded’ forms of production and consumption. They also challenge, he suggests, the signiWcance of the political economy approach; in fact, while this theoretical repertoire has helped to render visible the new connections and relationships that surround and shape food commodities, it leaves little theoretical space to discern much deviation from the precepts of ‘capitalist ordering’ (either on the part of producers or consumers). In other words, it fails to appreciate the full signiWcance of the new ecological conditions that Goodman believes exist in key parts of the contemporary food sector. It is indeed true that political economists have been wary of attributing too much signiWcance to the local production processes that give rise to niche products. There is a feeling among many such analysts (see Friedland, 1994) that the countervailing movement against globalization simply pales into insigniWcance in comparison with the huge global Xows that now characterize the contemporary food sector. While growing numbers of consumers may be turning to ‘alternative’ food products, the vast majority can still be found in mass markets. Moreover, the GM juggernaut continues to roll and this holds the potential to unleash a further round of industrial development. Thus, we must balance any celebration of localized natures and cultures against a recognition that processes of industrialization and standardization continue to unfold. Actor–Network Theory In seeking to move beyond political economy, Goodman (1999) turns to actor–network theory (ANT)—an approach developed in the sociology of science and technology (but now more widely applied2)—because he believes it shows more clearly how natural and social entities become entwined with one another in food networks. ANT authors (notably Callon, Latour, and Law) argue that chain or network activities can only be totally comprehended by taking into account the full range of entities (natural, social, technological, and so on) found therein. It is in this context that Callon (1991: 133) deWnes a network as ‘a coordinated set of heterogeneous actors which interact more or less successfully to develop, produce, distribute and diVuse methods for generating goods and services’. This focus on ‘hybridity’ appears to accord better with Goodman’s concern for the new ‘ecology’ of food. ANT diVers in important respects from the political economy approach. Whatmore and Thorne (1997: 250), for instance, see the political economy of globalization as involving a tendency to evoke ‘images of an irresistible and unimpeded enclosure of the world by the relentless mass of the capitalist 2 See e.g. Law and Hassard (1998). 18 Networks, Conventions, and Regions machine’. ANT, however, ‘problematises global reach, conceiving of it as a laboured, uncertain, and above all, contested process of ‘‘acting at a distance’’ ’. In so doing, ANT aims to ‘deconstruct’ the power of the powerful by showing how they struggle to maintain the myriad relationships upon which their power is based (see Callon and Latour, 1981). ANT thus aims to avoid any reiWcation of capitalist ordering processes. Moreover, where political economy tends to see a bifurcation of global and local processes—they are often thought to be distinct and unrelated—ANT uses the same framework of analysis for both long and short networks: that is, it focuses on the precise strategies that network builders use and on the amount of work required in holding alliances, associations, and relations together. Whatmore and Thorne suggest that, by using ANT, multiple forms of agency can be given more consideration when describing the establishment of food commodity chains. In particular, they propose that food networks must be conceptualized as composites of the various actors that go into their making. In this view, networks are complex because they arise from interactions among diVering entity types: the entities coalesce, exchange properties, and (if the network is successfully consolidated) stabilize their joint actions in line with overall network requirements (Latour, 1999). The emphasis on heterogeneity here means that, as Callon (1991: 139) puts it, ‘impurity is the rule’. Whatmore and Thorne (1997: 291–2) embellish this point: to be sure, people in particular guises and contexts act as important go-betweens, mobile agents weaving connections between distant points in the network. . . . But, insists [actor–network theory], there are a wealth of other agents, technological and ‘natural’, mobilised in the performance of social networks whose signiWcance increases the longer and more intricate the network becomes . . . such as money, telephones, computers, or gene banks; objects which encode and stabilise particular socio-technological capacities and sustain patterns of connection that allow us to pass with continuity not only from the local to the global, but also from the human to the non-human. In other words, networks and commodity chains inevitably mobilize a multiplicity of (social, natural, technological) actors, and the longer the networks and chains, the greater the mobilization is likely to be. Instead of the simpliWed world of capitalist ordering, we here encounter complex arrangements that comprise multiple rationalities, interrelated in a variety of ways according to the nature and requirements of the entities assembled within the networks. This emphasis on the heterogeneous quality of network relationships does not necessarily imply, however, that each chain or network is unique (a uniqueness that is determined only by the combination of heterogeneous elements). Networks are rarely performed in radically new or innovative ways; rather, incremental changes lead to ‘new variations’ on ‘old themes’. Because network ‘orders’ tend to reXect widely dispersed ‘modes of ordering’, we see patterns and regularities in network Networks, Conventions, and Regions 19 relationships.3 Modes of ordering—which can be conceptualized as discursive frameworks holding together knowledge about past performances of network relations—are ‘instantiated’ and stabilized in given network arrangements. As Whatmore and Thorne (1997: 294) put it, networks perform multiple ‘modes of ordering’, which inXuence the way actors are enrolled and how they come to be linked with others. The notion ‘mode of ordering’ as used in actor–network theory provides perhaps one means of establishing a connection between commodity chain and localized nature-cultures. However, actor–network theory tends to render ordering processes, and thus any connections to speciWc nature-cultures, in rather simpliWed terms. For instance, after uncovering a considerable amount of socio-natural complexity in food commodity chains, Whatmore and Thorne (1997) identify only two ordering modes in the food sector—one that arranges materials according to a rationality of ‘enterprise’ and another that emphasizes the spatial ‘connectivity’ of entities and resources. Given that food networks come in many shapes and sizes, this twofold typology seems unduly restrictive. Conventions Theory Closely allied to ANT is another theoretical approach that is becoming increasingly inXuential in agri-food studies (especially in France where it originates—see Allaire and Boyer, 1995; Boltanski and Thevenot, 1991; Eymard-Duvernay, 1989): that of conventions theory (see Wilkinson, 1997a; 1997b). Conventions theory proceeds from the assumption that any form of coordination in economic, political, and social life (such as that which exists in chains and networks) requires agreement of some kind among participants (as opposed to the simple imposition of power relations by one dominant party). Such agreement entails the building up of common perceptions of the structural context. Storper and Salais (1997: 16) describe such perceptions as a set of points of reference which goes beyond the actors as individuals but which they nonetheless build and understand in the course of their actions. These points of reference for evaluating a situation and coordinating with other actors are essentially established by conventions between persons. . . . Conventions resemble ‘hypotheses’ formulated by persons with respect to the relationship between their actions and the actions of those on whom they must depend to realise a goal. When interactions are reproduced again and again in similar situations, and when particular courses of action have proved successful, they become incorporated in routines and we then tend to forget their initially hypothetical character. Conventions thus become an intimate part of the history incorporated in behaviours. 3 For more detail on ordering processes see Law (1994). 20 Networks, Conventions, and Regions Storper and Salais (p. 17) emphasize that points of reference are not imposed upon actors by some all-encompassing social order (as in political economy); rather, they emerge through the ‘coordination of situations and the ongoing resolution of diVerences of interpretation into new or modiWed contexts of action’. EVorts at coordination give rise to conventions, deWned as ‘practices, routines, agreements, and their associated informal and institutional forms which bind acts together through mutual expectations’ (Salais and Storper, 1992: 174). Any food production activity will therefore give rise to a particular set of conventions as participants coordinate their behaviours and reach agreements on the most appropriate courses of economic action. Clearly, such agreements can cover any number of processes and eventualities. Thus, we might expect that conventions will come in many shapes and sizes. However, empirical studies by conventions theorists have tended to throw up only a limited number of convention types. For instance, Thevenot, Moody, and Lafaye (2000) identify the following as salient in providing modes of evaluation for productive and other activities: ‘market performance’, in which agreement is based on the economic value of goods and services in a competitive market; ‘industrial eYciency’, which leads to a coordination of behaviour in line with long-term planning, growth, investment, and infrastructure provision; ‘civic equality’, in which the collective welfare of all citizens is the evaluatory standard of behaviour; ‘domestic worth’, in which actions are justiWed by reference to local embeddedness and trust; ‘inspiration’, which refers to evaluations based on passion, emotion, or creativity; ‘reknown’ or ‘public knowledge’, which refers to recognition, opinion, and general social standing; and, lastly, ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ justiWcations, which consider the general good of the collective to be dependent upon the general good of the environment. Thevenot, Moody, and Lafaye (2000) argue that these convention types exist, in various combinations, in all social contexts. They therefore suggest that social scientiWc analysis should examine the way diVering cultural formations weave together the diVering combinations. In applying this perspective to the food sector we need to consider how diVering food cultures mobilize particular convention types and how these types are woven together into a coherent cultural framework. We also need to consider how consumption and production relations are aligned within such food cultures. We can then begin to take into consideration the mixtures of conventions that underpin commodity chains or networks and the relations these imply for regionalized nature-cultures. For instance, those chains or networks where modes of ordering reXect civic and domestic conventions will align a rather diVerent set of materials and spatial connections compared with those based on industrial criteria (Lamont and Thevenot, 2000). Although very useful to overcome the binary thinking that characterizes most literature on agri-food, conventions theory is not per se suYcient to Networks, Conventions, and Regions 21 capture the growing complexity of the contemporary food sector. In fact, it neglects what we consider two crucial areas of research: Wrst, the role of nature in the more localized emerging agri-food ecologies and, speciWcally, how this relates to opportunities for, and obstacles to, the development of those ecologies; second, the need for localized agri-food ecologies to mobilize resources to draw on more than just local resources. To become and remain sustainable, such ecologies need to be endorsed by, and draw support from, a multilevel governance system that would allow speciality to defend the local globally. As we will explore in our regional case studies and in Ch. 7, by considering the interaction among economic form (network or chain), cultural context (the market demands of consumers), political/regulatory regime and the impacts upon local and regional ecologies, we can begin to see the extent to which food chains are embedded in or, alternatively, disembedded from particular places and spaces. In turn, this should allow us to examine the diverse regions that comprise the new geography of food as discrete worlds of food made up of distinct ensembles of conventions, practices, and institutions. Conventions and Worlds of Production The clustering of conventions, practices, and institutions in diVering worlds of production is explicitly addressed in work conducted by Storper (see Storper, 1997; Storper and Salais, 1997). Storper is interested in new forms of regionalization and localization in the global economy. He argues (1997: 16) that the spatial connectedness of Wrms and industries can be explained not just in terms of proximity to raw materials and supplies of labour but also in terms of ‘know-how’, that is, ‘non-codiWed traditions and ways of doing things [that are] essential to the job’. This know-how is enshrined in conventions, habits, routines, and other localized practices. It comprises the ‘industrial atmosphere’ of discrete regions and localities and gives these regions and localities comparative advantages in given industrial sectors. The uneven geography of economic activities reXects, then, a geography of knowledge, that is, the varied spatiality of codiWed and non-codiWed knowledge forms. Storper develops his analysis by Wrst identifying two main institutional expressions of these knowledge forms: on the one hand, there are sets of standardized, codiWed rules and norms that impose common conventions across a range of diverse contexts. In this institutional expression, standard procedures prescribe the way productive activities are undertaken, leaving little room for localized innovation and autonomy. This kind of codiWed knowledge underpins globalized economic forms. On the other hand, there are conventions that emerge from local, personalized, idiosyncratic sets of relations. Here, tacit knowledge and small-scale entrepreneurship come to the fore, although the impact of these is limited by the absence of scale 22 Networks, Conventions, and Regions economies. The diYculties involved in codifying this knowledge ensure its continued localization. Thus two institutional expressions are demarcated: one is based on widely available knowledge and productive techniques; the other is embedded in very diVerentiated and distinct sets of production practices. However, Storper goes on to argue that this standardized/specialized distinction is cross-cut by the market orientation of the diVering productive activities. Thus, we Wnd, on the one hand, goods that are aimed at mass markets: these carry generic qualities and can be readily identiWed (through, for instance, branding strategies). On the other hand, we Wnd goods that are produced for a dedicated market: these goods carry customized and clearly diVerentiated qualities that are only recognized by specialized groups of consumers. By bringing together these two sets of distinctions, Storper (1997) identiWes diVering productive worlds. First, there is an Industrial World which combines standardized production processes with the dissemination of a generic product for a mass market (we might think here of well-known brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s). Second, there is the World of Intellectual Resources in which specialized production processes generate generic goods for the mass market (the most obvious example is the genetic modiWcation of widely used food products such as soya). Third, there is the Market World, which brings standardized production technologies to bear in a dedicated consumer market (we might refer here to the so-called ‘nichiWcation’ of food markets as products are increasingly diVerentiated using standardized technologies such as cook-chill). And fourth, there is the Interpersonal World of specialized production and dedicated products (clearly this refers to very localized and speciality food production and consumption practices, such as, for instance, those promoted by Slow Food). These four worlds describe diVering frameworks for economic action. In each we Wnd particular bundles of conventions held together as standardized and specialized productive processes meet the demands of diVering markets. As Salais and Storper (1992: 182) put it, ‘each world must develop its own internal conventions of resource deployment, with respect to its suppliers, its factor markets, and its own internal structure’. Thus, on the one hand, in the Industrial World of standardized-generic production we expect conventions associated with commercialism, eYciency, and branding to be particularly signiWcant. On the other hand, in the Interpersonal World of specializeddedicated production we expect conventions associated with trust, local reknown, and spatial embeddedness to be more important. Towards Worlds of Food Presented in this fashion, it is clear that Storper’s theory of productive worlds helps us to make sense of recent trends in the agri-food sector, where Networks, Conventions, and Regions 23 mass-market fragmentation (e.g. a growing Market World) now coexists with a resurgent specialized sector (e.g. a growing Interpersonal World). However, we wish to build on Storper’s approach here by suggesting that the worlds of food that now comprise the contemporary food sector work not just according to an economic logic (as implied in Storper’s approach) but also according to cultural, ecological, and political/institutional logics. That is, as we have emphasized above, the embedding of food in new productive worlds is taking place because of ecological problems in the Industrial World and the emergence of new cultures of consumption oriented to foods of local provenance and distinction. In short, the conventions that are assembled within new worlds of food cover economy, culture, polity, and ecology (as identiWed by Thevenot, Moody, and Lefaye (2000) in their various convention types). Thus, in the Industrial World production processes and cultures of consumption are standardized (with perhaps McDonald’s being the norm), while ecological factors are ‘substituted’ and ‘appropriated’. In the World of Intellectual Resources many trajectories of development are possible but currently the dominant approach seems be a striving for an intensiWcation of Industrial World trends—e.g. another round of appropriationism and substitutionism in the form of genetic modiWcation and biotechnology. In the Market World production processes remain standardized but cultures of consumption are fragmenting and becoming increasingly diVerentiated so that many diVering market niches now exist. Finally, in the Interpersonal World we Wnd that production process, consumption culture, and regional ecology are closely bound together; they comprise a mosaic of sharply distinct ‘mini-worlds’ in which food consumption practices are sensitive to the ecologies of production—whether this be in the form of typical foods or organic foods. So, we might ask, how do Storper’s productive worlds map onto the new geography of food? First, it is easy to identify the spaces of the Industrial World. These are the intensive and productivist agricultural regions that are closely tied into the global economy (e.g. the Midwest of the United States, East Anglia in the UK, the Paris Basin in France). They also comprise the areas of standardized food manufacture and industrial food processes (as is the case, for instance, in Denmark). Second, the spaces that make up the World of Intellectual Resources can be seen in those laboratories and science parks that are taking forward the GM revolution (Monsanto’s labs in Missouri, for instance). The fruits of such scientiWc know-how are applied ever more extensively in the form of GM agriculture (again, the American Midwest is the prime exemplar). Third, the Market World can be discerned in the use of standardized products for diversiWed market niches. The productivist agricultural regions are included here, along with new industrial spaces specializing in new food technologies such as cook-chill. Fourth, we come to the Interpersonal spaces of the local, regional, typical, and organic foods that provide the so-called ‘alternative’ sector. These alternative spaces, which, as 24 Networks, Conventions, and Regions we emphasized above, can be mainly found in those locations that have escaped the full rigours of industrialization, increasingly serve to demarcate food regions more clearly one from another. Here, diverse production and consumption cultures serve to strengthen those varied ecological conditions that give rise to organic and typical foods. The four productive worlds do, then, help to make some sense of the new geography of food. However, we should not expect to be able to map these worlds easily onto discrete spatial areas; in fact, it is likely that diVering nations, regions and localities will combine diVering aspects of these worlds. So while some areas might be clearly dominated by the Industrial World of production, and others will be clearly dominated by the Interpersonal World, most will combine features of the diVering worlds. Thus, in some places we may Wnd industrialization sitting side by side with localization; in yet other spaces we may Wnd more diverse market Wrms sitting side by side with hightech intellectual Wrms. Spatially discrete worlds of food may then be more complex than Storper’s theory suggests. Conclusions If we attempt to synthesize the various insights derived from all the theories we have analysed we Wnd that: (1) we need to consider the ‘will to power’ operating in heavily industrialized food chains that work constantly to expand their reach and to override local ecological and cultural conditions; (2) even these industrial chains are to some extent based on biological processes, thus ensuring their ‘hybrid’ nature; (3) the complex and hybrid nature of food chains ensures that they work according to a number of diVering logics, some of which emphasize eYciency or cost at the expense of nature and culture, while others work according to criteria that emphasize local connectedness, trust, artisanal knowledges and ecological diversity; (4) these diVering ‘logics’ give rise to diVering worlds of food in which conventions, practices, and institutions act concertedly to uphold particular trajectories of development; (5) these worlds of food gain spatial expression so that certain areas Wnd themselves subject to a logic of industrialization, standardization, and eYciency while others Wnd themselves subject to a logic of local belonging, cultural distinctiveness, and ecological diversity. Taking all these points into account, we can conclude that the alternative geography of food is underpinned by conventions, practices, and institutions that vary in line with the diVering logics of production and consumption outlined above. In short, we expect diVering worlds of food to comprise diVering mixtures of conventions and diVering organizational forms (in terms of productive activity and market). Yet, we have chosen to focus here on speciWc worlds within the food sector associated with our case study regions. Thus, in Tuscany we expect to Wnd an Interpersonal World Networks, Conventions, and Regions 25 in which many diverse, locally embedded products are produced for relatively customized markets. We expect this world to be bolstered by robust and supportive regional institutions. In Wales we expect to Wnd an Industrial World that is busily trying to reinvent itself as a more diverse, ecologically and culturally distinctive, Interpersonal World. In California we expect to Wnd an Industrial World that is moving inexorably into two other worlds at the same time: the Market World of diversiWed industrial products and the Interpersonal World of locally speciWc and ecologically embedded products. Yet, these starting assumptions may be Xawed: we may Wnd a much more mixed-up and complex reality in our case study regions than our initial thinking suggests. Be that as it may: we have merely stated here our working assumptions and explained how these derive from current social-scientiWc perspectives on the food sector.