Embedding Local Places in Global Spaces: Geographical Indications as a Territorial Development Strategy

Geographical indications (GIs) are place‐based names that convey the geographical origin, as well as the cultural and historical identity, of agricultural products. GIs are unique, in that they provide a means of ensuring that control over production and sales of a product stays within a local area, but at the same time they make use of extralocal markets. Although control over GIs largely rests with local actors, GIs are nested in wider regional, national, and international networks; and the passage from local to extralocal markets introduces new costs and benefits and new relations of power into the supply chain. The degree to which GI protection spurs development and protects local environmental and cultural resources depends on the structure of the GI legislation and on the territorial context in which protection is embedded. Using a commodity‐chains approach, I compare two GI production systems, tequila in Mexico and Comté cheese in France, in order to develop a theory of the factors that contribute to more sustainable, equitable GI production systems. I argue that three key differences in the design of the GI schemes help to explain the varying effects of the two cases: (1) the manner in which supply‐chain actors define quality, (2) the way that the GI valorizes the terroir of the region, and (3) the strength and cohesion that the collective organizing body exhibits. Moreover, the institutional and political context in which GI supply chains “touch down” plays a critical role. Contrary to a conceptualization of GIs as compatible with a purely market‐oriented model, my comparison of these two cases indicates that some level of state involvement, in order to level the playing field and empower small farmers, is a necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for successful and sustainable GIs.     

Are Geographical Indications a Valid Property Right? Global Trends and Challenges

This article explores what is at stake in the international conflict on geographical indications (GIs), particularly for developing countries. It first examines how the WTO panel has obliged the European Union to open its registration system to third countries and how the ongoing negotiations on GIs seem to be reaching stalemate. Initiatives showing how GIs are a key political and trade issue are identified in Turkey, India, China, Colombia and Ethiopia. Trade negotiation agendas have to handle this new balance of power, in which the reputation accompanying a good may become common.     

The quality of sustainability: Agroecological partnerships and the geographic branding of California winegrapes

Quality and sustainability are both socially constructed, ambiguous terms, but they have not been heretofore linked in the rural studies literature. The “quality turn” has received particular attention from researchers for its potential to organize linkages among various forces in agrofood systems, providing more income to producers by appealing to affluent, reflexive consumers. A distinct line of rural research has attended to the challenge of agro-environmental pollution and regulation, but this research trajectory has been subsumed under the broader paradigm of sustainability. This article seeks to contribute to discussions about quality in the agrofood sector by analyzing the potential of fusing rural resource protection practices with place-based marketing of enhanced quality, drawing from an empirical study of the California winegrape industry. In several California commodities, agroecological partnerships are becoming the chief vehicle for extending sustainable agricultural practices. California's winegrape farmers have undertaken more partnerships to greater effect than those of any other US crop, and they are now discursively linking their sustainable farming practices, environmental quality, and wine quality. This marks a new linkage of two heretofore discrete social imaginaries. This article argues that “quality” is a term that can conceptually link increasing consumer demand for differentiated product taste with increasing regulatory pressure for environmental protection. Synergistic benefits from such a linkage have the potential to strengthen rural development initiatives. Making progress toward sustainability requires collective action on the part of producers, and in some commodities, may mesh well with efforts to enhance foodstuff quality.     

Agroenvironmental conflict and world food system theory: Sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area

This paper presents a critique of the conceptualization of conflict over land-extensive rural production systems as presented by world food systems theorists. Two problems are identified. The first is historical; specifically, that the periodization of food regimes occludes Caribbean development and plantation agriculture, thereby missing the historical development of the social relations of certain commodity sectors. The second is geographical: that agroenvironmental conflict and sustainability are conceptualized either in terms of local/global (Friedmann, 1990, 1991) or in terms of North/South (Goodman and Redclift, 1991). The paper begins with a summary of the relevant arguments of world food theorists and then turns to the historical example of sugar production to examine its role in industrialization. The following section discusses arguments concerning agroenvironmental conflict that have emerged from food system theory, which emphasize contrasting ‘geographical’ components, either local/global or North/South. The limitations of this analysis are discussed with respect to the case of agroenvironmental conflict in Florida. Finally, a case study of the development of the Florida sugarcane industry is presented to illustrate a ‘First World’ environmental conflict over an agroindustrial production complex that cannot be categorized simply as a ‘consumption’ struggle.     

Factors Constraining Building Effective and Fair Geographical Indications for Coffee: Insights from a Dominican Case Study

The commodity nature of green coffee is the main cause of the ‘coffee paradox’ (falling producer prices and rising consumer prices). Geographical Indications (GIs) may be an effective ‘decommodifier’ of the coffee market, but many constraints have to be overcome. Based on an analysis of how the characteristics of the coffee production system shape the positions of local stakeholders and, thus, the GI building process, this article identifies some constraining factors that can seriously undermine the capacity the GI has to decommodify the market and attain a fairer distribution of the benefits for local producers.     

The Teachers’ Page

Place-based education is a growing trend in education. This article defines place-based education and briefly examines its use across the disciplines. So as to better understand the wider concept, meanings of the geographical term place are analyzed. Place-based education in a social studies classroom is examined using two hypothetical scenarios, demonstrating that place-based education is indeed appropriate in the social studies.     

Environmental Harm and “the Good Farmer”: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry

Maintaining sustainability discourses in the face of evidence to the contrary is a topic of considerable interest in sociology. We approach this topic with a focus on the beef industry in Alberta, Canada. By studying the discourses of cow and calf producers this article addresses the following questions: (1) What are the discourses that producers draw on to support their self‐perceptions as stewards of the land, (2) how are these discourses used by producers to negotiate and reconcile their involvement in a system that contributes to environmental degradation, and (3) what are key elements to interpreting these discourses of sustainability? Methods include semistructured interviews with attention to the potential of genomics for enhanced cattle breeding to ameliorate harmful methane emissions. Our findings indicate that producers draw on narratives of balance between economic and environmental concerns, focus on epistemic nearness, and fragment their understanding of the beef industry to maintain discourses of sustainability. These findings offer insights into the impacts that embodied, material forms of knowledge have on farmers’ perceptions of the land, and demonstrate that these narratives and ways of knowing predicate farmers’ understandings of sustainable development.     

Conventionalization, civic engagement, and the sustainability of organic agriculture

It is often assumed that organic farming is synonymous with sustainable agriculture. The broad goals of sustainable agriculture include economic profitability, environmental stewardship, and community vitality. However, the “question of sustainability” (Ikerd, 2008) can be asked of any type of farming, including organic production. One way to assess sustainability is to consider farmers’ perceptions of the sustainability of their operations. I draw on data from a survey of certified organic producers in Washington State to broaden our understanding of the sustainability of organic agriculture. Specifically, I consider certified organic producers’ perceptions of the degree to which their operations contribute to broad sustainable agriculture goals. Moreover, I use multiple regression to investigate how these perceived contributions are influenced by farm conventionalization variables (e.g., organic acreage, non-organic sales, and specialization) and civic engagement variables (e.g., direct marketing, community group membership, and participation in sustainable/organic agriculture organizations) while controlling for farmer demographics and farm location. Farm conventionalization appears to have a significant negative effect on perceived contributions to environmental and social sustainability, but a significant positive effect on perceived contribution to economic sustainability. Civic engagement appears to have a significant positive effect on perceived contributions to environmental and social sustainability, but no effect on perceived contribution to economic sustainability.     

Negotiating Sustainability: Climate Change Framing in the Communications,Energy and Paperworkers Union

Environmental problems are often reduced to a catch‐22 that portrays sustainability‐oriented policies as disastrous for resource sector workers. Despite efforts by many industry leaders to frame climate change in “jobs versus environment” terms, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) has supported ambitious greenhouse gas reduction policies. Using interviews with union members and staff, this study examines CEP's climate change framing. It finds that CEP extended the environmental justice master frame to define its response to climate change, neutralize anti‐Kyoto rhetoric, and work with the environmental movement. CEP's framing was accomplished through negotiation processes that continue to unfold as members work out the union's positions relative to their own values, experiences, and interpretations of what is possible. These findings suggest sustainability can be understood as an emergent, localized, and contested social order, and point to “self‐negotiation” in longer‐term social change struggles as a potential area of further study.     

Corporate social responsibility driven innovation

This study identifies the substantial relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and innovation activities of firms. Using the French Vigeo sustainability rating and the Thomson Reuters, we divided 619 firms into groups by their industry sectors, regions, and firm characteristics such as size and age. We premise that innovative investment is needed to prepare tomorrow's profits not only by considering investments in technology and in R&D, but also by dealing with sustainability to human, social, environmental, technical, and economic investments. Consequently, when the firm manipulates its short- and long-run business strategies, the consideration of the correlation between types of investment and CSR initiatives will lead to more cooperating effect on the outcome of investments. The findings provide a comprehensive understanding on the effect of sustainable management strategies on the innovation and sustainability of firms.     

The role of corporate social responsibility in strong sustainability

The aim of this paper is to analyze to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) contributes to strong sustainability, i.e. to what extent the use of natural resources and the environment is possible, given the current level of economic activity. We therefore examine responsibilities that corporations should take in order to fulfil the requirements of strong sustainability. Based on current CSR practices and theory as well as on businesses motivations regarding environmental and social investments, we will introduce the role of corporations in influencing consumption patterns. Furthermore, we will attempt to answer to what extent responsible corporate behaviour is determined by the current economic system.     

Voluntary standards,expert knowledge and the governance of sustainability networks

Products certified according to their environmental and social sustainability are becoming an important feature of production, trade and consumption in the agro‐food sector. ‘Sustainability networks’ are behind the emergence and growth of these new product forms, often evolving into multi‐stakeholder initiatives that establish and manage base codes, standards, certifications and labels. As sustainability moves into the mainstream, understanding the governance of these networks is essential because they partly reshape the structure and characteristics of commodity flows. In this article, we examine the role of expert knowledge and process management in governing two multi‐stakeholder initiatives (the Marine Stewardship Council and the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil) and in shaping their distributional effects. We find that the ability of developing countries, especially small‐scale actors within them, to shape standard setting and management to their advantage depends not only on overcoming important structural differences in endowments and access to resources, but also on more subtle games. These include promoting the enrolment of one expert group or kind of expert knowledge over another, using specific formats of negotiation, and legitimating particular modes of engagement over others.     

Re-assembling climate change policy: Materialism,posthumanism, and the policy assemblage

National and international policy-makers have addressed threats to environmental sustainability from climate change and other environmental degradation for over 30 years. However, it is questionable whether current policies are socially, politically, economically, and scientifically capable of adequately resolving these threats to the planet and living organisms. In this paper we theorize and develop the concept of a “policy assemblage” from within a new materialist ontology, to interrogate critically four policy perspectives on climate change: “liberal environmentalism”; the United Nations policy statements on sustainable development; “green capitalism” (also known as “climate capitalism”) and finally “no-growth economics.” A materialist analysis of interactions between climate change and policies enables us to establish what each policy can do, what it ignores or omits, and consequently its adequacy to address environmental sustainability in the face of climate change. None, we conclude, is adequate or appropriate to address climate change successfully. We then use this conceptual tool to establish a “posthuman” policy on climate change. Humans, from this perspective, are part of the environment, not separate from or in opposition to it, but possess unique capacities that we suggest are now necessary to address climate change. This ontology supplies the starting point from which to establish sociologically a scientifically, socially, and politically adequate posthuman climate change policy. We offer suggestions for the constituent elements of such a policy.     

Urban Myths: Popular Culture, the City and Identity

This article uses Manchester (England) as a case study to examine some relationships between the city and the popular culture that emerges from, or seeks to represent, this city. We focus on post-war popular culture that has been widely disseminated such as film, television and popular music. The article considers whether these examples of popular culture reflect wider urban, social and cultural change and discuss what impact this popular culture has had on changing the landscape and fortunes of the city. In particular, we discuss the case study of Manchester's popular culture in terms of ideas about place-based identities and social class. We consider popular culture in terms of de-industrialising Manchester through to regenerated Manchester. The paper concludes by discussing the possibility that the city centre of Manchester has become gentrified and considers the impact that this is having on popular culture.     

Trademarks,Geographical Indications and Environmental Labelling to Promote Biodiversity: The Case of Agroforestry Coffee in India

The district of Kodagu, also called Coorg, in the Western Ghats of India produces 2% of the world's coffee, the expansion and intensification of which have reduced the forest cover by more than 30% in 20 years. Innovative actions are therefore urgently required to link economic development and biodiversity conservation, and stakeholders are exploring three strategies to add value to coffee from Coorg and prevent further biodiversity erosion: registration of trademarks; geographical indications; and environmental certification, via eco‐labels. This article analyses their respective strengths and weaknesses and discusses the synergies between them.     

Tomorrow's Leaders and Today's Agents of Change? Children,Sustainability Education and Environmental Governance

Children are central to the rhetoric supporting global climate agreements, yet they are also envisaged to play a strategic role in materialising such agreements. Along with other household actors, children are implicated in localised efforts to manage global resource sustainability. As learners in educational systems that are being redesigned to encompass messages of sustainability, children are moreover positioned as ‘agents of change’ through sustainability education. Drawing on theoretical work on children's agency and interdependence, this review calls for greater attention to the structural and relational dimensions of environmental knowledge transmission to inform sustainability education. This is presented as one move towards constructing what Middlemiss (2014) terms a more ‘socially sensitive’ model of sustainable development.     

Shippers and freight operators perceptions of sustainable initiatives

The purpose of this paper is to document the extent to which Brazilian companies in retail channels have committed to adopting environmental sustainability measures, goals and strategies for waste disposal in the evaluation and planning of sustainable transportation. This paper also aims to examine the different viewpoints of sustainability issues and the preventive actions taken by companies in terms of controlling carbon dioxide emissions and proper disposal of tires, lubricant oils, accessories and spare parts. Finally, taking the perspective of these companies, this paper examines their difficulties in meeting environmental regulations. The research involved a survey completed by 185 representatives of different types of companies, including shippers (represented by manufacturers), LSPs (logistics service providers) and carriers. The non-linear canonical correlation was calculated to verify the opinions of these representatives from different companies regarding issues that impact on the environment, the preventive actions they adopt to reduce their environmental impact and their difficulties in meeting environmental regulations. The results show that shippers and LSPs have the same perceptions regarding these sustainability issues and preventive actions. In addition, the companies perceive high costs and the lack of training for their partners as the major challenges experienced in addressing these issues and undertaking preventive actions. Therefore they need to plan their transportation activities.     

天然气供津综述

介绍天津市燃气事业发展简况、天然气气源、消纳余气的途径和环境效益。     

Gender and Agricultural Science: Evidence From Two Surveys of Land‐Grant Scientists*

Abstract We test two sets of hypotheses concerning the association between gender and various structural and attitudinal variables, using data collected in two surveys (1979 and 1995–1996) from random samples of land‐grant agricultural scientists. The first set of hypotheses centers on the expectation that the resources and rewards of agricultural science are distributed unequally by gender. We find significant gender differences in scientists' postdoctoral work experience, academic rank, employment of graduate students, rate of book publication, and links with private industry. Our second set of hypotheses, drawing on the literatures of feminist epistemology and situated knowledge, focuses on the relationship between scientists' gender and perceptions of the goals of agricultural research. Our findings indicate that gender is unimportant in explaining differences in scientists' commitment to agricultural sustainability, environmental issues, and family farm preservation as important goals of land‐grant research. Yet we find significant gender differences in attitudes toward biotechnology and the growing links between land‐grant universities and private industry.