“That's not Grassfed!” Identity Formation,Maintenance, and Co‐Optation in Oklahoma's Grassfed Livestock Movement

Using interview data from thirty‐one grassfed ranchers across Oklahoma, we adapt a culturally focused social movement framework to explore a regional grassfed livestock movement. Drawing on social movement and agrifood literature, we examine how grassfed actors forge a cohesive grassfed collective identity and how collective identity processes inspire engagement in forms of individualized, cultural protest. We address how collective identity politicizes movement actors, moving them to prioritize cultural issues of the grassfed movement and development of a grassfed activist identity, sometimes above other tangible, economic rewards. We also consider how grassfed ranchers are restricting the boundaries of movement membership in response to increased interest in alternative agricultural practices by new producers and by agrifood elites, and how they use market‐oriented tactics to enforce those boundaries. In doing so we draw parallels to conventionalization processes in the organic sector. By emphasizing the identity work of grassfed producer‐activists, we provide new perspectives on an emerging agricultural movement gaining traction in the US and abroad.     

Antagonistic governance in South African fruit global production networks: a neo‐Gramscian perspective

Governance is a core focus of the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literatures. Recent research claims ‘complementary’ or ‘synergistic’ governance, achieved through the confluence of private, public and civil society actors, is required for sustainable social gains. While moving beyond a narrow focus on economic coordination, such analysis lacks a sufficiently nuanced examination of power relations. In this article, I draw on neo‐Gramscian perspectives to account for ongoing contestation, positing that governance needs to be understood in the context of a broader hegemonic project. ‘Antagonistic governance’ is proposed to conceptualize contestation within and across diverse initiatives, which forge, challenge and transform hegemonic stability in GVC/GPNs. I explore this through the South African fruit sector, in particular, a labour crisis in 2012/13. I argue that we need to move beyond apolitical readings of governance to account for the material and discursive practices through which contestation gets played out, compromises are forged, and hegemonic order is maintained.     

From bias to coverage: What explains how news organizations treat social movements

Why do newspapers cover social movement actors, and why is this coverage sometimes favorable? Early scholarship saw the news media mainly as a source of data on collective action, and sought to ascertain its biases, but scholarship has increasingly focused directly on why movements gain coverage, especially coverage that can advance their goals. To understand why and how newspapers cover movement actors, we start with the insight that movements rely on the news media for many reasons, but their coverage is largely in the control of news institutions. In this review, we focus on perspectives that specify 3‐way interactions between the characteristics of newspapers, social movement actors, and the social and political contexts, but we begin with how news media institutions are organized. We conclude with suggestions for future research that take advantage of the digital revolution of the last generation.     

Identifying social innovations in European local rural development initiatives

Social innovation is attracting increasing attention in research and policy, heightened by continuing austerity across Europe. Therefore, this paper examines earlier research into community-led local development (CLLD) initiatives in rural areas of Europe to develop our understanding of the meaning and scope of rural social innovation. We draw on a Schumpeterian view where innovations emerge from new combinations of resources that bring about positive changes and create value in society. A Schumpeterian social innovation framework is derived as the basis for re-analysing data from previous evaluations of LEADER policy in five different national contexts. This elicits a clearer understanding of social innovation in a rural development context, identifying different processes and outcomes that create social value. As the CLLD agenda and the demand for innovation in Europe gather pace, our aspirations are to inform future research and other initiatives on how to integrate social innovation into the design and evaluation of new rural development policies and programmes.     

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.     

Olfactive frames of remembering: theorizing self,senses and society

By analysing sensorial aspects of social memory and emotions, this paper theorizes the social significance of olfaction and other senses towards reconfigurations of self and social interactions through embodied identity work. The research question that this paper addresses is: how is the self perceived through memories that are mediated by smells? Olfactive frames of remembering are employed in order to explicate sensory meta‐narratives including sensory relations (pertaining to familial and other ties), sensory memory, time and space, and sensoryscapes. This article also elucidates upon the various moral, cultural and aesthetic codes that may be discerned in biographical narrations of social actors drawn from narrative interviews. Furthermore, it highlights a need to consider sensorial‐bodily experiences in qualitative inquiry and thereby conceptualize how actors articulate their sense of self, and how they reformulate their experiences and relationships with others vis‐à‐vis emotional discourses of happiness, sadness and nostalgia in the maintenance and continuity of selfhood. The paper therefore contributes to sensuous scholarship by explicating how smells and memories operate in conjunction toward shaping self‐identity and social relations.     

Trade shows and the creation of market and industry

This study addresses the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies. Specifically, the article studies the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real time computing market, which is part of the US electronics sector, during the mid‐1990's. Real time computing products assist the transfer, storage and processing of digital signals in real time and support many of the internet applications we use today. By applying ethnographic methods, we explore the general question of how economic actors cope with uncertainty in the phase of market‐making and at the cutting edge of technology. The paper makes two contributions to the existing literature. First, it shows that the attempt to organize a trade show in real time computing was triggered by the uncertainty experienced by sellers regarding the identity of prospective buyers and about the exact use to which they would put the emergent technology which is offered for sale. Secondly, we trace the history of an emergent market. We claim that trade shows for innovative products are important venues at which markets coalesce. The identification and ordering of market actors, the institutionalization of a distinct business culture and the social networks developed among market actors and across the subsidiary markets provided the basic social infrastructure for what later became known as the real time computing industry.     

Cosmopolitics: towards a new articulation of politics,science and critique

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world‐risk‐society theory (WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine ‘cosmopolitan politics’, how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on ‘cosmological politics’, how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses.     

Social Capital,Organic Agriculture,and Sustainable Livelihood Security: Rethinking Agrarian Change in Mexico*

Abstract This paper explores the relevance of extra local market linkages and local‐level social capital to sustainable livelihood outcomes in two agrarian communities on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Contextualized by the specificity of Mexico's transition from state‐directed rural development to neoliberally‐guided rural development in the 1990s, findings suggest that market linkages can intersect with pre‐existing social capital to both create new and destroy preexisting social capital, thus shaping the direction of development and inequality outcomes. The nature of a community's social fabric is often a result of long‐standing historical legacies. In the communities presented, the quantity and quality of social capital was intricately connected to their history of state‐sponsored or market agriculture; the nature of local institutions, with particular emphasis on the formation and evolution of the ejido; and the access to and availability of natural resources, namely land and water, which are both intricately connected to market access options. Moving beyond a simple demonstration that social capital matters, this analysis explores the complex and dynamic interaction between local‐level social capital and extralocal market linkages. In doing so, it contributes to the larger debate on how the historical legacy of populist reforms and the social and political institutions created during state populism have nuanced the trajectory of neoliberal development in Mexico.     

Translation sociology and social capital in rural development initiatives. A case study from the Italian Alps

This article analyses the results of a European ‘research and demonstration’ project promoting multifunctional and sustainable agriculture in Alpine regions through a participatory approach. It focuses in particular on initiatives undertaken by a local farmers group in the Italian Alpine area of Val di Sole, the purpose being to draw attention to the role of social dynamics in fostering sustainable rural development in a participatory context. In order to accomplish this objective, two key sociological approaches to the study of rural development, namely social capital and the sociology of translation, are considered. The former focuses on the relational capital available to a group of actors and which can be mobilised in a development initiative. The latter views change in social practices as resulting from a cycle of phases where the problem, its solution, and the identity of the actors are constantly transformed and negotiated. By contrasting the two theoretical approaches in relation to the outcomes of two specific actions implemented in the valley we suggest that the sociology of translation offers a more effective tool with which to capture the complexity of social dynamics involved in a rural development initiative.     

What is sociological about economic sociology? Uncertainty and the embeddedness of economic action

Conclusion This article argues that the problem of uncertainty represents the central limitation of efficiency-based approaches to the explanation and prediction of economic outcomes. The problem of uncertainty reintroduces the Hobbesian problem of order into economics and makes it possible to connect questions of economic decision-making with social theory. The emphasis lies not, as in the behavioral theories of the Carnegie School, in the influence of uncertainty on the actual decision process, but in those social devices that actors rely on in decision-making, i.e., that structure the situation for the agents. If agents cannot anticipate the benefits of an investment, optimizing decisions become impossible, and the question opens up how intentionally rational actors reach decisions under this condition of uncertainty. This provides a systematic starting point for economic sociology. Studies in economic sociology that argue from different theoretical perspectives point to the significance of uncertainty and goal ambiguity. This contribution reflects theoretically why economic sociology can develop a promising approach by building upon these insights. It becomes understandable why culture, power, institutions, social structures, and cognitive processes are important in modern market economies. But it should be equally emphasized that the maximizing paradigm in economics will not be dethroned without a causal theory of the relationship of intentional rationality and social rigidities.     

Against the norm: the transitional symbiosis of ‘grassroots clientelism’ and ‘rural citizenship’

Clientelism has predominantly been represented in the literature as an expression of backwardness and corruption with little attention being paid to the question of how clientelism has changed over the years. In contrast, this paper examines the particulars of state intervention in the agrarian economy with respect to clientelism and exposes the illogicality of contrasting patron‐client relationships with citizenship. The historical focus is on the ways in which, in the course of post‐dictatorship consolidation in rural Greece throughout the 1980s, the transformation of traditional brokerage‐based clientelism into the bureaucratic clientelism of the political parties actually enhanced the institutions and practices of ‘rural citizenship’. Comparative qualitative research on the driving force of agrarian change shows how Thessalian villagers made the transition from being socially excluded subjects to socially included clients in two lowland village communities and the role played by a dynamic state bureaucracy.     

Fisheries Trade and Social Development in the Philippine‐Malaysia Maritime Border Zone

Weakly regulated natural‐resource trading activities in the remote borderlands of developing countries are commonly viewed both as a means of improving economic development and as a way of smuggling valuable natural resources. Based on data from the Philippine‐Malaysia maritime border that focus on the trade in high‐value live reef fish, this article points to the need to situate such cross‐border activities more closely within the context of local perspectives and priorities. A locally‐grounded perspective is necessary in order to understand the context of social‐development challenges that mediate both macroeconomic and environmental policy outcomes.     

The link between economic and social upgrading in global supply chains: Experiences from the Southern Cone

This article uses nine case studies of global supply chains (GSCs) in Southern Cone countries to explore the extent to which economic and social upgrading are linked and spread from lead firms to their supply chain. While economic and social upgrading are found in lead firm segments throughout the case studies, the impacts on suppliers are varied. Pattern groupings enable the authors to develop a three‐part typology of development in GSCs, in the light of which they consider the roles of public policies, company behaviour and social actors in addressing developmental outcomes for GSC lead firms and suppliers.     

Exploring linkages between organisational culture and gender equality work—An ethnography of a multinational engineering company

This article explores linkages between organisation-specific cultural narratives and gender-equality programme planning through the lens of the ‘historicity’ concept. The article argues that to fully understand problem definitions, programme design and organisational change processes related to gender equality, scholars and practitioners cannot focus one-sidedly on expected outcomes and effects; we must also factor in cultural narratives, because gender equality actors never arrive at their work as ‘tabulae rasae’. A community of actors always draws on shared dispositions that give sense, direction and shape to their anticipations of the future hereby guiding their actions in the present. Based on an ethnography of a multinational engineering company, the article shows how cultural narratives may serve in different ways as support factors for gender equality programme planning and implementation, if they are actively but mindfully engaged. This mindfulness is important as positive cultural narratives may entail problematic gender dimensions. On the other hand, negative cultural narratives may entail important learning outcomes that may benefit future gender equality initiatives. The analysis further points to the centrality of strategic communication, leadership commitment and comprehensive evaluation in order to mobilise the potential of cultural narratives as support factors to gender equality work. Finally, this article offers a rich example to scholars and practitioners of how to employ cultural analysis in relation to gender equality activities, and demonstrates the value of the insights produced by this analysis for the case company and its gender equality programme.     

“Building a Bigger Table”: Mobilizing Social Capital to Develop a Community Food Resource Center

Traditional food initiatives often aim to increase food access through market-based, needs-driven models, leaving basic food requirements unmet for many in the current U.S. food system. Employing qualitative community-based participatory methods, we examine the asset-based developmental stages of a local-level Food and Resource Center (FRC) in rural Stillwater, OK. We consider the ways that social capital can be activated as a community asset for development, articulating how social networks are used to identify, mobilize, and galvanize community support. How has the community identified and mobilized a “stock” of social capital to employ an asset-based approach to developing a food resource center? How can the FRC enhance social capital for the community as a whole? We provide insight into how individual, agency, and institutional actors act as pivotal resources for community development, delineating the ways in which community social capital and asset-based development can influence an organization's operational goals. Additionally, we explore strategies used to enhance linking and bonding forms of social capital as well as obstacles to bridging social capital in the broader community.     

Does Actor Perspective Matter? A Case Study of Designing Intervention for Small‐Scale Palm Oil Production Enterprises in Kwaebibirem District of Ghana

Despite the fact that the government of Ghana imports the bulk of its industrial palm oil needs, it still fails to give assistance to about 80 percent of small‐scale producers to enhance development in the industry. To design interventions that will be sustainable for and beneficial to these producers, it is important to understand their perspectives first, so as not to “fix development” for them. This case study in the Kwaebibirem District of Ghana uses an actor‐oriented approach to understand the dynamics in the palm oil enterprise (kramer). Improvements in the kramer evidently evolve from the actors’ own agency. Any intervention for development should therefore first understand the dynamics of the kramer as a social field, and take this perspective as a bottom‐up starting point. This article is divided into six sections; the first section is an introduction, while the second describes our methodology. We next outline our conceptual approach, followed by an analysis of experiences of actors and their interactions. We then describe the resource flows and their interrelationships, including the power relations at play in the kramer networks. Finally, we conclude by drawing lessons on the relevance of an actor perspective in designing a learning intervention for processors, scientists, and extensionists.     

Commodities in action: measuring embeddedness and imposing values

Recent approaches in political economy look at the effects of technology and social values on economic action. Combining these approaches with those of economic anthropologists, this article poses that the way the economy is instituted can be understood by looking at reasons actors have for participating in actor‐networks of production, distribution and consumption. Using the author's research on American recycling, this article first shows that much of the‘making’or instituting of the economy happens outside the market, through political machinations, contracts and standards. Second, it suggests that these relationships impose value upon goods differently than do market relations. The details of the recycling‘chain’show the ways actors shape the network and demonstrate that the social values that add‘economic value’to goods are not uniform, but are highly contextual. Starting from Mark Granovetter's notion of 'social embeddedness', the article explains that the measure of social embeddedness is not as important as the values imposed upon other actors through social structure in the economy. It calls for a close observation of economic action in the locales within which production takes place to understand better the‘actions‐at‐a‐distance’where the politics of technology, social movements and power create the empirical, instituted economy.     

Forecasting food supply chain developments in lagging rural regions: evidence from the UK

Endemic problems in EU ‘lagging rural regions’ (LRRs) are well documented and various support mechanisms have long been in place to help overcome structural difficulties. Nevertheless, new rural development architectures are now being sought and some scholars have posited that LRRs may benefit from the ‘quality (re)turn’ in food and a relative shift from long to short food supply chains. The ways in which this ‘new agriculture’ relates to rural development in lagging regions sound fine in theory. However, in practice it is far from clear what will actually happen, where and how. This paper attempts to answer some of these questions and, using a Delphi technique, to forecast those factors likely to influence supply chain development and performance in two LRRs in the UK: West Wales and the Scottish–English Borders. The findings suggest that while most experts willingly accept the socio-economic values that can be gained by localising, shortening and synergising the food chain in LRRs, there are also important barriers that question the emergence of such an agrarian based rural development dynamic. These include the small number and size of ‘alternative’ producers in both locales, with most still locked into industrial forms of production; the restrictive influence of bureaucracy; the shortfall of key intermediaries in both regions’ food chains; and the poor provision of key physical infrastructures (e.g. roads, railway and telecommunications). The Delphi method also reveals how expert opinions about rural development in LRRs are contingent and contested, with contradictions emerging within, as well as between, rounds.     

Who Benefits from Production Outcomes? Gendered Production Relations among Climate‐Smart Agriculture Technology Users in Rural Ethiopia

The use of agricultural technologies is generally expected to increase production and household incomes. Gendered disparities in making use of agricultural outcomes could result in inequitable agricultural development. However, too little is known about whether the use of agricultural technologies improves gendered production relations, particularly in the Global South. This study investigates the question of gender‐equitable production relations by drawing on empirical data from women and men smallholders involved in conservation agriculture and small‐scale irrigation schemes in three study areas in Ethiopia. Findings show that the use of agricultural technologies does not improve unequal gendered production relations; rather, gender norms that exist within patriarchal social structures continue to influence production relations in at least three ways. First, societal norms restrict women from asserting their self‐interest in gendered bargaining. Second, there is a customary law in all the study areas that allows men (but not women) to inherit land—thus providing men with better bargaining and decision‐making positions over production outcomes, as they bring land to the marriage. Third, the restricted access of women to rural institutional services further contributes to unequal gendered production relations, as these services support men more than women in the use of agricultural technologies for enhanced production.