Norwegian salmon goes to market: The case of the Austevoll seafood cluster

This paper examines the impact of the globalisation of the farmed salmon commodity chain upon farmed salmon production in the western Norwegian municipality of Austevoll. On the basis of field research conducted in 2002 and 2003, we conclude that salmon farming in Austevoll has responded to the challenges of ‘buyer-driven’ food chains by virtue of its history as a seafood cluster. Despite the vertical relations assumed in the literature on ‘buyer-driven’ food chains, the horizontal relations in Austevoll have proven resilient in this era of ‘homogenised globalisation’. Nevertheless, recent changes in the global farmed salmon supply chain may result in the imposition of vertical relations in the Austevoll cluster. We conclude with suggestions for incorporating the literatures on global food chains and industrial clusters in the study of seafood production and global markets.     

Traditional vs. Modern Food Systems? Insights from Vegetable Supply Chains to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

This article describes the development of vegetable marketing in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), where modern distribution outlets are competing fiercely with traditional traders for wholesale and retail customers. Data from interviews with supply chain stakeholders and a survey of vegetable wholesalers have been used to compare the performance of modern and traditional chains, and the findings reveal the chains as segmented in their product focus, the modern sector focusing exclusively on quality. Modern marketing channels are generally more efficient than traditional ones but still account for only around 2% of vegetable distribution. The article argues that policy‐makers should not promote the ‘modernisation’ of food systems at the expense of traditional channels which meet important consumer needs.     

New rural territories: Regulating the differentiated rural spaces

Taking the differentiating countryside as a major feature of rural spatial change, this paper explores some of the key development spheres which are influencing the process of differentiation with reference to the British case. Combinations of local and non-local networks, supply chains and regulatory systems incorporate different rural spaces. Four particular development spheres: mass food markets, quality food markets, agriculturally related changes and rural restructuring implicate, in their different combinations, the different rural spaces. This analytical framework raises some important concerns for the governance of differentiating rural space in its regional context. In particular, it suggests that notions of integration and holism of rural spaces will be difficult to achieve; and that governance and regulation becomes highly variable according to the relative significance of local/non-local networks. In conclusion, the implications of the analysis are examined in relation to the growing rural development policy discourse. This suggests the need for more regionally and spatially orientated policy which is more customized to the internal and external conditions different regional-rural spaces experience.     

Distance as a hybrid actor in rural economies

This paper argues that the notion of distance ought to be re-conceptualized and promoted to the theoretical foreground of sociological analyses of rural economic action. Using research in rural British Columbia, Canada, I argue that current changes in rural political economy (for instance, the restructuring of industrial resource production, the promotion of local economic diversification, and advances in communications and transportation infrastructures) mean that the “performance” of connections between local and extra-local economic spaces are increasingly significant to economic relationships and exchange in rural settings. In re-conceptualizing the role of distance in a Post-Fordist rural economy, I borrow two key insights from actor-network theory: the notion of hybridity, and the strong influence that ‘hybridized’ networks have on (rural) actors. Rather than being a static fact, I argue that distance is itself a hybrid actor that ‘behaves’ differently according to the particular configuration of its natural, technological, and social dimensions. Thinking about distance in this manner makes a novel contribution to understanding rural development, as it asserts that the capacity to organize and configure distance (as opposed to simply acting ‘at a distance’) is a key source of power and variance in rural economies.     

On the trail of the global green bean: methodological considerations in multi‐site ethnography

The need to demystify and ‘ground’ globalization has spurred many calls for multi‐site fieldwork. This article discusses how such fieldwork was used to examine the contemporary restructuring of fresh food commodity chains between Africa and Europe, at a time of increasing European concerns about food safety and quality. Drawing on convention theory and actor‐network theory for conceptual guidance, qualitative fieldwork was conducted at sites of production, import and export in ‘anglophone’ (Zambia–London) and ‘francophone’ (Burkina Faso–Paris) commodity chains. The article also discusses the challenges posed by multi‐site research, especially in realms where secrecy and deception are standard tools of the trade.     

Strangers asking strange questions? A methodological narrative of researching belonging and identity in English rural communities

This paper emerges from a current research project that examines the relationship between contemporary English rurality and notions of identity and belonging. While this is primarily a methodological narrative we argue that this narrative speaks to an analysis of current rural relations. The paper concerns itself with two key methodological issues that have arisen during the ‘doing’ of the research. First, it examines our own relationship, as ‘outsider’, urban-based researchers, to the rural and the use and/or relevance of our biographies as resources for making ourselves seem less ‘strange’ and for accessing, and being in, rural environments. At the same time as providing us with a map into our micro rural worlds the paper draws on this biographic-research relation in order to problematize notions of homogenous rural identities and polarized rural/urban identities. The second part of the paper argues that who we were/how we were perceived had a relation to what ‘truths’ and accounts we were told by our respondents. More particularly, we show how our use of focus group interviews had a direct role in the rehearsal and presentation of these ‘truths’. Given the current contestations and tensions over what and who ‘the rural’ is, it was clear that those involved in the focus group discussions wanted to give us particular stories that often fell into a consensus pattern of either ‘rural idyll’ or ‘rural crisis’ narratives. Drawing on Simmel's notion of the stranger and focus group data we argue that for these narratives to be told we, as researchers, were ascribed by the group members to shifting positions of intimacy and remoteness.     

Farmer share and fair distribution in food chains from a consumer’s perspective

Discussions about fair revenue distribution in food supply chains gained importance in 2008 when European milk producers entered a strike against dairy processing companies (EU milk strike). A broad discussion in the media emerged, provoking civil society as well as politics to get involved in a debate over fair prices for farmers. During the milk strike, consumers in Germany were to a large extent sympathetic with the farmers, while food retailers were seen as the main cause of the problem. However, the question what fairness and a fair revenue distribution in food production meant remained unanswered. Hence, this study aims to analyze consumer perceptions of what a fair revenue distribution is in food chains and to determine what factors contribute to fairness perceptions of the farmers’ share. Through an online survey conducted in November 2012, German consumers were asked to estimate the distribution of the food dollar among different supply chain partners and to indicate what a fair distribution should look like. This paper contributes to the literature of the perceived unfair compensation of farmers and provides empirical examples of the concepts of distributive, procedural and interactional fairness. The findings of the survey showed that farmers are mainly perceived as being treated unfairly in supply chains and should get more compensation from a consumer’s point of view. Food retailing should mainly lose shares in this context. A fair distribution of revenues is influenced by distributive considerations, process control and interactional fairness, revealing that non-monetary aspects are also influencing fairness perceptions of revenue distribution in food chains.     

The Chinese Cashmere Industry: A Global Value Chain Analysis

Growth and internationalisation of the Chinese economy have reconfigured the global value chains of many commodities with important implications for industry and rural and regional development both in and outside China. This article analyses the chain for cashmere, all stages of which have gravitated to China, and the impacts on rural development, especially for herders in remote pastoral regions. Traditionally a high‐value product, cashmere has become increasingly generic and adulterated over the past decade. More formal and closer integration of Chinese actors into the global industry and re‐orienting policy from supply‐side intervention to the enforcement of standards would enhance the competitiveness of Chinese cashmere in international fibre markets.     

Why institutional environments for agroforestry seed systems matter

Rethinking the logic of institutional environments aiming to facilitate agroforestry smallholders in economic development, this article compares smallholder input supply systems for crop and tree seeds in sub‐Saharan Africa and reflects on two basic challenges: (1) how to develop a large number of relevant tree crops for different agroecologies, (2) how to reach smallholders in rural areas. Policy options for improving agroforestry input supply systems are discussed, whereby our article concludes with suggestions how sectoral approaches for crop seed systems can be modified to agroforestry seed‐seedling systems. Biophysical differences have practical implications for how the logic of the ‘African green revolution’ would be translated into a corresponding revolution for agroforestry.     

Institutions and Policies for Pro‐poor Agricultural Growth

Global experience with pro‐poor growth and empirical work spanning India, Malawi and Zimbabwe demonstrates the importance of agricultural growth for poverty reduction in poor rural areas, while also pointing to the need for complementary non‐farm sector growth. Theoretical arguments, historical evidence and livelihoods modelling in poor medium‐potential rural economies suggest that, contrary to thinking dominating much of current development policy, subsidies to relieve critical seasonal credit and cash restraints and reduce market and input supply uncertainties need to help in ‘kick‐starting’ agricultural markets if increased smallholder productivity in food‐grains is to drive rural non‐farm growth. Establishing the base conditions for these to work, designing and implementing them to be effective, and then phasing them out are major challenges facing policymakers.     

The interpersonal world of direct marketing: Examining conventions of quality at UK farmers’ markets

Inherent within emerging new food supply chains (FSCs) in the UK in recent years, and in particular those based upon direct marketing, is the (re)connection of production–consumption processes and concomitantly producers and consumers. New forms of connection are apparent, as food produce is differentiated on the basis of quality constructs which are often linked both to the place and nature of its production, but also to the exchange context. As a result, quality evaluation has become increasingly complex and heterogeneous, necessitating context-specific examinations of its mediation. This paper seeks to do this through its examination of producers and consumers at farmers’ markets (FMs). Utilising the framework of Conventions Theory, it assesses how producers and consumers coordinate their mutual expectations in order to circumvent the uniform standards of ‘conventionally’ produced food and create new production–consumption spaces. In so doing, the notion of a Regard Convention is suggested as a means of acknowledging the non-economic benefits of FSCs that are underpinned by direct marketing and, in particular, those that involve face-to-face interaction between the participants concerned.     

Regulating the new rural spaces: the uneven development of land

With the demise of agricultural productivism, that set of economic and political arrangements which made food production the overriding aim of rural policy, new forms of regulation have come into existence. These are linked to new patterns of development in rural areas which have arisen as economic actors seek to exploit the opportunities presented by the crisis in agriculture. Both development and its regulation have become localised — that is, detached from the national regime associated with productivism. This is leading to increased differentiation. We examine three land development sectors — minerals, farm building conversion and golf — to illustrate how the processes of differentiation are driven by a variety of economic, political and social actors. These are assessed using the notion of ‘arenas of representation’. Two arenas are identified — those of the market and regulation — showing how uneven development of the countryside can be understood as arising from action-in-context. Such differentiation, or the emergence of new rural spaces, is inevitable in the post-productivist era.     

Invisible landscapes: students’ constructions of the social and the natural in an engineering course in South Africa

This paper examines the discourses that students draw on and propagate in a course on rural development in a first‐year engineering foundation programme. It looks at the way ‘rural’ is often constructed as ‘lack’ and therefore ‘other’, the dangers of constructing development as linear, the ways nostalgia and utopianism feed into discourses of development and how ‘propriety’ serves to maintain boundaries between nature and people, society and individuals. Different modes and media, coupled with the degree of regulation in the classroom, may enable alternate discourses to emerge or to be suppressed. This paper argues that the curriculum needs to engage with students’ views in order to understand, interrogate and critique the kinds of realities they feed into.     

Everyday Matters in Global Private Security Supply Chains: A Feminist Global Political Economy Perspective on Gurkhas in Private Security

Abstract

In a case study of Nepalese Gurkhas working for Western private military and security companies (PMSCs), this article develops feminist global political economy understandings of global labour chains by exploring how the ‘global market’ and the ‘everyday’ interact in establishing private security as a gendered and racialised project. Current understandings of PMSCs, and global markets at large, tend to depoliticise these global and everyday interactions by conceptualising the ‘everyday’ as common, mundane, and subsequently banal. Such understandings, we argue, not only conceal the everyday within private security, but also reinforce a conceptual dualism that enables the security industry to function as a gendered and racialised project. To overcome this dualism, this article offers a theoretically informed notion of the everyday that dissolves the hegemonic separation into ‘everyday’ and ‘global’ levels of analysis. Drawing upon ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis of PMSCs’ websites, the analysis demonstrates how race, gender, and colonial histories constitute global supply chains for the security industry, rest upon and reinforce racialised and gendered migration patterns, and depend upon, as well as shape, the everyday lives and living of Gurkha men and women.     

Modern Food Supply Chains and Development: Evidence from Horticulture Export Sectors in Sub‐Saharan Africa

The global food system is undergoing rapid processes of transformation and modernisation. This is causing important changes in developing‐country food supply chains, particularly in supermarket‐driven and high‐value export chains, but the welfare implications of these changes are poorly understood. This article analyses and compares the welfare effects in different horticulture export chains in sub‐Saharan Africa, disentangling different types of effects and the channels through which rural households are affected. Its main conclusion is that increased high‐value exports and the modernisation of export supply chains can bring about important positive welfare effects, which can occur in various ways through product‐ or labour‐market effects and through direct and indirect effects.     

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.     

Women and the rural idyll

The existence of a ‘rural idyll’ has been widely accepted by social scientists working within the rural field. Yet the term itself has received relatively little critical attention. In particular, the variable characteristics and impacts of the rural idyll amongst different groups within the rural population has been largely overlooked. The cultural turn in rural geography and the emphasis which has recently been placed on identifying and studying the rural ‘other’ provides an important opportunity for the notion of a rural idyll to be unpacked from the perspective of different rural dwellers. This paper investigates the role of the rural idyll in maintaining rural gender relations. It examines women's attitudes towards and experiences of two key elements of the rural idyll; the family and the community. Drawing on material from interviews with women in rural Avon in the south west of England, the paper shows how women's identity as ‘rural women’ is closely tied in to their images and understanding of rural society. It is argued, in particular, that the opportunities available and acceptable to women are built on very strong assumptions and expectations about motherhood and belonging within a rural community. Some of the more practical implications of these expectations are explored in the context of women's involvement in the community and in the labour market.     

Trapped workers,urban freedoms and labor control in Brazilian agriculture: Evidence from Southwest Goiás

Labor entrapment in Brazilian agriculture is not limited to ‘marginal geographies’ or sectors, but is a troubling presence at the core of some of the country's most developed and urbanized agricultural regions. This paper looks at the conditions of labor resistance and control in a dynamic and highly urbanized agricultural region of central Brazil that may explain the use there by employers of entrapped workers from distant regions. Commercial agriculture is intensely seasonal and sensitive to the quality and timing of delivery, so the fulfillment of labor demand continues to be a central concern of rural employers despite arguments for surplus labor. In the context of rural exodus, Brazilian farmers can no longer count on a flexible supply of residential workers. The article considers the importance of two ‘urban freedoms’ derived from the migration of rural workers to cities during the last 35 years. One is the increasing presence of labor unions and regulation in wage markets. The other is the creative strategies that households develop to weaken their dependence on agricultural work. To understand these strategies, gender relations within and outside of the household are taken into account. The paper ends by critically examining the argument that wage compression is the reason that employers in Brazilian agriculture resort to labor replacement in dynamic regions.