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Accepted Paper:
Climates of everyday failure: public servants' engagement with Sikkim's organic conversion
David Humphrey
(University of St Andrews)
Paper short abstract:
The state-mediated transition of all farming in the northeast Indian state of Sikkim to organic methods has been branded variously as anything from a 'lighthouse to the world' to a 'sham'. I examine the ways in which officials frame the possibility of failure in this 'organic conversion'.
Paper long abstract:
The state-mediated transition of all farming in the northeast Indian state of Sikkim to organic methods has been branded variously as anything from a 'lighthouse to the world' to a 'sham'. I argue that the frequency of criticism of this 'organic conversion,' and in particular of the role of officials in it, produces a general climate of everyday failure. In contrast to this, I examine a specific instance of contested ascriptions of failure in the certification of land as organic. I conclude that these specific contestations may serve to articulate the possibility of failure by making it salient from the ground of the general and the everyday, enabling officials and contractors to react to its possibility and adapt.