Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the shape of people's desire for an alternative agri-food system alongside their inability to recognise the neoliberal component in ethical foods. It does so by analysing the organic agriculture movement both against its current European backdrop and in Sicily more specifically.

Paper long abstract:

Intersecting comparative and ethnographic perspectives, this paper reflects on the problematic relation between the desired economy of ethical foods—particularly organic ones—and the contemporary neoliberal economy. Organic agriculture can be seen as an international counter-movement acting against many of the problems created by the industrial agri-food sector. A comparison of the movement in Europe allows to highlight its shared traits: a desire to defend food quality and personal health, local producers and nature, and a rejection of traditional forms of political activism to achieve these aims. Usually absent from such traits are wider issues of class and inequality. It is arguable, however, that class and inequality greatly affect organic agri-food systems, especially in our difficult economic times. A case in point of this situation is found in western Sicily and the city of Palermo. By looking at a variety of actors, from growers to retailers to consumers, the paper will therefore ask the following questions. Who will benefit from the economy these actors try to accomplish? Who is left out from the desired model? How are concerns about the 'local' fashioned vis-à-vis those about national and international economy? Which values are called upon and which are, instead, left unspoken? The paper argues for the need to specify more fully the characteristics of the desired paradigm shift that the organic movement is supposed to embody, and to address questions of class, social justice and neoliberal governmentality.

Paper short abstract:

The ethnography follows a group of Romanian small-scale producers and peasant activists attached to Slow Food and Via Campesina international movements, attempting to capture how they relate to the repertoires of morality proposed by the two global movements.

Paper long abstract:

The Romanian food landscape is still negotiating with its past identification as Europe's 'grain barn' and struggling with the socialist legacy of collectivization and food rationalization. İn the last few years, while trying to fit under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy and under neoliberal economıc models, some Romanian food stakeholders have been attempting to widen the range of legitimate models of production and consumption.

Transformations in the food market have seen a shift from the postsocialist consumption patterns to a re-centralisation of the figure of the peasant or the semi-subsistence farmer in the food chain as the embodiment of a set of values and morality. Delegitimized for the past decades, confronted for a long time with the stigma of precariousness and often positioned in the gray economy, the peasant was deemed an uncomfortable hindrance in Romania's path to modernisation and Europeanization. Representing over 90% of the total of farmholds in Romania, some of the subsistence and semi-subsistence farmers are currently finding their voice on the national food agenda by occupying a stable niche of local gourmet 'quality' foodstuffs that eliminates many of the sources of uncertainty in the foodchain. İ am analyzing how the involvement with Slow Food and Via Campesina of a small network of such farmers in Transylvania provides them with acces to global knowledge fluxes and to a repertoire of strategies to avoid the trappings of the economic crisis.

By refering to their story, I am discussing a possible route from victim to winner in the global capitalist model of economy.

Paper short abstract:

Two families' stories of food production from Soviet times to the present demonstrate how the articulation of the political economy, bureaucratic controls on production, and moral ideals of consumption result in different positioning of foods as ethical at various historical moments.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I examine one family's history of artisanal bread-baking in Latvia from Soviet times to the present, and a recent scandal surrounding the sale of seeds of tomato varieties not in the European Common Catalog. I demonstrate how the articulation of the political economy of food systems, bureaucratic controls on production, and the moral ideals of consumption result in a different positioning of foods as ethical at various historical moments. This shows that the confluence of anxiety, austerity, and morality is not particular to modern capitalism, though the sources of anxiety and the locations of austerity have shifted.

Under both systems, informally obtained food products bear the mark of authenticity, and bypassing the system becomes equated with an ethical stance. The Soviet planned economy mandated austerity at the level of raw materials that led to a scarcity of final products, yet innovative ways of producing and procuring them. I will explore how these historical precedents have shaped farmers and consumers' reactions to the most recent forms of anxiety, austerity, and bureaucracy in the current economic crisis. The current EU system, through quality standards and hygiene regulations in the processing phase, also results in a scarcity of legally produced home-made final products. In both periods, however, producers and consumers have cultivated and created new social networks to obtain necessary goods and inputs that challenge official marketing channels and their relations to structures of power.

Paper short abstract:

I propose a critical analysis of the role of the Slow Food movement as an 'ethical food' management agency in the contemporary Tuscany. I will focus on the practices and rhetoric that Slow Food produces from below, where the movement's philosophy encounters the local capital.

Paper long abstract:

I propose a critical analysis of the role of the Slow Food movement as an 'ethical food' management agency, based on the results of a broader research I conducted in Tuscany on the heritage process of traditional food. Slow Food creates strategies to protect local heritage as an alternative ethical paradigm to globalised consumption. The patrimonial goods relaunched by Slow Food stand for "certainty" because they are protected by a brand which guarantees place of origin and production techniques.

Typical products have become a metaphor for ethical consumption embodying immaterial attributes such as naturalness, historical authenticity, territory, social justice etc.

I will also discuss the practices and rhetoric that Slow Food produces from below, or in other words, where the movement's philosophy (or rhetoric) encounters local social, historic an economic capital.

From the research results it appears that ethical consumption meets individual rather than collective needs. In Tuscany, issues of social justice and relaunch of marginal productions seem to be overshadowed by the aesthetic value given to objects (and subjects) involved in this consumption.

The question that comes to mind is whether products invested with immaterial surplus, such as ethical values, represent a possible alternative to the global crisis. For now they remain "trapped" in a consumption of distinction and personal well-being which Slow Food, as agency, helps to produce.

Paper short abstract:

Biodynamic vintners in Burgundy, France and the US Pacific Northwest manifest science and magic, artisanal luxury production, and environmental ethics. Like other artisan organic products, biodynamic wine is priced higher than industrial competitors, while claiming a magical moral higher ground.

Paper long abstract:

Biodynamic viticulture involves planting and harvesting wine grapes by lunar cycles, and sometimes marketing wine by the lunar calendar as well. It uses soil amendments that resemble homeopathic medicines involving esoteric practices such as burying cow horns packed with manure. Developed by Waldorf School founder Rudolph Steiner, biodynamic agriculture has a growing constituency among both European winemakers and New World vintners, among them producers of pinot noir in both prestigious vineyards in Burgundy, France and the Willamette Valley of Oregon in the US Pacific Northwest. Aligned with the organic and “natural” wine movements, biodynamics stakes a claim to environmental ethics and terroir, or “taste of place,” as an agricultural practice that eschews industrial fertilizers and herbicides, and that prefers “native” yeasts to those produced commercially. At the same time, in both France and the US, these wines, positioned as high-quality local alternatives to lower priced, mass-produced wine, are frequently priced (well) above the discount range. This paper examines the discursive dynamics by which winemakers, tastemakers, and consumers navigate a magical moral high ground with respect to contradictory local-global and class relations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper concerns the discourse and practice around ethical foods by examining the debates of the establishment of an organic grocery-chain store in Detroit. It reflects on the meanings of ethical foods within the context of anxiety over quality food supply in a post-industrial city.

Paper long abstract:

In the fall of 2011, a national-chain supermarket WF famous for its high-quality and organic foods broke ground in a Detroit neighborhood to establish its first store in this post-industrial city known for its urban decay and class politics. In the past decade, Detroit has increasingly been described as a 'food desert' with no national-chain grocery stores within the city limit. Its citizens have long been relying on the small neighborhood stores for their daily groceries with few choices and uncompetitive prices. More recently, the growing concern and anxiety of poor-quality food supply, public health discourse, and the city's revitalization initiatives have given rise to a vibrant local food movement through the city's farmers' market. While access to fresh produce has improved thanks to these initiatives, Detroit citizens still consider themselves deprived of good quality food products for their daily consumption. The arrival of the national grocery chain store known not only for its high-quality foods but also for its higher price tags, therefore, has sparked lively debates and controversy around whether this supermarket can address the food anxiety of Detroit citizens, the majority of whom consider themselves lower (middle) class. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the discourse and practice around the idea of "ethical foods" which is a dominant ideology of this particular supermarket chain. Whose ethics is at stake here? Where do class politics and ethical concerns intersect? The paper reflects on how the establishment of this supermarket can meet the food needs and expectations of Detroit citizens who perceive themselves as living through a constant state of uncertainty.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the repercussions of China's 2008 melamine adulteration scandal to consider the possibilities and limitations for the transformation of conventional foods into ethical ones following a crisis.

Paper long abstract:

In the fall of 2008, as the global financial crisis crested, China faced yet another highly publicized food safety scandal with the revelation that the domestic dairy supply was contaminated with the industrial chemical, melamine. Local government and corporate actors' attempts to suppress information highlighted concerns about China's commitment to transparency and accountability norms and underscored growing consumer unease with the complex chains of food production and distribution systems and anxiety over the global governance of food and health risks. Although the melamine scandal was not an artifact of the global financial crisis as such, both crises raised questions about the role and limits of regulation and prompted public debate over the moral values underlying regulatory practices and even capitalism itself. This paper uses the aftermath of the scandal to examine how conventional foods, often presented as antithetical to traditional ethical foods such as fair trade and organic items, become ethical following a crisis. I examine a diverse set of actions and reforms undertaken in response to demands for greater transparency to consider the possibilities and limitations for this transformation.