Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the tension between mechanisation and manual labour in "nature-adjacent" foods in Mexican and French supply chains. Building on a literature of value and valuation, it explores imaginaries of “naturalness” and the epistemological and socio-technical systems that underlie them.

Paper long abstract:

“We’re reclaiming natural tortillas,” shared the mother of a Mexican peasant family, who had begun commercialising handmade tortillas in a city where, for three decades, automated machines had dominated. Conversely, in rural France, a neighbourhood baker has installed a “TradiLoaf” machine, autonomously crafting “traditional” baguettes. Operable without technical baking expertise, the salespeople manage it throughout the day, while the bakers rest from their early-morning shifts.

This paper explores the tension between mechanisation and manual labour in “nature-adjacent” foods, based on an ethnographic comparison of the supply chains of bread in Ardèche and tortillas in Chiapas. Drawing on the French concept of filière (supply chain), I question not only consumer imaginaries of “naturalness,” but also how food makers interpret and integrate these notions into their practices. Building on a literature of value and valuation (Appadurai, Graeber, Boltanski, Esquerre), the paper underscores how diverse supply chain actors align their actions with multiple conceptions of quality, reflecting not only distinct socio-technical approaches but also fundamentally different conceptions of "nature" and materiality.

Handmade tortilla makers are valued for distancing themselves from the mechanisation of neoliberal Mexican technological politics, embodying a "return" to natural and domestic imaginaries. But this return, and the perceived entrepreneurial benefits of entering the capitalist labour market, often coincide with increased exploitation of care work. In France, it fuels the emergence of paradoxical systems of “automated tradition,” applying a uniformising logic to more sensorial know-how. Ultimately, what are the tensions that emerge from a discursive attachment of “naturalness” to manual labour?