Introduction between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexity in the Contemporary Food Sector

Abstract

The contributions fall into two main sections in the book. The first one deals with the theorising of complexity between the global and the local. Wilkinson provides a theoretical overview, which considers the historical polarisation of debates within agri-food and rural studies, especially those between actor–network approaches and political economy analyses. He proposes a new convergence based upon a re-consideration of conventions theory and the development of ‘net-chain’ concepts. Hatanaka, Bain and Busch take on one major development of complexity and conventions that is associated with the increasing use of standards to differentiate both agricultural products and processes. In particular, this is leading to the growth of Third-party certification (TPC) as a new feature of the global agri-food system and Wilkinson's ‘net-chain’ concept. What is developing is not simply new rounds of standardisation and differentiation, but rather more complex and multi-dimensional systems of differentiated standardisation, on the one hand, and standardised differentiation on the other. These are not so much opposing tendencies, but actually operating as aspects of the same phenomena in the new, more complex world of the ‘economy of qualities’ and quality conventions now being established in the global food sector.