Local food beyond fixed scales and values: The scalar politics of Japan's jidori chicken mosaics

Abstract

Abstract Local food is often explained by drawing on fixed ideas of scale or value, but such fixed notions of local food inevitably oversimplify the diversity of situated local food mosaics. This paper develops the application of scalar politics to strengthen analysis of the situated initiatives, institutions, discourses, and practices that shape scalar impacts and aspects of local food. I develop this approach through a case study of jidori chicken, a prominent symbol of local food in Japan. Through archival research and semi-structured interviews with key actors, I analyze the emergence of jidori as a category of artisan chicken linked to notions of local food. The national government introduced a standard that set minimum levels for the commercial use of jidori and made jidori legible to industrial and corporate approaches. Even though I trace the material and discursive construction of jidori from a municipality in Akita prefecture to jidori's recognition in international haute cuisine, I argue that the mosaic of local food initiatives linked through jidori defies simple hierarchical relationships. This case study of jidori from a non-Western context helps to destabilize common assumptions of local food's scale and political orientation in the Anglophone literature. This article has two main contributions. First, the application of scalar politics to local food better recognizes the mosaic-like spatial entanglements of local food. Second, in moving beyond fixed notions of scale or values, this paper encourages a broader exploration of local food in non-Western contexts.