Cultivating Compliance

Governance of North Indian Organic Basmati Smallholders in a Global Value Chain

Bibliographic Data

ID4139861
AuthorsSanjeev Arora (0000-0001-8836-6821, Eindhoven University of Technology, corresponding author), Saurabh Arora (Eindhoven University of Technology), Naomi Baan Hofman (Eindhoven University of Technology, corresponding author), Vinod Koshti (University of Delhi, corresponding author), Tommaso Ciarli (0000-0003-0362-8496, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SL, England, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume45
Issue8
Pages1912-1928
Publication date2013-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/a45421
OpenAlexW2146998728
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited54

Focusing on a global value chain (GVC) for organic basmati rice, we study how farmers' practices are governed through product and process standards, organic certification protocols, and contracts with buyer firms. We analyze how farmers' entry into the GVC reconfigures their agencements (defined as heterogeneous arrangements of human and nonhuman agencies which are associated with each other). These reconfigurations entail the severance of some associations among procedural and material elements of the agencements and the formation of new associations, in order to produce cultivation practices that are accurately described by the GVC's standards and protocols. Based on ethnography of two farmers in Uttarakhand, North India, we find that the same standards were enacted differently on the two farmers' fields, producing variable degrees of (selective) compliance with the 'official' GVC standards. We argue that the disjuncture between the 'official' scripts of the standards and actual cultivation practices must be nurtured to allow farmers' agencements to align their practices with local sociotechnical relations and farm ecology. Furthermore, we find that compliance and disjuncture were facilitated by many practices and associations that were officially ungoverned by the GVC

Business · Certification · Comparative advantage · Corporate governance · Economics · Global value chain · Industrial organization · International trade · Management · Sociotechnical system · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Organic Food and Agriculture

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