Disciplining Nature: The Homogenising and Constraining Forces of Anti-Markets on the Food System

Abstract

To understand the changing patterns within agriculture, it is important to look not only at social relations and organisational configurations. Also salient to such an analysis is an examination of how those formations give shape to nonhumans. Much attention has been placed recently on the political economy of agriculture when speaking of these emergent patterns. Yet in doing this, the natural environment is all too often relegated to the backdrop; where the agroeconomy is viewed as something that manoeuvres within the environment but never through it. The conceptual groundwork for this paper draws from two often unconnected scholars: Michel Foucault and Fernand Braudel. In Foucault, we find a framework, with a little conceptual development, through which to talk about how the economy (of both discipline and capital) enters into nature. Specifically, the argument is made that through the embodiment of discipline, nature too becomes disciplined. Yet in Foucault we find a discursive conception of socio-economic history; where capitalism is discussed, but always as an effect of the discursive structures of power/knowledge. Enter the work of Braudel, to provide us with a materialist counterweight to Foucaultʼs theorising. In Braudel, we find a detailed analysis on the emergence of capitalism, out of which then comes his distinction between markets and anti-markets. In short, when both accounts of history are overlaid, interesting connections between the emergence of Braudelian anti-markets and Foucaultian discipline are revealed. Two brief case studies are then examined to add further depth to the discussion: the first focusing on corn; the second centring on the cow. The paper then concludes speaking on the issue of resistance.

Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture?

“…In doing this, it vividly highlights how structures of power can shape social relationswhich, in this case, centered on the collusion between industrial agriculture and political actors. Thus, when speaking of agriculture as a discursive, socially contested system, we must also keep in mind that it is a system imbued with unequal power relations, involving such influential actors as the state (e.g., government subsidies), credit/lending agencies (e.g., banks), corporations, and the like (Carolan 2005a). All these actors have played important roles in making sustainable agriculture what it is (and is not) today.…”

Saving Seeds, Saving Culture: A Case Study of a Heritage Seed Bank

“…Compared with the reductionist epistemology of, say, biotechnology, which has been said to reduce seeds to genes (Carolan 2005c) and corn to genes and bags of nitrogen (Kloppenburg and Burrows 1996), SSE promotes a conception of nature that centers on interconnections between parts rather than the parts themselves. This point can be gleaned, for example, from the slogan and logo of SSE: ''Seed Savers Exchange-Passing on our Vegetable Heritage.''…”

Producing Compliant Polluters: Seed Companies and Nitrogen Fertilizer Application in U.S. Corn Agriculture

“…Carolan () extends Foucault's notion of disciplinary power in two key ways. First, while Foucault often discusses disciplinary power as a network of power, Carolan, like other scholars (see Schriltz ), argues that Foucault's work either explicitly or implicitly points to capitalists and capitalist sectors as capable of directing disciplinary mechanisms.…”

“…Using disciplinary mechanisms, monopolistic capitalist enterprises seek to further expand their production and profit‐making capacities by ever greater entrenchment into elements of social‐economic life (i.e., antimarket logic demands that capitalist firms seek to become more monopolistic). Carolan () focuses on the disciplining of antimarkets in the global food system.…”