Performative Regional (dis)Integration: Transnational Markets, Mobile Commodities, and Bordered North–South Differences

Abstract

Confronted with an imperfect reality, proponents of free trade demand the erasure and dismantling of all obstacles to the free movement of goods, people, and financial capital. The utopian aim is a perfect global market, a homogenous economic space without borders and frictions. In order to reach this ideal state it is necessary to fix market imperfections and do away with trade distortions, aligning the existing real economic world to the laws and norms of the free-trade model. Free traders therefore advance a radical, but consistent position. For them the focus is solely on the essentials: the free movement of goods with as little interference as possible from noneconomic actors.For a long time now critics have commentated on the seemingly unrealistic character of this reasoning. In the real world, it is argued, demands for the unregulated movement of goods, labor, or capital are na|« ve and betray a complete misunderstanding of how the market really works. In a stylized way, there are two varieties of this critique. Socioeconomists point out that markets cannot be separated from their social and institutional context, arguing that the embeddedness of economic processes brings about variation. Political economists dispute the vision of the free-trade argument, challenging the utopian dream of the benevolent effect of free markets by pointing to the destructive nature of the (neo)liberal ideology [see Berndt and Boeckler (2009) for a discussion of different heterodox approaches to markets].At the heart of these critical interventions is the relationship between abstract free-trade/free-market discourse and concrete economic integration realities. We acknowledge this critique, but remain unconvinced of the underlying dichotomy between an economic model core and social context, or uneven economic realities with open borders for capital and goods and closed ones for labor, respectively. It is ironic that both free-market zealots and their heterodox critics draw a sharp line Approaching the contingency of borders from a perspective informed by the performativity approach to markets, this paper starts from the assumption that this paradox is particularly salient in the context of commodity chains which connect the Global South with the Global North. Taking the example of one single agrocommodity, the tomato, and two border regions (Morocco^EU and Mexico^USA), we follow the links and heterogeneous associations which stretch from the border to the fields, supermarket shelves, and standardization agencies to migrant labor, quality-control apparatuses, and so forth. By reading commodity chains from their literal limits, that is, from the border and from the margins, we focus on an element of this global assemblage which is normally taken for granted and excluded from academic and public discourse.

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

“…First, we are more alert to differences between individual farmers' experiences than the GVC studies (e.g. Ouma et al, 2011;Berndt and Boeckler, 2011). Second, in our work the source of these differences do not primarily lie in the flexibility of organic standards (van der Kamp, 2011), but also in the different types of surveillance the farmers experienced, the nature of their inclusive exclusions and the different roles played by (non-)human actors in their agencements.…”

“…Producers' entry into global commodity/value chains is argued to effect an 'ontological transformation' of existing institutional settings, socio-technical relations, production practices and natural orders (Ouma et al, 2011;Berndt and Boeckler, 2011;Bain and Hatanaka, 2010).…”

“…Until recently however, 'governance in practice' was rarely studied in the GVC literature, obscuring the socio-technical practices through which standards, certification protocols and contracts are enacted in specific sociotechnical settings. Recent work on GVC governance and on agro-food standards more generally has shown how standardization produces ontological transformations through a re-arrangement of existing socio-technical relations (Ouma et al, 2011;Berndt and Boeckler, 2011;Konefal and Hatanaka, 2011;van der Kamp, 2011). The present article contributes to this literature in three ways.…”

Framing, overflowing, and fuzzy logic in educational selection: Zurich as a case study

“…Whereas Law emphasizes this notion of playfulness and the instability of assemblages, Deleuzian "socio-technical agencements" show two other points: first, an "arrangement of material, technical, logistical, legal, procedural, etc. elements and human beings; and second, this arrangement, this hybrid collective shapes agency, a capacity to act which may be individualized, but is more often distributed amongst various agents" (Berndt andBoeckler, 2011:1060, emphasis in original). In Luca's case, agency was distributed amongst teachers from primary school and grammar school, his own performance at school, test papers and evaluation sheets from school, the primary school headmaster backing the teacher's decision, the ZAP regulations and test, and his parents' support or insistence on his taking the ZAP test.…”

“…take place more or less inde-pendently of their surrounding context. (Callon, 1998:249) The process of framing implies severing all sorts of connections (see Berndt andBoeckler, 2011:1060). However, Callon observes that framing is not fully detached from its surrounding context, since actors bring with them "cognitive resources as well as forms of behaviour and strategies which have been shaped and structured by previous experiences" (Callon, 1998:249).…”