Worlds of wool: Recreating value off the sheep's back

Pawson, Eric; Perkins, Harvey C.

doi:10.1111/nzg.12032

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…An important premium market for the British wool industry is Japan, where there is a strong appreciation of the tradition, heritage and craft of British textiles and British fashion more broadly, being, for example, one of the major markets for hand‐woven Harris Tweed (The Scotsman ). This can be seen in contrast with the New Zealand wool industry, where value has been derived through the promotion of farm‐level traceability by companies such as Icebreaker (Pawson and Perkins ). By contrast, the USA is viewed as an emerging market for British wool, as it currently accounts for only 3% of UK wool exports.…”

Section: Tracing Newtown Woolmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Another core attribute of an assemblage for DeLanda is that the individual components can simultaneously carry out material and expressive roles integral to the functioning of that set of relations, bringing in a discursive dimension that extends the material focus of actor‐network theory. These concerns are evident within the work of Pawson and Perkins () on the shifting dynamics of the New Zealand wool industry. Although these authors do not explicitly referencing the work of DeLanda, they apply an assemblage reading to the myriad of organic and inorganic participants who are involved in various attempts to capture and add value through the creation of new wool products and brands.…”

Section: Doing Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

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Unravelling the Global Wool Assemblage: Researching Place and Production Networks in the Global Countryside

Jones¹,

Heley²,

Woods³

2018

Sociologia Ruralis

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This article applies an assemblage reading to the contemporary global woollen industry to demonstrate how assemblage thinking has value as a methodology for generating insights into the local impact of global economic restructuring; bridging concerns with the relationality of rural places and translocal production networks. Putting assemblage into research practice, we trace the interactions and interdependencies between human and non‐human, organic and inorganic, technical and natural components of the global wool assemblage from the entry point of Newtown in mid‐Wales. In so doing, we call attention to those critical moments in this schema that may be usefully exposed or explored via the concept of assemblage. Here we consider the agency of non‐human actors, as well as the biological, technological, regulatory and marketing regimes that seek to produce wool as a globally mobile commodity. Through their enrolment in these sets of relations, Welsh farmers are exposed to the effects of spatially dispersed and contingent dynamics. Using the example of wool we develop a broad argument for using a framework of assemblage alongside other critical theories as a means of grasping how rural societies, places and communities are negotiating change in the context of globalisation.

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Section: Tracing Newtown Woolmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Doing Assemblagementioning

confidence: 99%

Unravelling the Global Wool Assemblage: Researching Place and Production Networks in the Global Countryside

Jones¹,

Heley²,

Woods³

2018

Sociologia Ruralis

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“…The New Zealand Merino Company (NZM) has played a vital role in the establishment of these relationships. It has sought to move beyond a commodity model, by separating merino from the bulk wool clip and differentiating and naming it as a special and distinct fibre in its own right (Pawson and Perkins, ; Perkins and Pawson, ). This has been a key means towards the creation of enhanced value (Table ).…”

Section: Making Merinomentioning

confidence: 99%

New Zealand going global: The emerging relationships economy

Pawson

Perkins

2017

Asia Pacific Viewpoint

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The paper examines the value-generating strategies used in some of New Zealand's primary activities in a rapidly changing trading context in which the countries of East Asia increasingly figure. These strategies range from scaling up volume, with a consequent conspicuous impact on rural landscapes, to innovative valueenhancing relationships linking producers, processors and consumers in processes which value landscapes for the contribution they make to provenance stories. Our argument is that higher-value strategies are necessarily more intensely collaborative and involve a pursuit of engaged relationships, especially between onshore producers and manufacturers and consumers at a distance. We term this collaborative form of strategising as 'the relationships economy'. We illustrate our argument using two case studies, dairying and merino. While there are great differences in scale between them, and dairying focuses significantly on volume-generating capacity, there are players in dairying who are adopting higher-value relationships-based approaches similar to those developed in the merino industry. The common thread connecting the case studies is that of intentional enactment, which echoes earlier periods in New Zealand's trading history when considerable work was undertaken by industry participants to create new markets for primary products.

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“…The SI works through: new initiatives in red meat breeding and export to the UK (Henry and Roche, ); more nuanced attempts at wool marketing, drawing on place‐ and producer‐specific imagery and narrative in an attempt to create an aura of authenticity around local wool production (Pawson and Perkins, ); innovative tourism strategies in Central Otago (Rosin et al ., ); the governance of New Zealand Farmers' Markets (Joseph et al ., ); and wine marketing (Le Heron et al ., ). There is insufficient space here to provide a comprehensive review of each of the SI papers so some general comments on the SI will have to suffice.…”

Section: Farming and Regional Development In An Era Of Multifunctionamentioning

confidence: 99%

Australasian Rural Geographies: At the Core, in the Antipodes?

Argent

2015

Geographical Research

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This paper reviews ‘Antipodean’ rural geography research published over the period 2012–2014 inclusive. A broad, inclusive stance was adopted to what should be regarded as Antipodean rural geography. Key publication outlets were identified and scanned for what were deemed to be relevant paper titles and abstracts, then the institutional and disciplinary affiliations of authors, bearing in mind a general concern for ‘rural issues’. The review concentrates on the prominent themes of the recent mining boom and its externalities, new perspectives on agrarian and regional development, and population issues. Australasian rural geographers have not only become adept at ‘writing back’ to the centre but have played leading roles in the intellectual development of the sub‐discipline and cognate areas (e.g. rural sociology). Indeed, at least in the short period covered by this review and in the admittedly selective scope of that survey, Australian and New Zealand rural geographers have been at the forefront in advancing the sub‐discipline internationally. In doing so, they have not only placed the discussion of Australasian rural issues within a global context but have further refined the philosophical and conceptual approaches and tools used. In important respects, then, Australasian rural geographers are very much at the core of the international project of contemporary rural geography. Moreover, they have made – and continue to make – important contributions to the broader discipline of human geography.

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Worlds of wool: Recreating value off the sheep's back

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Unravelling the Global Wool Assemblage: Researching Place and Production Networks in the Global Countryside

Unravelling the Global Wool Assemblage: Researching Place and Production Networks in the Global Countryside

New Zealand going global: The emerging relationships economy

Australasian Rural Geographies: At the Core, in the Antipodes?

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