The Rise of the Organic Foods Movement as a Transnational Phenomenon - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 742

several organic foods movements, and organic foods is incorporated into the agenda of
a variety of much broader movements that have ultimate goals and ambitions that go far
beyond questions of how food is produced.
Second, these “organic foods” movements do not conform to common understand-
ings of transnational social movements, which according to Tarrow's deinition are
distinguished, in part, by their engagement in “sustained contentious interaction with
powerholders in at least one state other than their own, or against an international insti-
tution,oramultinationaleconomicactor”(2001,p. 11).Suchcontentionhardlycharac-
terizesthebehaviorofmostorganicfarmersorconsumersoforganicfoods,whoarenot
necessarily engaged in contentious politics even with regards to powerholders in their
ownstate(Tovey1997,2002).Anexceptiontotherulemightbefoundinasocialmove-
ment that has an affinity with the organic movement, namely the anti-GMO (geneti-
callymodiiedorganism)movement—butheretherallyingcryisfor“GMO-free”(or
GM-free) rather than for “organic” foods. Although the latter is by deinitional iat
GMO-free, so is much “conventionally” produced food as well. The organic foods move-
ment was but one of many social movements that joined in the surprisingly success-
ful fight against biotech, in which the repertoire of contention included tactics such as
“bio-sabotage”(Schurman2004;SchurmanandMunro2009).
At the associational level, the organic movement is engaged in intensive interaction
with powerholders in governments, international institutions, and multinational cor-
porations,butthisinteractionishighlyroutinized.heriseoftheorganicfoodsmove-
mentasatransnationalphenomenonhastakentheprimaryformofinstitutionalization
as an international NGO that is concerned with “enacting, codifying, modifying, and
propagatingworld-culturalstructuresandprinciples”(Boliandhomas1999,p. 19).
What began as local or, at most, national organic foods movements have also nur-
tured the growth of what we might call a transnational “epistemic community” that,
thankstospecializedscientiicknowledgeandexpertise,isinapowerfulpositionto
inluencepolicydecisionsrelatingtotheorganicield(Adler1992;Haas1992).
Acentralconlictwithintheorganicmovementistobefoundintheperceivedten-
sion between the “alternative” visions of its pioneers and the extensive incorporation of
organicfoodsintothe“conventional”industrializedandglobalizedmarketeconomy—
and its institutionalization in the attendant regulatory frameworks—that has taken
placeinthecourseofthepastthreedecades(Guthman2004;Buck,Getz,andGuthman
1997;Noe2006).Farmerswhoconvertfromconventionaltoorganicagriculturetoday
are not necessarily part of any “movement” at all, if this is understood to involve an ideo-
logical commitment to a more or less clearly defined set of “organic” values (Sligh and
Cierpka2007),ratherthantotherationalexploitationofproitopportunitiesinaniche
market, the attractiveness of which is, in part, a function of government subsidies that
have created organic “rent havens.” At the other end of the commodity chain, consum-
ers of organic foods do not necessarily self-identify as members of any organic move-
ment. This is particularly true of all those who consume organic foods as a consequence
of public procurement policies that ensure that organic products account for a rapidly
growing share of the food served in kindergartens, schools, hospitals, and other public