Differentiating Organics: Performing Multiple Objects to Organize Singular Markets for Organic Tea and Biscuits in the UK - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 62

a point of comparison (Callon et al. 2002 ). For example, organic tea must be similar
enough to the quality profile of conventional tea in order to convince consumers
that the organic product is just as good as the conventional product, while providing
additional environmental benefits (some also claim health benefits) and thus singular
and desirable. However, with the case of the use of standards in this process we see
another layer of singularization occurring through the process of standardized differ-
entiation (Hatanaka et al. 2006 ). Here, singular products have been systematically
differentiated through the process of standardization of practices and qualities. In
other words, the singularity is based on an underlying sameness of standardized
organic practice in order to differentiate itself from the similarities shared with
conventional practice. This notion of singularization is particularly important when
we consider the ontological connotations of performativity analysis. How does a
single notion (i.e., organic) singularize products if its performance in practice is
multiple?
Understanding the role that standards play in this process has emerged recently
as an object of study. For example, standards have been explained as market devices
that perform particular market arrangements (Busch 2007 ;Kamp 2010 ; Loconto and
Busch 2010 ; Konefal and Hatanaka 2011 ). However, it is not the standard itself that
creates the market. It is the mobilization of the standard as a socio-technical device
to 'assemble' different actors in a market network. Organic is a case in point. The EU
regulation did not create a market for organic. Rather, it was the network of actors -
including farmers, researchers, activists, journalists, consumers and policy-makers -
that mobilized a concept of organic (including its techno-scientific artifacts) and a
market for organic products. The EU regulation is the outcome of this mobilization,
yet now stands as a stabilized, singular, enactment of organic for the EU market.
However, if we take the concept of performativity seriously, we see that there are
multiple enactments of organic farming that are constantly circulating in practice.
This paper attempts to capture some of these.

4.3 Methods

To examine how enactments of organic farming can differ in practice, we compare
two sets of farming practices that are in various ways opposites. On the one hand we
explore how tea is grown as a crop from perennial plants by Sub-Saharan African
producers for the specific purpose of export to European markets; on the other
we describe the cropping practices of cereal produced from annual plants by UK
farmers for the home market. As we will show, these different settings allow us to
explore differentiations in certification regimes as well as cropping practices. Using
a case study methodology of organic practices, we have relied upon four quali-
tative data collection methods: (1) semi-structured interviews, (2) semi-structured
focus groups, (3) field observations and (4) document content analysis (e.g.,
standards, websites, published material, and databases). Data collection by the
authors occurred in Tanzania, Kenya, Germany and the UK between June 2008 and