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JUST VALUES OR JUST VALUE?
REMAKING THE LOCAL IN AGRO-
FOOD STUDIES
E. Melanie DuPuis
ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the politics the current
discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories
of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up
in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on
social justice. The example for California’s localized governance of pes-
ticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social
justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where
a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of
rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization.
Examining a Marsden et al.’s case study of one of these localization
projects in the UK the authors argue that this strategy does not neces-
sarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and
EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in
neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the
discourse of ‘‘value’’ in the EU or ‘‘values’’ in the US. Rather than re-
jecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more
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Between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexity in the Contemporary
Agri-Food Sector
Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 12, 249–277
Copyright r2006 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1057-1922/doi:10.1016/S1057-1922(06)12010-7
249
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‘‘reflexive’’ localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while con-
sciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.
Why is localism ‘‘good’’? Why has ‘‘the local’’ become a key tool in the fight
against global economic injustices? Why, amidst a deluge of anti-global-
ization messages on bumper stickers, are we enjoined to ‘‘act locally’’? Why
does current policy guidance proclaim ‘‘local governance’’ as the solution to
our current ills? In other words, is ‘‘the local’’ the foundation for salvation
from the current pernicious impacts of the now globally organized capitalist
system: mega-sized shopping chains and the ‘Walmart effect’,
McDonaldization of lifestyles, loss of civil society, ineffective central bu-
reaucracies, economic disarray, individual and group disempowerment?
The idea that localization movements will overcome, or at least amelio-
rate, these perceived ills is particularly evident in both the food social
movement discourse in the US and in rural development discourse in the
EU. In a previous work (DuPuis & Goodman, 2005), we described how the
ontology of localist social movements fails to deal with inequalities in local
politics and power. In this chapter, we will begin by looking more closely at
the ways in which localism can and does lead to unequal and unjust out-
comes. To do this, we will draw upon two major frameworks: theories of
justice and theories of neoliberalism. This examination will show that US
localist discourse is wrapped up in a problematic communitarian discourse
of social justice, which equates justice with action commensurate with a
community’s ‘‘just values.’’ Using the example of California’s local govern-
ance of pesticide drift, we will show that moving an issue to the local level
can serve to make social justice problems invisible and thus disempower
marginalized people. In other words, empowering the local may simply ex-
acerbate local inequalities.
EU discourse, for its part, emphasizes local capture of rents in the value
chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. In this case, rural
development policy seeks to empower local food producers in order to
achieve ‘‘just value’’, while relying on market forces to achieve greater
equality. Drawing on a case study by Marsden et al., of a local beef co-
operative in the UK, we will show that this strategy does not necessarily lead
to more equitable forms of rural development.
Despite their differences in terms of both explanation and implementa-
tion, both the US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same
coin. In these imaginaries, localized processes and institutional mechanisms
E. MELANIE DuPUIS250
of food provision signify ‘resistance’, which is then equated with social
justice or more equitable participation in global value chains. This confla-
tion of territoriality with progressive social organization has been roundly
condemned in the agro-food literature, particularly in critical deconstruc-
tions of ‘defensive localism’ (see, for example, Hinrichs, 2000, 2003). QA :1Build-
ing on this critique, we go on to suggest that the relocalization of food
systems is compatible with, and may reinforce, ideologies of neoliberal po-
litical economy and governmentality. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical
form, they both deny the politics behind either ‘‘value’’ or ‘‘values.’’
We therefore join a number of other observers who have recently noted
that localization as a social movement does not necessarily make food sys-
tems more just and, in fact, can perpetuate and exacerbate local inequalities.
They have acknowledged with David Harvey (1996) that the local is not an
innocent term, observing that it can provide the ideological foundations for
reactionary politics and nativist sentiment (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman,
& Warner, 2003; Hinrichs, 2003; Hassanein, 2003; see also Swyngedouw,
1997). On the other hand, we are also sympathetic to a number of US and
European scholars who have made strong, empirically based arguments on
behalf of localism as a tool for resistance to the global food system (Hol-
loway & Kneafsey, 2004; Hassanein, 2003; Hendricksen, 2002; DeLind,
2002; Lyson, 2005; Murdoch & Miele, 2002; Kloppenburg, Hendrickson, &
Stevenson, 1996), showing that relocalization has in some instances led to
better, more equitable food systems. In this vision, grassroots local food
democratic processes create community values which resist the universal
instrumentalist juggernaut of globalization and the accompanying processes
of agricultural modernization (Hendrickson & Heffernan, 2003; Hassanein,
2003; Lyson, 2005; Marsden & Smith, 2005).
Our purpose, therefore, is not to ‘‘bash away’’ at localism but to more
thoroughly understand localism’s ambivalences and ambiguities in relation
to justice and equality and remake a local politics that takes these into
account. In the second part of the paper, therefore, we will attempt to
‘‘redeem’’ the local by thinking through what a just localism might look like.
The first step is to recognize the political in the local. An examination that
brings politics back in shows that localism is a powerful but politically
contradictory strategic tool. By working in full recognition of the contra-
dictions of the local, a ‘‘reflexive localism’’ can lead to more effective and
just social action and more effective rural development.
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Just Values or Just Value? 251
THE US: LOCAL AS JUST VALUES?
Popular US rhetoric against globalization is filled with calls for a return to
the local. David Korten, in the extremely popular book, ‘‘When Corpora-
tions Rule the World’’ details the rise of global business hegemony and then
presents the following solution:
Initiatives throughout America are seeking to counter the trend toward corporate con-
trol and ownership. Some 3,000 community development corporations across the coun-
try support local business development. More than a thousand family farms in the U.S.
and Canada have contracts with local residents to provide fresh produce y. These and
countless related initiatives are the proactive side of the living democracy movement,
demonstrating the possibilities of local democratic control within a framework of com-
mitment to creating healthy, ecologically sound communities that work for all (Korten,
2001, p. 319).
Other popular authors on the US progressive Left, such as Francis Moore
and Anna Lappe’s (2003) Hope’s Edge, WorldWatch’s Brian Halweil’s
(2004) Eat Here and Gary Nabhan’s (2002) Coming Home to Eat call for the
rebuilding of ‘‘foodsheds’’ (see Kloppenberg, 1996) and the making of local
‘‘food democracy’’ (see Hassanein, 2003). Joining them are the ‘‘New
Agrarians’’ who testify that food relocalization, ‘‘offers useful guiding im-
ages of humans living and working on land in ways that can last. In related
reform movements, it can supply ideas to help rebuild communities and
foster greater virtue’’ (Freyfogle, p. xviii). QA :2From this viewpoint, a local ag-
riculture is a sustainable and just agriculture – just societies and healthy
ecologies are inextricably linked.
What, then, do we make of the extremely detailed and convincing de-
scriptions by historians such as Lizbeth Cohen and Mike Davis, of how
Americans have historically used localism as a tool for exclusion, not com-
munity, for greed, not virtue? Cohen’s history of US consumerism (Cohen,
2003) shows how localism has been put to work in the service of inegal-
itarian local agendas in many different arenas, particularly housing, finance,
and schooling. ‘‘Localism has a long history in the United States,’’ she states
(p. 228), but argues that only after World War II did localism become the
main tool for the creation of ‘‘stratified communities with mass suburban-
ization’’ (p. 230). Cohen’s study of local ‘‘home rule’’ policies focuses spe-
cifically on the State of New Jersey, but her words echo those of Carey
McWilliams (1935), Don Mitchell (1996), Mike Davis (1992) and other
California Studies scholars who have shown that maintaining local control
over land use planning, housing, and agricultural practices has enabled large
scale farmers and white middleclass suburbanites to monopolize control
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E. MELANIE DuPUIS252
over the State’s natural resources. Both Cohen and Davis point to the in-
equities involved in the localist practice of ‘‘upzoning’’: ‘‘a strategy of re-
quiring substantial plots for home construction to preserve high property
values but also to cap the municipality’s population and thereby control the
cost and demand for social services’’ (Cohen, 2004, p. 231). In New Jersey,
the result was the creation of ‘‘two societies: a sparser, wealthier and better
services New Jersey, on the one hand, and a denser, poorer and overbur-
dened New Jersey on the other’’ (p. 231). Those who benefited from these
distinctions justified and naturalized them through a discourse of ‘‘home
rule’’ local control and the universalization of Northern European notions
of moral living often presented as fostering greater community solidarity
and public (particularly children’s) health (Shah, 2001; McClintock, 1995).
Harrison (2004) shows that the inequalities of localism hit close to home
in the case of California agriculture, where a highly devolved pesticide reg-
ulatory structure exacerbates the problem of human exposure to pesticides
while maintaining growers’ power to pollute in counties dominated by ag-
ricultural production. Harrison examines the problem of pesticide drift – the
off-site airborne movement of pesticides away from their intended target –
and the accompanying debates about how well regulatory agencies protect
the public from the associated acute and chronic health effects of exposure
to drift. Through analysis of regulatory structure, discursive framings and
local politics, Harrison’s study explains the contradiction between the min-
imal regulatory response to the issue and activists’ allegations that pesticide
drift is a daily, systemic problem affecting the long-term health of thousands
of Californians on a daily basis.
California’s historically devolved set of political institutions dates from
turn of the century Progressive Era ‘‘direct democracy’’ reforms. These re-
forms worked against centralized agencies and legislative processes and fa-
vored decision making through local county agricultural boards as well as
commodity commissions that are usually territorialized to particular pro-
duction areas and water commissions covering single watersheds. As a re-
sult, water, land use and agricultural management have been in local hands
for over a century (Starr, 1986; Pincetl, 1999). Likewise, California’s pes-
ticide regulatory system is a highly devolved network in which a tremendous
amount of responsibility is granted to county agriculture commissioners.
The San Joaquin Valley, at the southern end of the Central Valley, has
long epitomized California’s industrialized form of agricultural production.
The devolved, local regime of control enables powerful agricultural groups
in the State to continue to pollute resources and to play down the worker
and community health effects of pesticide use, thereby also reinforcing the
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Just Values or Just Value? 253
industrial agriculture regime. It is the township and county level control of
agricultural resources and regulations that allows California’s growers to
keep pollution issues ‘‘in house’’, hidden from public view, and disconnected
from similar problems in other counties. This is particularly the case in
counties dominated by agricultural production with large populations of
politically disenfranchised farmworker communities.
Agriculture continues to be an economic entry point for new, undocu-
mented immigrants, and researchers estimate that 45–52% of California’s
800,000 farm laborers lack documentation (CIRS, 2001). In general, being
‘‘illegal’’ means that individuals are rarely likely to assert their rights or seek
damages in terms of fair wages, benefits, working conditions, on-the-job
injuries or exposures to pesticides. Consequently, the local politics that drive
pesticide regulation and other social services disproportionately and noto-
riously reflect the economic interests of the dominant agricultural elites,
while sidelining and rendering invisible the concerns of the poor, non-cit-
izen, marginalized farmworker communities. In short, ‘local’ politics effec-
tively represent the interests of the ‘productionist local’ but not the
‘reproductive local’ of farmworker communities. Lake and Disch (1992)
have similarly noted ways in which industry and regulatory interests con-
verge, particularly when regulatory scalar ‘fixes’ particularize pollution de-
bates and thus serve the interests of the regulated.
Regulatory protection of growers’ interests has deep historical roots. Al-
though the state’s devolved pesticide regulatory structure prioritizes ‘local’
needs, these have historically been defined solely in terms of crop protection.
Researchers have shown that local pesticide regulatory action has histor-
ically been motivated to protect farmers’ economic interests, to the detri-
ment of ecological or public health concerns (Baker, 1988; Nash, 2004).
Furthermore, in her analysis of regulatory discourse, Harrison shows that
the ways in which regulators frame the issue of pesticide drift justifies this
devolved regulatory system and obscures the full extent of the problem.
Pesticide regulators and agricultural industry representatives frame pesticide
drift as a series of localized, isolated ‘accidents’ occurring within an oth-
erwise protective system, thereby maintaining the local governance of pes-
ticide regulations and justifying minimal regulatory response to this problem
(Harrison, 2004).
The consequences of such discursive exclusions are physical and signif-
icant: by privileging the rights of growers as producers, the framing of drift
as ‘accident’ justifies regulatory agencies’ failure to take meaningful action
on an egregious public health problem. In this way, farmworker concerns
over worker safety, pesticides and housing never scale up to become a
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E. MELANIE DuPUIS254
statewide concern. Localism thereby maintains the invisibility of farmwork-
ers’ concerns – an invisibility which is a direct result of the historical race-
based and locally implemented economic exploitation of farm labor in Cal-
ifornia (McWilliams, 1935; Mitchell, 1996). On the other hand, localism
does have the power to give communities with more prosperous and po-
litically powerful residents the ability to maintain stronger control over local
agricultural resource use.
These exclusionary and disempowering forms of localism are clearly
counter to the stated ‘‘food security’’ goals of local food movements which
are explicitly concerned with the equitable distribution of healthy, nutritious
food. Yet, by unreflexively accepting localism as the main tool of anti-global
resistance, local food activists may be playing into the hands of interests
with less egalitarian goals. As a consequence, the social justice consequences
of local food movements may be unconscious and implicit, involving what
these movements fail to do as in what they do. For example, a recent study
of 37 local food organizations by Patricia Allen and colleagues demonstrates
this lack of reflexivity toward social justice issues. Survey responses showed
that farmworkers have disappeared ‘‘from the framing of social justice in
food’’ (Allen et al., 2003, p. 73). In the entrepreneurial, individualistic po-
litical culture of neoliberalism, changing the food system for these organ-
izations ‘‘means increasing the diversity of alternative markets, such that
consumers have more choice, rather than making deep structural changes
that could reconfigure who gets to make what kinds of food choices’’ (Ibid.,
p. 72). Another study of community food organizations (Slocum, forth-
coming) illustrates how the whiteness of this movement leads to inevitable
inequalities: ‘‘Community food work promises to build a more just food
system, but it fails to act on the complicity of white middle class privilege
with institutionalized racism extant in the food system and the community
food alliance.’’
In other words, despite the fact that localism has becoming a darling of
the US progressive Left, the movement itself is not necessarily progressive.
Localism is a major tenet of neoconservative political movements as well. In
many cases, localism enables politics to fall into the hands of neoliberal,
faith-based social service groups, which hold a strongly conservative
agenda. For example, according to the current US Department of Educa-
tion website, the current neoconservative administration’s ‘‘No Child Left
Behind’’ Act, ‘‘gives communities and parents increased local control and
more opportunities for faith-based and community organizations to aid in
improving student academic achievement’’ (http://www.ed.gov/nclb/free-
dom/faith/faith.html).
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Just Values or Just Value? 255
One way to measure the extent to which localist food organizations are
progressive or conservative, albeit by proxy, is by examining the presence of
food policy councils at the state level in states that voted Democrat or
Republican in the last presidential election (the ‘‘Red State, Blue State’’ list).
The Drake Agricultural Law Center website describes food policy councils
as explicitly localizing institutions that ‘‘convene citizens and government
officials for the purpose of providing a comprehensive examination of a
state or local food system. This unique, non-partisan form of civic engage-
ment brings together a diverse array of food system stakeholders to develop
food and agriculture policy recommendations’’ (http://www.statefoodpoli-
cy.org/). The Drake website heralds these new organizations as ‘‘playing a
role in building a better food system – strengthening food democracy.’’ The
concept of ‘‘food democracy’’ – greater empowerment of all in creating a
better food system – is a concept generally found in more progressive food
system reform discourse (see, for example, Hassanein, 2003). Yet, as Table 1
shows, there are as many food policy councils in conservative ‘‘Red’’ states
as in progressive ‘‘Blue’’ states. In other words, food policy councils are not
necessarily associated with progressive food democracy movements, in part
because localization is a concept that is appealing to both sides of the po-
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Table 1. Location of U.S. State Food Policy Councils by State Political
Emphasis.
Food Policy Council State Support in 2004 Election
Arizona Red
Connecticut Blue
Illinois Blue
Iowa Red
Kansas Red
Massachusetts Blue
Minnesota Blue
New Mexico Red
North Carolina Red
North Dakota Red
Oklahoma Red
Oregon Blue
Utah Red
Red ¼Republican/Conservative, Blue ¼Democrat/Progressive.
E. MELANIE DuPUIS256
litical spectrum in the US. As we will show in the next section, this is a
feature it shares with European localist food politics.
Of course, it is just such alliances – between groups with different interests
but some overlapping agendas – that makes politics work, especially in the
US where people must work out political differences within a two-party
system. The success of the food localization movement – community food
organizations and food policy councils – are an example of what de To-
cqueville noticed in the America of the 1830s, about how the US system
requires people with different agendas to work together in order to further
their agendas. However, these alliances become problematic when people do
not go into them with their ‘‘eyes open’’ – when they assume that everyone
in the organization shares the same idea of ‘‘the local.’’ The ambiguous
history of American Agrarianism does not help, with its ontology of rurality
that sees the city as working along Tonnies’ ‘‘gesellshaft’’ lines and the rural
areas as functioning along more trust-based ‘‘gemeinshaft’’ lines (Goodman
& DuPuis, 2002). Unfortunately, in the progressive/left version of agrar-
ianism, the city becomes emblematic of a ‘‘gesellshaft’’ of industrial cap-
italism, while a conservative agrarianism sees the city as emblematic of a
degenerate, criminal modernity. The idea of the local as drawing upon
community-based, trusting ‘‘hometownedness’’ – a re-assertion of the rural
pastoral – can represent either democratic yeomanry or economic and/or
racialized exclusion (see Garcia, 2001; Cloke & Little, 1997). Yet, because
the agrarian framework presents the rural pastoral as the source of com-
munity, it assumes that a politics that links to rurality must be intrinsically
just.
We have also argued previously that the split between production (the
country) and consumption (the city) in food studies (Goodman & DuPuis,
2002) has kept the urban influence on food politics largely unexamined.
While this lacuna may have been of less significance in earlier studies of
rurality, it becomes particularly problematic in the study of the re-locali-
zation of food systems, which are characterized by relationships both within
and between the urban and the rural. For example, the local politics of
farmers markets are as heavily influenced by urban interests as they are by
rural interests, a point made clearly by New Yorker journalist John McPhee
in his book, Giving Good Weight.
Ever since the eaters moved out of the countryside, food politics –
whether the ‘‘urban-rural food alliances’’ of the 1970s and 1980s (McLeod,
1976; Belasco, 1993) or today’s ‘‘food policy councils’’ – have been based in
urban social movements. Nearly all sub-state local food policy councils –
The Kansas City Food Circle, the Toronto Food Policy Council, etc – are
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Just Values or Just Value? 257
named after the city that contains the consumers, not the region that con-
tains the producers. Again, this suggests that we need to draw on urban
political sociology if we are to understand local food systems. Yet, this
literature is largely, and sadly, absent from this discussion. Better analysis of
local urban–rural politics will result, we believe, in less reliance on norma-
tive – ‘‘gesellshaft/gemeinshaft’’ explanations and will, we argue, lead to a
greater realization that the relocalization of food systems requires a remak-
ing of power relationships within and between urban and rural areas, in
order to realize the truly ‘‘trust and care based’’ system envisioned by lo-
calists.
EUROPE: LOCAL AS JUST VALUE?
In Europe, the turn toward the local has been stimulated by the ‘turn’ to
quality in food practices, following in the wake of episodic food ‘scares’ and
heightened health and food safety concerns. These concerns have created a
wider range of farm-based livelihood opportunities for producers who can
adopt quality conventions, which emphasize territorial provenance in lo-
calized socio-ecological processes. This analytic architecture is built prima-
rily with meso-level concepts, including quality, embeddedness, trust,
network and, more recently and problematically, regional cluster. These
shifts are described as the ‘re-localization’ and ‘re-embedding’ of food sys-
tems, whose institutional expressions are designated as ‘short food supply
chains’ (SFSC) and ‘alternative agro-food networks’ (AAFN). Such cate-
gories are used as invocations of the local and the socio-material practices
and processes of place-making. These representations and their supporting
constructs – quality, embeddedness, trust – privilege certain analytical cat-
egories and trajectories, whose effect is to naturalize and occlude the politics
of the local and of the new economic forms whose emergence configures a
‘new rural development paradigm’ for some observers (Ploeg et al., 2000).
The primary aim of this quality ‘turn’ of SFSC/AAFN scholarship is to
delineate ‘alternative’ food practices and their ‘economies of quality’ rather
than their politics. In addition, analyses of interactions with extra-local
processes and spatial scales tend to be approached mainly from the ‘inside’
of agro-food supply chains and networks. That is, the analysis typically is
centered on the internal dynamics of ‘re-localization,’ rather than the power
relations of surplus value creation and the rent-seeking behavior of off-farm,
downstream actors.
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E. MELANIE DuPUIS258
Of course, there are some exceptions to this broad generalization, though
these also lend it weight. For example, in a recent paper on food supply
chain relationships in the UK, Marsden (2004) focuses on the struggle to
control the meanings of quality and thus be in a position to delineate the
‘‘competitive ‘spaces’, boundaries and markets’’ (p. 130) between ‘conven-
tional’ retailer-led commodity chains and ‘alternative’ SFSC.
1
QA :3In these
competitive dynamics, ‘‘the construction of food quality has become more
embedded’’ (p. 147) in the strategies actors deploy as they seek to configure
the distribution of economic and political power in food supply chains in
their interest. In this struggle for ‘‘competitive control of quality’’, the large
multiples, buttressed by ‘‘a supportive state’’, hold a forbidding advantage
over actors in SFSC due to ‘‘the continued institutional and regulatory
dominance of retailer-led food governance’’ (Marsden, 2004, p. 144).
This attention to power relations across the spaces of food supply chains
is long overdue and hopefully it will lead to detailed empirical work, par-
alleling the research on global value chains (Kaplinsky, 2000; Institute of
Development Studies, 2001). However, this does little to attenuate the gen-
eral neglect of the politics of scale, space and place in the literature on
AAFN/SFSC, which stands in vivid contrast to the lively current debates in
human geography. Indeed, the quality ‘turn’ literature takes the ontology of
the local as given, not as a category to be explicated. This stance is difficult
to understand when ‘‘The proposition that geographical scale is socially
constructed (is) an established truism within contemporary human geogra-
phy’’ (Brenner, 2001, p. 592, original emphasis). AAFN/SFSC scholarship
has failed to problematize the socio-spatial practices of scale construction,
whether the processes constituting the local or the dynamics of interaction
between local forms of socio-spatial organization and extra-local actors and
institutions (but see Marsden & Smith, 2005, on the production of new
quality food ‘spaces’.)
Several recent review papers by leading contributors can be used to reveal
the main theoretical perspectives and framings of the local found in AAFN/
SFSC scholarship (Ploeg et al., 2000; Marsden, Banks, & Bristow, 2000;
Ploeg & Renting, 2000; Renting, Marsden, & Banks, 2003). The theoretical
optic used to appraise case studies of AAFNs/SFSCs in these contributions
derives from a policy-driven agenda based on a particular diagnosis of the
problematics of rural development in Western Europe. These problematics
are defined by the process of decapitalization of farms and rural areas en-
gendered by the imperatives and structural tendencies of industrialized food
systems, and manifest in the historical decline in the share of farm-based
activities in the value stream of agro-food systems. In these circumstances,
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Just Values or Just Value? 259
Marsden et al. (2000, p. 424) suggest that ‘‘two questions need to be an-
swered by rural development theory. First, what are the mechanisms needed
to capture new forms of value added? And secondly, how relevant is the
development of short food supply chains in delivering these?’’
To exploit new opportunities for value added generation, producers are
encouraged to ‘short circuit’ industrial chains by building ‘‘new associat-
ional networks’’ and creating ‘‘different relationships with consumers’’
through engagement with ‘‘different conventions and constructions of qual-
ity’’ that evoke ‘‘locality/region or speciality and nature’’ (Marsden et al.,
2000, p. 425). With ‘‘their capacity to re-socialize or re-spatialize food,’’
SFSC are in a position ‘‘to redefine the producer-consumer relation by
giving clear signals as to the origin of the food product’’ (p. 425). This
reconfigured relation plays a key role ‘‘in constructing value and meaning’’
since the identifiers of quality and provenance embedded in the product
enhance its differentiation and thus its potential ‘‘to command a premium
price’’ (p. 425).
Marsden et al. (2000, p. 425) conclude that ‘‘All SFSC operate, at least in
part, on the principle that the more embedded a product becomes, the
scarcer it becomes in the market.’’ In other words, SFSC valorize those
qualifiers of ‘the local’ and its socio-ecological attributes – terror, traditional
knowledge, landrace species, for example – that can be translated into
higher prices. In this instrumental context, ‘the local’ becomes a discursive
construct and is deployed to convey meaning at a distance, and thereby
becomes a source of value. From this perspective, the local and SFSC are
empirically and theoretically defined primarily in the form of economic rent
arising from the enhanced valorization of local resources. Rural develop-
ment and social change accordingly are conceptualized in terms of market-
led processes within a neoliberal political culture of entrepreneurship, choice
and consumer sovereignty.
Moreover, as Buller and Morris (2004) observe, these approaches also
emphasize the potential gains arising from the economic exploitation of
attributes of territoriality hitherto beyond the value form. Commodification
now encompasses aspects of the conditions of production and farm labor
processes previously seen as positive environmental externalities, including
landscape conservation, wildlife habitat and sustainable farm environments.
As these socially valued externalities are ‘internalized’ by the discourse of
quality, ‘‘new forms of commodification permit a shift in the values attrib-
uted to the various ‘products’ of agriculture enterprise’’ (Buller & Morris,
2004, p. 2). As these authors suggest, the line between market-driven and
state-led mechanisms of environmental services provision in farming areas is
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being redrawn since ‘‘the incentive for food producers to positively manage
the environment comes directly through the harvesting of market benefits’’
(Buller & Morris, 2004, p. 3).
These analyses usefully remind us of the dynamism of valorization proc-
esses. However, they fail to explore the driving forces behind the reconfig-
uration of space and scale and the new forms of commodification of
territoriality. The local as a political–economic arena and socially con-
structed scale of accumulation remains an opaque category, conceptually
and empirically. Territoriality, a cipher for the local, similarly is black
boxed, figured by landscape, habitat or craft knowledge in ways, which
naturalize the social relations underlying its production and reproduction.
In order to address these limitations, attention should focus on the con-
ception of the local as a naturalized, fixed spatial construct, and the expli-
cation of its contemporary importance by recourse to the questionable
binary of local ‘resistance’ to globalizing capitalist logic. To counter charges
of reification and reductionism, it is important to explore the social and
political processes underlying the prominence of the local in the current
conjuncture of late modern capitalism: Why the ‘local’ and why now?
Efforts over the past decade to ‘spatialize’ French regulation theory,
building on the ontological premise that scale is not given ‘in the order of
things’, offer one possible avenue to explore (Peck & Tickell, 1995; Mac-
Leod, 1997, 1999). For example, Jessop (1999, 2000) on the ‘hollowing out’
of the nation-state and changing ‘spatio-temporal fixes’ and Swyngedouw
(1997) on ‘glocalization’ and the discursive deployment of ‘scalar narratives’
seek to understand the contemporary significance of nonstate governance
and articulations between subnational, national and supranational scales of
governance and economic activity. As Whitehead (2003, p. 285) observes,
this work involves ‘‘an appreciation of the relational fluidity of scale and the
ways in which scalar discourses are being exploited to meet certain political
and economic ends (and) reveal(s) the active role of scale in the geometries,
choreographies, and constitution of social power’’ (our emphasis). In short,
the socioeconomies and discourses of the local need to be situated analyt-
ically within the current dynamics of scalar and spatial structuration proc-
esses. A related but explicitly actor-oriented analysis of scale and uneven
spatial development is advanced by Cox (2002), who emphasizes the role
played by ‘territorially based coalitions’ in defending and enhancing ‘‘the
flow of value through local social relations’’ (p. 95).These coalitions artic-
ulate local positions and interests within the changing geographical division
of labor and consumption.
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Just Values or Just Value? 261
Significantly, these formulations directly confront bounded conceptions
of ‘local’ places and bring out the importance of social struggle and con-
tested political economic processes in the contingent social construction and
scaling of the local. These contemporary theoretical currents starkly expose
the naturalized, static and reductionist conceptualizations found in the
AAFN/SFSC literature. To engage the local, it is critically important to
detail actors’ socio-spatial projects, analyze their distinctive spatialities,
power relations and social consequences, and situate these at the interface
with current processes of scalar and spatial restructuring.
AAFN/SFSC: Individual Accumulation or Shared Development?
Some authors (Ploeg et al., 2000), discern elements of a new paradigm in an
emerging constellation of European rural development practices and their
potentially synergistic effects. These practices comprise the production of
quality foods and specialty products, new modalities of food provision in-
corporating new producer–consumer relationships, such as localized SFSC,
and different forms of commodification of environmental and territorial
‘public goods.’ However, it has been suggested that this agrarian-based rural
development literature fails to subject farm-level innovation and multi-
product value-added strategies to critical sociological analysis. That is, it
does not ‘‘systematically engage issues of power within the farm enterprise,
as variously configured by social relations of production, domestic labour,
gender relations and patriarchal property structures. Beyond the farm/
household, the ways in which these strategies will mitigate such long-stand-
ing rural problems as income inequality, low paid employment, rural pov-
erty, social exclusion, and more general questions of uneven development
(also) receive negligible attention’’ (Goodman, 2004, p. 7).
The effectiveness of farm enterprise synergies and the exploitation of
economies of scope as the ‘prime movers’ of a paradigm shift also have been
interrogated from other perspectives. As several contributors have sug-
gested, SFSC and other new rural development practices are likely to ac-
centuate rather than mitigate uneven development due to spatial inequalities
in the distribution of the requisite capacities and resources. Thus Buller and
Morris (2004, p. 13) observe that ‘‘once territoriality becomes a component
of value, it also becomes a commodity in itself, to protect and exploit, a
source of differentially commodified relationships, leading to, in Marsden’s
words (Marsden, 1999, p. 507) ‘new rural geographies of value.’ The di-
mensions and expressions of this new competitive territoriality of value, and
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its implications for processes of rural development, are only just beginning
to be explored.’’
The key question here is whether farm-centred AAFNs/SFSCs will be
catalysts of sustained rural development rather than accumulation strategies
for select groups of enterprises. At the theoretical level, this issue of the
developmental role of AAFNs/SFSCs as sources of local value-added and
regional competitiveness has been addressed most directly by Terry Mars-
den and his colleagues. These linkages are explored in their study of the Llyn
Beef Producer’s Cooperative in north-west Wales, which commands pre-
mium prices in two new supply chains established to market its natural,
grass-fed beef. In the construction of the socio-economic relationships un-
derlying these SFSC, ‘‘we can see how new equations between space, nature,
quality, value and product come together. This does not occur automat-
ically’’ (Marsden et al., 2000, p. 435). Moreover, the prospects of replicating
the success of Llyn Beef are remote because its supply chain relations are
like ‘‘unique ‘forks of lightening;’ they occur intensely across spaces in one
vector, but by definition they are difficult to replicate in identical form
elsewhere’’ (p. 436). Reflecting on SFSC more generally, it is suggested that,
‘‘their role in creating new forms of rural development will be to increase the
distinctiveness of space and diversified agricultural relations’’ (p. 436).
Marsden et al. (2000) conclude by identifying two possible avenues for
further theoretical development. One of these is consonant with the argu-
ment advanced in this chapter, namely, the importance of taking account of
‘‘the power struggles operating in the development of new food supply
chains. Theoretically, we need to begin to assess how local ecologies, social
relations, and forms of evaluation become implicated in differing produc-
tion systems’’ (p. 436). The second avenue is associated with the observed
distinctiveness and uniqueness of SFSC in their localized space-time equa-
tions, which is at the root of ‘‘one of the most significant paradoxes of the
new rural development paradigm’’ (p. 436). To paraphrase, since the new
rural development initiatives ‘‘are all – by definition – dependent upon a
distinctive evolutionary trajectory,’’ how can they ‘‘collectively make a ma-
jor spatial impact?’’ (p. 436, original emphasis). In order to address this
paradox, it is suggested that ‘‘we need to progress theoretically the concept
of rural development clustering’’ (Marsden et al., 2000, p. 436, original
emphasis). In effect, as these authors concede, the role of AAFNs/SFSCs in
wider rural development processes remains very much an open question.
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Just Values or Just Value? 263
LOCALISM AND NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION
As a number of authors have noted (Jessop, 1998; Lovering, 1999; Law-
rence, 2005; Dean, 1999) the embrace of localist forms of control ‘‘are ex-
periments in sub-national regional governance that are themselves a
response to wider problems in managing global capitalism’’ (Lawrence,
2005, p. 3). Relocalization can be seen as part of the restructuring of gov-
ernment toward ‘‘governance’’: the devolution of decision making to local
networks of self-governing actors, coordinated through multi-layered insti-
tutional structures. Students of this radical institutional change are divided
between the optimists, who see the devolution to regional governance as a
new form of participatory democracy (Fung & Wright, 2003) and pessimists
who suggest that this relocalization of decision making is not necessarily
democratic or empowering; it can lead to greater inequalities between re-
gions (Sanderson, 2000; Gray & Lawrence, 2001; Bauman, 2004), the fur-
ther marginalization of certain groups through new exclusionary practices
(Morrissey & Lawrence, 1997), and a loss of previous welfare state safety net
guarantees (Geddes, 2003; Allen & Guthman, forthcoming; also Sweet
Chartiy?).
Recent interrogations of neoliberalism have demonstrated that the per-
ceived ‘globalization’ and the accompanying weakening of national social
and environmental protections are only one part of the broader neoliberal
political economic ideology, whose practice has relied on the concomitant
upscaling of power and downscaling of responsibility:
In the asymmetrical scale politics of neoliberalism, local institutions and actors were
being given responsibility without power, while international institutions and actors were
gaining power without responsibility: a form of regulatory dumping was occurring at the
local scale, while macrorule regimes were being remade in regressive and marketised
ways (Peck & Tickell, 2002, p. 386).
From this more critical perspective, relocalization appears to be not in re-
sistance to neoliberal globalization but an intrinsic part of it, because it has
‘‘endorsed and fostered the self regulation of individuals and communities
which, at the regional level, equates to the acceptance of programs, tech-
niques and procedures that support market rule, productivism and global
competition’’ (Lawrence, 2005, p. 9). In other words, relocalization can be
part and parcel of what Dean (1999), using Foucault, calls ‘‘neoliberal gov-
ernmentality’’ – the creation of neoliberal political subjects.
A comparison of food relocalization as a social movement with the his-
tory of urban environmental social movements in the United States makes
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the ambiguities of the local clear. As environmental historians have repeat-
edly noted, local problems often remained unresolved until they were moved
up to a broader geographical scale:
Although most waterworks and sewerage schemes originated from perceptions of local
needs, extra local units of government and business often became involved in their
financing and engineering and in the resolution of land and water rights disputes. In the
battle for clean air, local government again formed the first line of defense. Yet met-
ropolitan if not national, solutions would have to be imposed before any permanent
victories were won in reducing air pollution (Platt, 2005, p. 13).
In both Europe and the US, in city after city, historians cite the delocal-
ization of air pollution governance – for example with the establishment of
the Environmental Protection Agency and national Clean Air Act legisla-
tion – as the benchmark for the beginning of effective air pollution policy
(see articles in DuPuis, 2004).
We would argue, then, that the two rationales for relocalization described
above – localist communitarian ‘‘values’’ and locally appropriated market
‘‘value’’ – do not necessarily represent a stand against the forces of global-
ization. In fact, they are often deployed to further a neoliberal form of
global logic, a refashioning of agricultural governance that plays on both
left ideals of political participation and right ideals of non-interference in
markets (see also Allen et al., 2003). This dangerous political bargain can
lead to the dismantling of hard-fought rights for state protection, either for
the protection of individual health and welfare or for protection against
crony capitalist state-industry alliances.
REFLEXIVITY AS JUST PRACTICE: REMAKING
LOCALISM
As the above discussion shows, localism is not an ‘‘innocent’’ term: it can be
utilized to reinforce both local economic and cultural inequalities and the
exploitative relations of global neoliberalism. Notably, our case study of
AAFNs/SFSCs suggests that social resistance efforts can unintentionally
absolve the state of its important social and environmental responsibilities,
and that they can fail to confront problems that extend beyond the realm of
the market. However, despite the serious issues we have raised here, we are
not interested in arguing for the abandonment of localism, community em-
powerment or food democracies. We agree with neoliberal theorists who
emphasize the importance of multiscalar resistance (Peck & Tickell, 2002, p.
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Just Values or Just Value? 265
401). However, such work will also need to interrogate deeply embedded
and naturalized notions of privilege. Harrison’s work on pesticide drift
made this point clear, by showing that an agricultural system that is pro-
tective of the health of all people will need to confront the industry’s ex-
ploitation of vulnerable, race-based immigrant labor groups.
In this section, we will explore how to rebuild localism along more just
lines, through a more ‘‘reflexive localism’’ which pursues local empower-
ment in ways that maintain conscious awareness of potential injustices at
this territorial scale. To do this, we will look more closely at theories of
social justice currently under debate and examine how local food move-
ments do or do not fit into the terms of this debate.
There are a number of well-known and well-argued current perspectives
on social justice today. The ‘‘Theory of Justice’’ conversation in philosophy
is based primarily on Enlightenment ideas of universalism, rationality and
the ‘‘public sphere’’ as the arena for decision making about the common
good. Post-Enlightenment ideas of justice critique notions of universalism,
rationality and ‘‘the public’’ as exclusionary and based in the idea of the
ideal citizen/subject as white and male (Scott, 1988; Lipsitz, 1998). We can-
not cover both conversations in toto. Instead, we will focus on how these
theories deal with the tension between the universal and the particular and
how localism can work reflexively within these tensions.
Enlightenment Notions of Justice
In the Western intellectual tradition, most thinking about theories of justice
began with the Enlightenment rejection of traditional monarchistic and
theocratic authority in favor of democracy. Utilitarians Bentham and Mill
critiqued the authority of the church and the monarch as ‘‘perfectionism’’:
as a priori determinations of the right way to live. According to this critique,
perfectionism was undemocratic, denying the individual’s own reasoning
and ability to determine right living. Adam Smith argued that involvement
in market relationships was the way in which individuals created universal
social welfare (or ‘‘wealth’’) on a day-to-day basis. From this perspective,
the market facilitated individualist democratic decision making about what
life each person chose to lead, by enabling individual preferences to be
fulfilled.
Both political liberals and Marxists formulated trenchant critiques of the
utilitarian perspective, although from very different positions. Marx decried
utilitarian notions of market-based individual freedom and democracy as
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bourgeois ideology and argued that the economic relationship between lab-
or and capital in fact created inequality. Political liberals, on the other hand,
took a more positive stance toward the abilities of democracy to create a
system of equality under capitalism. Nevertheless, liberals critique utilitarian
notions of market democracy as individualist and a-social, arguing that
social justice comes about through a civil society in which people demo-
cratically make decisions about ‘‘the good life,’’ generally through national
electoral processes.
Despite these differences, utilitarians, political liberals and Marxists all
agree that perfectionism is a problematic form of politics. Marx argued that
the good society would come about through the struggle between capital
and labor. Political liberals argue for the amelioration of capitalism by
egalitarian democratic processes which temper inequalities (Rawls, 1971,
1993). In Europe, this process is often envisioned as carried out through a
more social-democratic form of civil society (Habermas, 1999).
Recently, these Enlightenment notions of justice have come under critique
from post-Enlightenment communitarians, feminists, post-colonial and crit-
ical race theorists who argue that universalist notions of justice are exclu-
sionary, making a particular group, namely Western white male citizens,
into the universal category, thereby mystifying the privilege this group en-
joys in modern society (Lipsitz, 1998; Omi & Winant, 1986). Post-Enlight-
enment theorists argue that concepts of justice must include considerations
of group autonomy, including racial, ethnic and community ‘‘group differ-
entiated rights.’’ These philosophers argue for a more ‘‘particularist’’ form
of social justice against the ‘‘universalist’’ schemes of political liberalism.
Communitarians ‘‘are united by the belief that political philosophy must
pay more attention to the shared practices and understandings within each
society’’ (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 209). Proponents of communitarian forms of
social justice, such as Michael Walzer (1983), Michael Sandel (1982) and
Charles Taylor (1994), argue for community-based autonomy, in which
communities are free to make their own decisions about what a good society
is and how to go about making that society. Unlike egalitarian liberals, who
define the good life as equal political representation within a ‘‘neutral state’’,
communitarians base their notion of social justice in the ‘‘politics of the
common good’’ which
Is conceived of as a substantive conception of the good life which defines the commu-
nity’s ‘way of life’. This common good, rather than adjusting itself to the pattern of
people’s preferences, provides a standard by which those preferences are evaluated. The
community’s way of life forms the basis for a public ranking of conceptions of the good,
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Just Values or Just Value? 267
and the weight given to an individual’s preferences depends on how much she conforms
or contributes to this common good (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 220).
Communitarian concepts of social justice are therefore based on mutually
agreed community notions of ‘‘the good life’’ embedded in relationships of
trust. In many of these communitarian schemes, ‘‘tradition’’ is redeemed
from the Enlightenment critique to become a source of mutuality rather
than a form of authority. In many, if not most, cases, communitarians tie
their notions of a good society to a good place. In other words, justice and
territory go hand-in-hand.
In response to these ideas, political liberals sometimes charge communi-
tarians with perfectionism. And, in fact, some autonomous groups, like the
Amish, could be seen as reflexively perfectionist, since they define their
‘‘traditions’’ as the good life voluntarily chosen by members of the group.
Unreflexive perfectionism, on the other hand, leaves a group open to the
pitfalls of white privilege. Slocum (forthcoming) argues that, in fact, com-
munity food organizations do not look reflexively at the perfectionism lo-
calism can engender.
Slocum bases her argument in critical race theory and feminism. These
critics treat inequality not simply as the result of market-based relationships,
but also as part of the culture of middle-class white male politics, including
the democratic politics of reform. Historical case studies of the US welfare
state, for example, show that these government policies favored white mid-
dle-class male interests through their ‘‘possessive investment’’ in the benefits
of these policies, including access to education, housing and business finance
(Cohen, 2003; Lipsitz, 1998). Yet, white middle-class men are the ‘‘un-
marked category,’’ in that their possessive investment in social benefits to
which they have privileged access is represented as a universal right, making
their particular interests ‘‘the norm,’’ or ‘‘the perfect’’ ideal: the unques-
tioned and naturalized view of the good life (Frankenberg, 1993; Lipsitz,
1998).
In food studies, the relationship between white reform politics and food
reform becomes evident in the history of pure food movements. For exam-
ple, DuPuis’ (2002) analysis of the rise of American milk drinking, Nature’s
Perfect Food, shows that the effects of an inegalitarian perfectionist politics
have been part and parcel of the development of the industrial food system.
Middle class, white urban consumers became a powerful political force,
which lobbied for ‘‘pure’’ and ‘‘safe’’ food. They allied with developing
large-scale industrial processors and state regulatory interests to organize
the food system as clean and sanitary. DuPuis argues that the rise of in-
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dustrial food was not simply the product of the logic of capitalist production
relationships, it was also brought into being by the political power of one
particular group: privileged white middle class consumers.
A number of contemporary scholars have been attempting to formulate a
theory of justice, which both takes into account reflexive notions of equality
while maintaining rights of group or territorial autonomy. For example,
several influential scholars have argued for the concept of ‘‘reflexive,’’ or
dialectical, equality (Benhabib, 1996; Young, 2000; Beck, Giddens, & Lash,
1995). These philosophers see reflexivity as a way to escape a politics of
perfection, which both hides and perpetuates hegemony. The challenge,
therefore, becomes the ability to create social projects that make society
‘‘better’’ while not reinforcing traditional particularist inequalities.
Reflexive egalitarians see all truly democratic politics as intrinsically open
or ‘‘imperfect,’’ the product of negotiation and contestation between all
social groups in which the best result is an agreed upon, reflexive bargain
that does not necessarily reflect one consensus view (Young, 2000; Fraser,
1990). Rather than a naturalized notion of purity which defines the creation
of a better society as convincing ‘‘the masses’’ of their interests through a
‘‘politics of conversion’’ (Childs, 2003), reflexive egalitarians see democracy
as embedded in a ‘‘politics of respect’’ and ‘‘recognition’’ (Childs, 2003;
Taylor, 1994; Fraser, 1990).
From the perspective of reflexive egalitarianism, the perfect politics of
imposed standards, whether it is ‘‘pure,’’ ‘‘natural,’’ ‘‘local’’ or ‘‘organic,’’
denies the politics behind the definitions. As Guthman (2005) has shown the
maintenance of notions of ‘‘good’’ food as ‘‘pure’’ food, certified and labe-
led as meeting particular standards, plays into the hands of food corpora-
tions by making sanitized, labeled, certified and well-sealed packaged
products the preferred choice of fearful consumers. Labels and standards
are a-political in that they cut off any negotiations about what food should
look like in the future, since the goal – the perfection – has already been
defined. Ideas about ‘‘good food’’ that are embedded in middle class, gen-
erally white, reformism (or ‘‘social movements’’) – whether they are the
sanitarians of the turn of the century or the Slow Food advocates and the
organic supporters of today – therefore propagate a notion of perfect food
which denies the multiplicity of political interests behind the food system.
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Just Values or Just Value? 269
NEW BEGINNINGS: REDEEMING THE LOCAL
We have argued here that localism represents for many people the social
justice politics of today. However, this is not in fact the case. Local politics
are not intrinsically equitable and democratic and moving decision making
down to the local level may not be broadly empowering and participatory,
especially in local contexts of extreme inequality. This is true whether one is
speaking of localism as a source of community values or as a local capture
of economic value.
Nevertheless, we recognize that localism is a powerful tool, particularly
when the goal is to increase public health through increasing the availability
of fresh food, while, at the same time, increasing farmer income. We do not
deny the relationship between the current globalization and industrialization
of the food system and the increase in nutrition-related health problems
such as obesity, and we recognize the injustice of this system. However, we
have argued here that the sort of ‘‘politics of the adverse’’ that a simple
localism represents may not rectify the injustices that globalization brings
about. As our case studies illustrated, locally devolved control of agricul-
tural policies can reinforce inequalities in those places.
In the place of this simple localism, we need a reflexive localism that
works to understand and work against local inequalities. To become re-
flexive, food localism movements will need to undergo significant changes in
practice. First, movement actors need to become more aware of the ways in
which their efforts fit into a broader rural–urban (and suburban) commu-
nity engagement. In particular, they need to recognize the extent to which
current regional politics entails the forming of local boundaries (in terms of
housing, schooling, shopping, etc.) that involve inter-jurisdictional struggles
over resources, particularly between wealthier and less wealthy neighbor-
hoods. Localists need to recognize the ways in which this type of boundary
setting between the places of the poor and the places of the well-off are a
significant part of the story of injustice today. Local food movement ac-
tivists must refuse to make alliances with defensive localists, or else their
efforts will only serve to perpetuate this trend.
Even more, a just and reflexive food localists will work not to erect eco-
nomic boundaries between a particular ‘‘here’’ and the global ‘‘there’’ but to
engender and deepen their connections with the people who live nearby. For
instance, localism could incorporate the broader goals of the ‘‘New Re-
gionalist’’ and ‘‘smart growth’’ movements, which attempt to re-unite inner
city and surrounding suburban interests (Pastor et al., 2000; Drier, 2001), as
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a way to put reflexive justice into practice. New Regionalist movements
emphasize political inclusion of all people for a region-wide equitable sys-
tem. It goes beyond the ‘‘value-chain’’ idea that those who sell and buy are
the only people worth thinking about.
Like the fair housing and inclusive community movements, reflexive,
‘New Regionalist’ food politics would do more than just respond to envi-
ronmental degradation and loss of livelihood experienced within industrial
economies. It would address the ways in which racial notions of purity and
privilege helped to usher in the industrial food system we have today. In the
same way we need to realize that white flight and localist ‘‘upzoning’’ con-
tributed to urban sprawl, and localist education policies contributed to the
maintenance of an undereducated underclass, we need to understand the
ways in which privilege, class and status struggles contributed to the rise of
the industrial food system that has ultimately threatened the health of the
entire population (DuPuis, 2002).
A ‘New Regionalist’ approach would conceive of local food systems as
products of political relationships that cross categories of economy and
identity. Food system relocalization could also contribute to the New Re-
gionalism movement by moving it one ring beyond the suburb. Ideas about
‘‘smart growth’’ and intelligent planning then become part of larger hous-
ing, nutrition and economic development policies, which would include ac-
tive partnership with rural hinterlands.
By situating food re-localization politics as part of this larger ‘New Re-
gionalist’ context, one is able to see how local food policies can fit into a
more inclusive metropolitan regionalist politics that seeks to promote a
more equitable distribution of regional resources and social services, across
the board. For example, policies to reduce childhood obesity, such as school
lunch reform, will be ineffective without thinking about how it fits into the
overall problem of school funding (Guthman & DuPuis, forthcoming; Allen
& Guthman, forthcoming). This more inclusive policy would reveal how
local food inequities are tied to inequalities at higher geographic scales, such
as federal school lunch policies.
From this more reflexive, non-perfectionist viewpoint, true reform of our
food system requires that we muck ourselves up in the imperfection of
political contestation over food. We need to validate diverse and ‘‘situated’’
(Haraway, 1991) knowledge and recognize the complexity of definitions
behind ideas like ‘‘organic’’ and ‘‘local.’’ This is particularly true when some
members of the food system advance schemes to make food more accurately
reflect monolithic notions of ‘‘community values’’ as if all communities were
defined by a consensual, monolithic set of values. This is not to deny the
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Just Values or Just Value? 271
importance of community or the power of local food to solve social prob-
lems such as hunger and obesity. However, to move toward a reflexive,
egalitarian localization of food systems will require more than a process in
which a few people define what is ‘‘good’’ food and then try to convince the
rest to grow it and eat it. Instead, re-localization of food systems, to be
equitable, will require the creation of new processes of inclusion and
‘‘transcommunality’’ (Childs, 2003) that have not yet been part of the dis-
cussion (Slocum, 2005). Needless to say, in order to overcome inequalities of
access it will be necessary to go beyond the creation of farmers’ markets and
CSAs and explore more democratic food provisioning processes, including
public procurement policies, consumer cooperatives and community food
schemes.
A reflexive and imperfect open politics could lead to a food social move-
ment which goes beyond the creation of ‘‘perfect food’’ – whether defined as
‘‘pure,’’ ‘‘safe’’ or ‘‘healthy’’ – and brings us closer to dealing with how local
food inequities are tied in to inequities at higher geographic scales, such as
food industry monopolies, USDA agency capture, nutrition policy, subsidy
policy and dumping, food deserts, food imperialism, obesity, food aid issues,
etc. This reflexive politics can include re-localization as one powerful tool in
the ongoing struggle over the food system – combining a ‘‘not in my back-
yard’’ politics of environmental justice with a ‘‘not in my body’’ (DuPuis,
2001) politics of boycotting and a ‘‘yes in my body’’ politics of boycotting –
but within a more realist perspective of local and global power. Reflexive
justice brings activism back to the imperfect politics of process and away
from the perfect and privileged politics of standard setting. Rather than
creating an alternative economy for the homogenous few, reflexive localism
could work across difference, and thereby make a difference, for everyone.
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(1993); Hendrickson & Heffernan (2002); Herod (1991); Korten (2001);
Lappe & Lappe (2003); McPhee (1994); Marsden, Banks, & Bristow (2002);
Marsden & Smith (2004); Marsden & Smith (Forthcoming); Massey (1993);
Massey (1994); Massey (1999); Pastor, Drier, Grisby,& Lopez-Garcia; Perr-
ons (2001); Ploeg (2000); Smith (1993); Storper (1997); Watts (1991); Watts
(1999); Watts (2000).
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E. MELANIE DuPUIS272
NOTES
1. This approach brings in power relations insofar as it analyses the differential
ability of actors to occupy high rent activities or nodes in the chain, control gov-
ernance functions and position themselves to benefit from systemic efficiency gains
through supply-chain management.
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AUTHOR QUERY FORM
ELSEVIER
Research in Rural
Sociology and
Development
Queries and / or remarks
JOURNAL TITLE: RRSD-V012
ARTICLE NO: 12010
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AQ 1
The following references are not listed in the reference list.
Hinrichs (2000), Hendricksen, (2002), Hendrickson & Heffernan
(2003), Marsden & Smith (2005), Francis Moore & Anna Lappe
(2003), Kloppenberg (1996), Cohen (2004), Starr (1986), Pincetl
(1999), Marsden (2004, 1999), Marsden & Smith (2005), Jessop
(1998), Fung & Wright (2003), Sanderson (2000), Gray &
Lawrence (2001), Bauman (2004), Morrissey & Lawrence (1997),
Geddes (2003), Guthman & DuPuis (forthcoming), Allen &
Guthman (forthcoming), Peck & Tickell (2002), Guthman (2005),
Pastor et al. (2000), Dreier (2001), Slocum (2005) and DuPuis
(2001).
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Guthman & Melanie (Forthcoming).
Marsden & Smith (Forthcoming).
Slocum (Forthcoming).
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