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Negotiating Technical and Ideological Standards for Agroecological Rice Production in Emerging Markets: The Case of Cambodia

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Hart Nadav Feuer at Kyoto University
Hart Nadav Feuer
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Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which the materiality of rice is encountered by agents along the production-consumption chain, from farmers to processors to urban consumers. Each agent, whether it is a farmer, miller, trader, consumer, or agronomic research agency, defines what is material (i.e., both tangible and discursively relevant) with respect to his or her relationship to rice. Materiality of rice is informally constituted by each actor in ideological standards that guide and configure how different aspects of rice, such as cultivation, milling, and variety, equate with quality and desirability. Technical standards, which originate from ideological standards and discursive norms, crystallize certain combinations of quality characteristics in space and time. Although technical standards initially exist as points of reference within more comprehensive ideological standards, they can multiply and increasingly dominate the material encounter with rice. Local actors, however, can contest this process by trying to bring technical standards more into line with ideological intentions. More specifically, I explore how a technical organic standard is situated within an ideological standard for natural in Cambodia, a country with strong historical and contemporary sympathies for ecological agriculture. I find that organic/natural is an important platform for promoting popular control over standardization and, more generally, over commoditization of food.
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Negotiating Technical and Ideological Standards
for Agroecological Rice Production in Emerging Markets:
The Case of Cambodia
Hart N. Feuer
Received: 13 July 2010 / Accepted: 24 June 2011
qNational Science Council, Taiwan 2011
Abstract This essay explores the ways in which the materiality of rice is encountered
by agents along the production-consumption chain, from farmers to processors to
urban consumers. Each agent, whether it is a farmer, miller, trader, consumer, or
agronomic research agency, defines what is material (i.e., both tangible and discur-
sively relevant) with respect to his or her relationship to rice. Materiality of rice is
informally constituted by each actor in ideological standards that guide and configure
how different aspects of rice, such as cultivation, milling, and variety, equate with
quality and desirability. Technical standards, which originate from ideological stan-
dards and discursive norms, crystallize certain combinations of quality characteristics
in space and time. Although technical standards initially exist as points of reference
within more comprehensive ideological standards, they can multiply and increasingly
dominate the material encounter with rice. Local actors, however, can contest this
process by trying to bring technical standards more into line with ideological inten-
tions. More specifically, I explore how a technical organic standard is situated within
an ideological standard for natural in Cambodia, a country with strong historical and
contemporary sympathies for ecological agriculture. I find that organic/natural is an
important platform for promoting popular control over standardization and, more
generally, over commoditization of food.
Keywords Organicricestandardsmaterialitysustainable agriculture
Cambodia
1 Introduction
This paper sets out to explore ways in which the materiality of rice is encountered and
reshaped by the multitude of agents along the path from the field to the rice bowl. Each
H. N. Feuer (*)
Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management (ZEFc), Center for Development Research,
Walter-Flex-Strasse 3, D-53113 Bonn, Germany
e-mail: hfeuer@uni-bonn.de
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (2011) 5:441–459
DOI 10.1215/18752160-1458013
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agent, whether it is a farmer, miller, trader, consumer, or agronomic research agency,
defines what is material (i.e., both tangible and discursively relevant) with respect to
his or her relationship to rice. For example, each actor has somewhat different expec-
tations about what constitutes quality and suitability in each of his or her domains.
Generally, farmers tend to value farm system characteristics; traders and processors
value standards and marketability; consumers (which also include farmers) value
taste, texture, and fragrance; agronomic research institutions privilege productivity
and consistency. These actors exert their respective influence on the various configu-
rations of rice by demanding and transforming varieties, cultivation methods, and
standards that suit their evolving needs on the farm, in the test plot, in the marketplace,
and on the kitchen table. Farmers in agrarian societies, as the majority of producers and
consumers, historically have played the largest cumulative role in the formation of
tastes, farming systems, and processing. Urban consumers and traders, as well as
research institutions, also play a role in configuring production-consumption patterns
for rice in poor countries. However, with the onset of large-scale commoditization of
staple crops in the seventeenth century and the climax of the so-called Green Revolu-
tion in the mid-twentieth century,
1
the state and select international agencies have
typically become the dominant agents in many countries. They privilege a narrow
productivist experience with the materiality of rice and work to curtail the influence of
producers, traders, and consumers (Smith 2010;Courville 2006). However, with the
decline of the hegemony of green revolution agriculture in international development
discourse, localized food and agriculture systems, often with ecological character-
istics, have been increasingly reasserted by a wider stakeholder base.
Through a focus on the materiality of rice in Cambodia, I describe the locally
specific ways that commoditization and agrarian transformation are managed by
reconfiguring technical and ideological standards. Technical standards are a codifica-
tion of certain material aspects of rice that the private and public sectors deem worthy
of institutionalization and regulation (see, e.g., The´venot 2009;Hill 1990). Ideological
standards are informal, relational, and flexible guidelines for quality assessment root-
ed in experience that often overlap with technical standards but are defined in differ-
ent terms and experienced in different ways (e.g., sensory perception, in negotiation,
through measurement).
2
A relevant example is the technical standard organic and the
ideological standard natural. The former requires specific guidelines to be fulfilled;
the latter is broadly agreed upon in society but ultimately settled individually. In a
general sense, ideological standards are the antecedents of technical standards, though
the former has a much broader purview and can encompass characteristics that are not
easily defined or are symbolic (Appadurai 1986), such as tastiness, fragrance, texture,
and heritage value. Ideological standards are also relational and fluid, which is to say
that they do not judge one characteristic to the exclusion of others and that they are
1
By green revolution agriculture (lowercase), I refer primarily to a package of policy and technical
interventions referenced in modernist agricultural literature, including, but not limited to, government-
assisted land consolidation, widespread irrigation projects, varietal narrowing through external seed
input, and support (usually subsidies) for fertilizer and other agrochemicals (Kaosa-ard and Rerkasem
2000).
2
This conception of ideological standards is broadly consistent with French convention theory (notably
from Boltanski and The´venot 2006); differences are clarified further in the text.
442 H. N. Feuer
... However, even as the nominal levels of urbanization have increased, observers of Phnom Penh have, in fact, characterized the enduring rural character of the city (see Saphan, 2011;Simone, 2008), describing it as having the atmosphere of a large village. In previous work (Feuer, 2011), I have also outlined how the farming background of most current city dwellers in Cambodia is associated with greater appreciation of food variety, the quality of produce, and the sanctity of balanced meals. This is necessarily associated with the way in which cuisine in the city is understood, negotiated, and evaluated. ...
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... As the majority of farmers make production decisions oriented towards supporting their family and farm, and not to anonymous consumers in the market, why do they cultivate a grain they have no wish to consume? This is perhaps best explained by Feuer's (2011) insight that "the more intrusive the technical standard, the more material facets of rice are fixed and removed from ideological interpretation and material encounter" (457). Such a perspective explains why farmers provided almost solely with information that emphasises the importance of grain yield (the technical standard) learn to dismiss many of their ideological preferences (for agro-ecological cultivation), even to their own disservice. ...
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