Title: What makes organic agriculture move: protest, meaning or market? A polyocular approach to the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture

Authors: Hugo Fjelsted Alroe, Egon Noe

Addresses: Danish Research Centre for Organic Food and Farming (DARCOF), P.O. Box 50, Tjele DK-8830, Denmark. ' Department of Agroecology, Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 50, Tjele DK-8830, Denmark

Abstract: Many different actors have hopes and aspirations for the future of organic agriculture. They have different perspectives on organic agriculture with different understandings of what it is and what makes it move. Each perspective entails a certain understanding of organic agriculture featuring certain concepts and values and a particular logic or rationality. It is important to acknowledge this heterogeneity when investigating the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture. We suggest a polyocular approach that facilitates a comprehensive and balanced understanding of organic agriculture by enabling us to handle different perspectives reflexively. To illustrate this approach we describe three significant perspectives on organic agriculture based on protest, meaning and market. No perspective is the |right| one and we claim, different perspectives on organic agriculture cannot be merged to one. We hope that polyocularity as a general analytical tool, and the three specific perspectives, will be helpful in understanding the future development of organic agriculture and how it may be influenced.

Keywords: organic farming; regulation; perspectives; reflexive; actor network; semiotics; conventionalisation; values; organic agriculture; agricultural dynamics; agricultural governance; protest; meaning; market.

DOI: 10.1504/IJARGE.2008.016976

International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, 2008 Vol.7 No.1/2, pp.5 - 22

Published online: 03 Feb 2008 *

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