Between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexicity in the Contemporary Agri-food Sector

Terry Marsden, Jonathan Murdoch

Elsevier JAI, 2006 - Social Science - 358 pages

The volume presents a range of critical perspectives on the contemporary agri-food sector. The starting point is the recognition that geography matters in agri-food more than ever, and it plays a diverse range of roles in shaping production-consumption relations. With hindsight, it may be argued that the extensive rural sociological literature on the globalisation of food over the past twenty years has tended to over-emphasise the degree to which food products and processes have indeed been industrialised and standardised. But if diversity and variety have become increasingly significant in distinguishing food commodities, spaces of production, and the practices of consumption, how are we to critically understand and theorise this complexity? What are the features of the institutional, private, public and civic frameworks that work to promote and sustain diversity and complexity in the international food sector both within and between the global and the local? What new or reconfigured sets of power relations are developing through the unfolding of this complexity; and what do these suggest for the sustainability or vulnerability of rural locales and natures?
Through the two sections of the book- first concerning Theorising Complexity, and the second, problematising Local development and Local complexities- and bringing together under this theme international theoretical and empirical comparisons, the book begins to explore this rich rural sociological and development field. The chapters examine in detail the ways that constellations of organisations, cultures and entrepreneurial practices become embedded in discrete spatial areas. They show the importance of these areas and theirassociated institutions to the contemporary, and increasingly contingent development of the international food system.
*Both sections of the volume take a critical perspective when examining the agri-food sector
*Explores the sociological and developmental impact of the contemporary food sector

About the author

Kevin Morgan has taught at Cardiff University since 1989, prior to which he was a research fellow in the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. His main research interests revolve around three core themes: regional innovation strategies, multi-level governance systems and sustainable
food chains. He is the author of a number of articles and books, including The Associational Economy: Firms, Regions and Innovation, which was co-authored with Philip Cooke and published by Oxford University Press in 1998 (h/b) and 2000 (p/b). His current projects include an ESRC-funded research
project called Delivering Sustainability: The Creative Procurement of School Meals in Italy and the UK and a Joseph Rowntree project on Regenerating Coalfield Communities.
Terry Marsden has taught at Cardiff University since 1995 and has been a co-director of the ESRC Centre BRASS at Cardiff since 2003. He also holds visiting posts at the University of Helsinki and the University of Rome. His research interests include rural development, environmental policy and
agri-food studies.
Jonathan Murdoch has taught at Cardiff University since 1995. His main research interests include actor network theory, agri-food studies and environmental policy and planning. His most recent book is entitled Post-Structuralist Geography: A Guide to Relational Space (Sage, 2005). He is also part
of the research team on a EU-funded research project on animal welfare in the European Union.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexicity in the Contemporary Agri-food Sector; Volume 12 of Research in rural sociology and development, ISSN 1057-1922
• Editors: Terry Marsden, Jonathan Murdoch
• Contributor: Terry Marsden
• Publisher: Elsevier JAI, 2006
• ISBN: 076231317X, 9780762313174
• Length: 358 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Sociology / General