| Oosterveer, Peter (2005) Labelling food for sustainability. In: 7th Conference of European ... |
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Oosterveer, Peter (2005) Labelling food for sustainability. In: 7th Conference of European Sociological Association, Rethinking inequalities, Torun, Poland, 9-12 September 2005. - Torun, Poland: Institute of Sociology Nicolaus Copernicus University Torun, 2005
A newly emerging category of innovative global governance arrangements tries to manage material and informational flows of food at the global level and, at the same time, relate these global flows to the specific material and social impacts of producing, processing, retailing and consuming food while involving different social actors. Such arrangements aim at providing standardised information about the production practices involved with the help of certification and labelling schemes. This way information about production practices is provided is not necessarily limited to product-related characteristics but can address other producer and consumer concerns. Food labels create connections between different (producer and consumer) concerns and between different (governmental and non-governmental) actors, enabling the building of abstract trust. Authority and power in such approaches are distributed indistinctly and located among producers, processors, traders and consumers along the supply chain. Besides private firms, international NGOs claiming to represent producers and consumers are also becoming driving forces behind different certification and labelling schemes. Thereby NGOs are complementing, and sometimes even replacing, nation-state actors in legitimising particular food chains and policies whereby they build trust between different actors in the food chain over long distances in time and space. |
