GI83E99X

5027

3 janvier 2023 12:22

3 janvier 2023 12:37

Recent conversations concerning organicfood systems have focused on the conventionalizationhypothesis, which posits that the organic food sectorhas become increasingly bifurcated between ‘‘histor-ical’’ players in the organic movement on one side,and on the other by distributors and industrialoperators recently arrived in the sector, who practicea more conventionalized form of organic agriculturewhich is now on the ascendancy. The most prominentexplanations for the growth and dominance of aconventionalized organic food system have beeneconomic, based in the logics of input costs,especially land rent. We use the cases of the BelgianBlue commodity system and the Belgian organic beefcommodity system to argue that conventionalizationis also cognitive. To understand the role of cognitionin the ascendance of the conventional organic foodsector, we utilize concept of ‘‘re·fe·rentiel’’—or systemof cognitive references—as developed by Muller andJobert. We believe that comparing organic andconventional practices as two systems of cognitivereferences makes a deeper understanding of conven-tionalization possible in two ways: first because itmakes it clear that the two systems coexist on acognitive level, understood in a broad sense as tightlyknit sets of knowledges, beliefs, standards, andimages. Secondly, the concept of re·fe·rentiel enablesone to understand how the conventional system canbecome irreversible (lock-in effect) and thus incom-patible with the development of the organic system.

None

• AB - Spécifique
• belgian blue cattle
• CRA-W
• wallonie
• filières agroalimentaires
• food chain lock in
• organic conventionalization
• stock farming

GeoJournal

31-44

26/07/2008

26 juillet 2008

0.1007/s10708-008-9176-2 Le DOI est une URL unique de référencement d'une publication. Il est donc plus fiable et permanent qu'une URL classique