The Dynamics of Alternative/Sustainable Economies: Modes of Governance as Everyday Forms of Collaboration

A major strategy in the creation of sustainable economies has been the establishment of alternative market institutions. However, the dynamics of these markets are poorly understood. What are the rules of behavior by which these markets function? How do these markets maintain their separate identity as “alternative” and apart from the conventional (“free”) market system? Building on Lyson’s notion of civic agriculture interpreted as a “mode of governance” (Bulkeley, et al, forthcoming) and through a micropolitics of collaboration as developed in the discipline of science studies, we see modes of governing as forms of collaboration that focus on the particular material objects created by those collaborations (Rhineberger, 1997). We will then illustrate the use of these tools through an extended case study of the mode of governance in the national organic market, looking specifically at the current governance crisis in organic: the Harvey case. DuPuis, The Dynamics of Alternative/Sustainable Economies, page 2 Recent assessments of the politics and potentials of sustainable economies have focused on the role of alternative market institutions, the establishment of “economic alterity” (McCarthy, 2006). Nowhere is this more prominent than in more recent work on alternative food systems, which has emerged from the more obscure study of alternative forms of consumption that comprise 3-5% of all food purchases to a more prominent role as the topic of focus for studies of alternative – sustainable, local, and/or fair -economies as a form of resistance to globalization. As a result, the somewhat parochial interests of rural sociology, rural geography, and food studies have become the major empirical research topic of the sustainable economy movement (see McCarthy, 2006 for an overview). These analyses of have included the studies of direct marketing, farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), organic, local and ethical or “fair-trade” markets as models of alternative, sustainable forms of economic governance in the more academic literature and as model forms of marketing alternatives for economic development in the policy literature. In science studies terms, one might describe alternative food networks as the “model organism” of research in alternative economies. The definition of alternative food networks as the iconic ideal for the study of alternative economies, however, has not gone entirely unchallenged. Many have challenged the claims of true economic alterity in alternative food systems, arguing that the promises of sustainability, equality and local empowerment need to receive careful, if respectful, scrutiny (Guthman, 2004a; Allen and Kovach, 2000; DuPuis and Goodman, 2004). Ironically, many of these more critical analyses of alternative food networks has come from one particular institution: UC Santa Cruz, a university that exists in ground zero of the major organic agriculture regional agglomeration in the US, a place which includes some of the major “conventionalized” organic agriculture firms such as Earthbound Farms (founded by UCSC alumni) (Guthman, 2004a). The “Santa Cruz School” of alternative food systems argues for a clear-eyed view of alternative economies that will avoid the pitfalls of past romantic utopian panaceas, creating a more pragmatic, if imperfect, realist politics that hold up better than the alternative social movements of the past (from Fruitlands to Food Coops) (DuPuis, 2007). It is time, however, for both those more positive and those more skeptical to admit that the micropolitical dynamics of alternative markets are poorly understood, to say that it is time to ask the empirical DuPuis, The Dynamics of Alternative/Sustainable Economies, page 3 and micropolitical question: “What are the rules of behavior by which these markets function? How do these markets maintain their separate identity as “alternative” and apart from the conventional (“free”) market system?” Using data from (1) the internet, (2) other media outlets and (2) government documents on the Harvey case, we will attempt to answer this question, drawing upon the insights of science studies, sociology of knowledge and a the broader literature on market governance as our framework as laid out below. Our answer to the question is as follows: alternative economies, unlike conventional economies, are created and re-created on an everyday basis through forms of civic engagement. Drawing upon Scott’s idea of “everyday forms of resistance” we argue that there is also an “everyday form of alterity” that deserves more careful study. This paper is therefore one of a set (and one of a set of chapters in a book) on the “dynamics of alterity.” The book will begin with a discussion on how to frame a study of the dynamics of alterity, the beginning of this paper providing a draft of that discussion. The chapters will cover four specific cases of everyday alterity creation: milk market orders, organic strawberry production, farmers’ markets and the case discussed here: the Harvey lawsuit and the National Organic Program.