Tad Mutersbaugh - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Tad Mutersbaugh
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of certified environmental products and qualities rangin... more Recent years have witnessed an explosion of certified environmental products and qualities ranging from agronomic and forestry activities such as 'bird-friendly®', shade-grown, sustainable, and organic-applied to diverse products such as coffee, shrimp, timber, carbon (sequestration), and hunting-to industrial processes such as waste management and mining, and to services such as ecotourism. Hundreds of thousands of 'nature workers'-farmers, foresters, fishers, and craftspeople-presently labor to apply 'environmental' standards, and they in turn find their compliance assessed by a burgeoning global certification service sector involving tens of thousands of personnel working in certification agencies, NGOs, national regulatory boards, and ISO working groups. As we detail in a subsequent section on certification types, certified qualities have drawn a good deal of scholarly attention as well, not least within political ecology. The goal of our contribution is to examine the contours of an emerging political economy of nature work centered on inspections and audits, labor practices, and institutional frameworks, and examine its relevance to political ecology from three perspectives: First, from a policy standpoint, certification has become an ineluctable aspect of contemporary conservation initiatives. In both numbers of personnel and areal extent of certified conservation activitieslinking price incentives to the performance of environmental labor-the participation in certified environmental activities is on par with other forms of conservation. Second, from a governmentality perspective, certification protocols are productive of nature. Certification may, in this sense, be viewed as a process through which environmental qualities are pegged to commodities, creating new arenas of environmental decision-making and valorizing particular environmental tasks and spaces while devaluing others. Third, and most importantly with respect to the perennial political ecology concern for environmental justice, the certification service economy organizes 'conservation work', providing jobs for millions of small producers, inspectors, and accreditors. However, the combination of low payments for this work and high certification costs often shifts the economic burden of conservation from (wealthier) consumers to (poorer) producers. In the field, farmers have deemed environmental certification to be an 'ecological neocolonialism'. This pithy expression captures a commonly experienced sense of injustice:
Certification is a set of practices that includes the writing of standards, the inspection and la... more Certification is a set of practices that includes the writing of standards, the inspection and labeling of products that meet those standards, and the accreditation and auditing of producers, inspectors, and agencies involved in certification. This entry will discuss the growth and expansion of certification and certified product consumption, and address the following points. First, certification itself is becoming more standardized under ISO (International Organization for Standardization) guideline 17065. Second, certification networks have expanded to form a global certification industry that is linked to state agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and global institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Third, since certification practices impact environments and conservation organizations, these practices have become a source of contention between national and international institutions and agencies. Finally, certification practices shape the everyday lives of ce...
The MIT Press eBooks, Jan 25, 2008
In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standard... more In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standards have on the service workers who certify organic coffee in Oaxaca, Mexico. (1) These frontline service workers must bridge two service modalities: standards-based certifier practices arising in transnational certification norms and cargo practices rooted in the indigenous service culture of Oaxacan coffee producer villages. Yet, as these service workers seek to speak across this divide and make standards-based certification intelligible to certified parties, they risk making the results of certification work unacceptable to certifying agencies.`Certified' organic agriculture is a monitored food-production system that organizes the movement of organic products from farm fields to consumers. Within certified-organic-food markets, worldwide production currently totals over $20 billion in sales and encompasses 10.5 million hectares (Willer and Yussefi, 2000). Organic coffee holds a 2^3% US/EU (2) market share (Rice, 2001
In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standard... more In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standards have on the service workers who certify organic coffee in Oaxaca, Mexico.(1) These frontline service workers must bridge two service modalities: standards-based certifier practices arising in transnational certification norms and cargo practices rooted in the indigenous service culture of Oaxacan coffee producer villages. Yet, as these service workers seek to speak across this divide and make standards-based certification intelligible to certified parties, they risk making the results of certification work unacceptable to certifying agencies. `Certified ' organic agriculture is a monitored food-production system that organizes the movement of organic products from farm fields to consumers.Within certified-organic-food markets, worldwide production currently totals over $20 billion in sales and encompasses 10.5 million hectares (Willer and Yussefi, 2000). Organic coffee holds a 2 ^...
Abstract. The author argues that organic-coffee certification enacted under the rubric of transna... more Abstract. The author argues that organic-coffee certification enacted under the rubric of transnational certification norms alters the logic and practice of economic management and governance in an Oaxacan (Mexican) peasant producers ' union. As the title indicates, these changes are productive of social and economic tensions. An economic and ethnographic analysis of `certification labor' demonstrates (a) that the work of certification is distributed within producer organizations such that village and regional leaders become burdened by significant new responsibilities, and (b) that practical changesöincluding a new producer logic (`market-price interdependence') and village certification-service providers (`peasant inspectors ' and `community technical officers')öhave a significant qualitative impact upon household and village economic governance. In addition, certification (c) affects the operation of statewide producer unions, altering the ways in which t...
Environment and Planning A, 2005
In the study of global standards, many paths lead back to Karl Polanyi's (2001) analysis of late ... more In the study of global standards, many paths lead back to Karl Polanyi's (2001) analysis of late 19th^early 20th century market utopian efforts to base the international economy on the gold standard. As national currencies were pegged to gold, governments newly stripped of control over monetary policy found it increasingly difficult to protect citizens from the wrenching economic dislocations occasioned by the knock-on effects of a static money supply. Although those powerful nations benefiting most from the single standard managed to preserve social peace, others experienced a widespread breakdown in economic order. Many responded with increased police power that, in some cases, proved fatal to democratic institutions (Polanyi, 2001, page 245; see Burawoy, 2003; Hart, 2004). With respect to contemporary agricultural standards, Polanyi's analysis of market regulation offers three relevant insights: first, social movements seeking to manage markets arise in potent, though discordant, coalitions of multiple class and state actors; second, the remaking of market form reshapes economic practice, altering, among other things, modes of transaction, ways of measuring, gathering, storing, and policing data, and ways of taking decisions; third, these remodeled markets are productive of far-reaching and disruptive changes in social and cultural relations. Drawing upon these insights, in this paper I will argue that agrofood standards are being progressively`globalized'. The standards language is being rewritten, or harmonized, to bring provisions into agreement across national and transnational contexts.
Economic Anthropology
The quest for gender economic equality is becoming a component of corporate and transnational ins... more The quest for gender economic equality is becoming a component of corporate and transnational institutional antipoverty initiatives in the Global South. Framed as “smart economics,” this approach explicitly ties women’s empowerment to economic growth. On one hand, this framework employs a discursive construction that depicts women as attentive, family-oriented entrepreneurs and caregivers who are more likely than their male counterparts to invest in their household and in their children’s future; on the other hand, it involves a set of practices that register and reward women’s participation. The smart-economics movement operates on both public and private registers, ranging from women-oriented government welfare programs to NGO-managed microcredit schemes and, in this article, corporate actors and public–private partnerships engaged in agricultural value chains. Here we examine recent smart-economic coffee industry initiatives, namely, a case study of microbatched “women’s coffee” projects such as Allegro Coffee’s Café La Dueña. We explore how coffee-market value-chain discourses and economic actions affect gendered ideologies and agricultural practices in coffee-producing communities. We compare the impact on members of an Oaxacan (Mexican) fairtrade, organic producer organization that has implemented a women’s microbatching coffee initiative relative to other organizations that have not adopted such programs. We find that although the program fails to demonstrate improvements in gender equity by reducing agricultural asset gaps or enhancing women’s economic decision-making power, landownership, or access to important agrotechnical services, it does lead to practical changes that are positively correlated with an increase in women’s organizational participation, an openness of both women and men to gender-equity programs and services, and women’s increased access to land titles. Smart-economic depictions of women as caring entrepreneurs also found a mixed reception in coffee communities: although women producers agreed with the notion that their coffee is superior, their risk aversion countered the entrepreneurial imaginary.
Econ Geogr, 2008
ABSTRACT This ethnographic case study of a rural production co-op in the indigenous community of ... more ABSTRACT This ethnographic case study of a rural production co-op in the indigenous community of Santa Cruz (Oaxaca, Mexico) documents men's efforts to enlist women's participation in men's co-op projects. Over an eight-year period, men initiated a number of production projects, only to see them fail when women refused to participate. I use data from participant observation, surveys, and interviews to construct gendered time-geographies of agricultural and co-op project labor. These reveal the existence of labor crises, moments in the agricultural calendar when men's labor is insufficient to cover both household and co-op tasks. Men's attempts to mobilize women's labor power were met with women's counterstrategies of resistance. Ultimately, women established their own co-op production section (bakery) when men opted to incorporate them into the co-op as decision makers. The analysis suggests, first, that development project dynamics are fluid and, within specific circumstances, can enhance women's social and economic position vis-à-vis men. Second, participation is always partial and contingent and best examined within a context of ongoing negotiations. Lastly, poststructuralist time-geographies may contribute to development analysis when conceived as both material and discursive practices bound to geographic imaginaries.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2016
Agriculture and Human Values, 2016
In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexic... more In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexico’s organic coffee ‘farm operators’ were women; by 2013 the female farmer rate had increased to 42 percent. Our research investigates the impact of this significant increase in women’s coffee association participation, assessing the extent to which it is correlated with reductions in the gen-der asset gap and increases in women’s voice and agency in their everyday lives. We explore gender equity among 210 members of two coffee producer associations in Oaxaca, Mexico. The data, gathered between 2014 and 2016, form part of a larger, comprehensive study on this topic involving close to 500 producers across four regions, five coffee producer associations, and multiple language groups. We find that female coffee organization members report high levels of household decision-making power and they are more likely than their male counterparts to report control over their income. These significant advances in women’s agency within the household are offset by the fact that the women experience significant time poverty as they engage in coffee production while bearing a disproportionate share of domestic labor obligations. This time poverty limits their ability to fully participate in coffee organizational governance.
"As Durand and Landa note, common property studies bring a new perspective to migration anal... more "As Durand and Landa note, common property studies bring a new perspective to migration analysis, shifting the focus to communal institutions and away from an exclusive focus on family-network processes. Though the privileging of family relations and networks has yielded tremendous benefits, it has tended towards an empirical and theoretical slighting of community relations: common property studies help to fill this lacunae by bringing attention to community governance mechanisms that both affect, and are affected by, migration."
Political Geography, 2002
This article examines the politics of migration in an indigenous Oaxacan village (Mexico), and fi... more This article examines the politics of migration in an indigenous Oaxacan village (Mexico), and finds that the village acts, with measured success, to shape the timing and rhythm of migration. Villagers regard migration as necessary yet problematic. Migration provides income for village families yet undercuts traditions of community service and disrupts the integrity of local development networks that link the community to NGOs, state bureaucracies, and product markets. As a consequence, villagers engage in a cultural politics of negotiation and contestation that moulds both the meanings of migration, and the village social practices that regulate migration. Regulation operates via the setting of norms for village communal labor participation: those who do not undertake assigned tasks (cargos and tequios) face loss of usufruct of communal lands. This finding of strong sending community agency is contrasted with recent migration studies that emphasize the agency of migrant networks and transnational spaces. The paper presents a case study of migration that examines the exercise of community agency via collective labor participation, and the study concludes by calling for a greater analytical focus on the cultural politics of sending communities.
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2014
Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, 2007
Handbook of Research on Fair Trade, 2015
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of certified environmental products and qualities rangin... more Recent years have witnessed an explosion of certified environmental products and qualities ranging from agronomic and forestry activities such as 'bird-friendly®', shade-grown, sustainable, and organic-applied to diverse products such as coffee, shrimp, timber, carbon (sequestration), and hunting-to industrial processes such as waste management and mining, and to services such as ecotourism. Hundreds of thousands of 'nature workers'-farmers, foresters, fishers, and craftspeople-presently labor to apply 'environmental' standards, and they in turn find their compliance assessed by a burgeoning global certification service sector involving tens of thousands of personnel working in certification agencies, NGOs, national regulatory boards, and ISO working groups. As we detail in a subsequent section on certification types, certified qualities have drawn a good deal of scholarly attention as well, not least within political ecology. The goal of our contribution is to examine the contours of an emerging political economy of nature work centered on inspections and audits, labor practices, and institutional frameworks, and examine its relevance to political ecology from three perspectives: First, from a policy standpoint, certification has become an ineluctable aspect of contemporary conservation initiatives. In both numbers of personnel and areal extent of certified conservation activitieslinking price incentives to the performance of environmental labor-the participation in certified environmental activities is on par with other forms of conservation. Second, from a governmentality perspective, certification protocols are productive of nature. Certification may, in this sense, be viewed as a process through which environmental qualities are pegged to commodities, creating new arenas of environmental decision-making and valorizing particular environmental tasks and spaces while devaluing others. Third, and most importantly with respect to the perennial political ecology concern for environmental justice, the certification service economy organizes 'conservation work', providing jobs for millions of small producers, inspectors, and accreditors. However, the combination of low payments for this work and high certification costs often shifts the economic burden of conservation from (wealthier) consumers to (poorer) producers. In the field, farmers have deemed environmental certification to be an 'ecological neocolonialism'. This pithy expression captures a commonly experienced sense of injustice:
Certification is a set of practices that includes the writing of standards, the inspection and la... more Certification is a set of practices that includes the writing of standards, the inspection and labeling of products that meet those standards, and the accreditation and auditing of producers, inspectors, and agencies involved in certification. This entry will discuss the growth and expansion of certification and certified product consumption, and address the following points. First, certification itself is becoming more standardized under ISO (International Organization for Standardization) guideline 17065. Second, certification networks have expanded to form a global certification industry that is linked to state agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and global institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Third, since certification practices impact environments and conservation organizations, these practices have become a source of contention between national and international institutions and agencies. Finally, certification practices shape the everyday lives of ce...
The MIT Press eBooks, Jan 25, 2008
In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standard... more In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standards have on the service workers who certify organic coffee in Oaxaca, Mexico. (1) These frontline service workers must bridge two service modalities: standards-based certifier practices arising in transnational certification norms and cargo practices rooted in the indigenous service culture of Oaxacan coffee producer villages. Yet, as these service workers seek to speak across this divide and make standards-based certification intelligible to certified parties, they risk making the results of certification work unacceptable to certifying agencies.`Certified' organic agriculture is a monitored food-production system that organizes the movement of organic products from farm fields to consumers. Within certified-organic-food markets, worldwide production currently totals over $20 billion in sales and encompasses 10.5 million hectares (Willer and Yussefi, 2000). Organic coffee holds a 2^3% US/EU (2) market share (Rice, 2001
In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standard... more In this paper I examine the paradoxical effects that transnational product-certification standards have on the service workers who certify organic coffee in Oaxaca, Mexico.(1) These frontline service workers must bridge two service modalities: standards-based certifier practices arising in transnational certification norms and cargo practices rooted in the indigenous service culture of Oaxacan coffee producer villages. Yet, as these service workers seek to speak across this divide and make standards-based certification intelligible to certified parties, they risk making the results of certification work unacceptable to certifying agencies. `Certified ' organic agriculture is a monitored food-production system that organizes the movement of organic products from farm fields to consumers.Within certified-organic-food markets, worldwide production currently totals over $20 billion in sales and encompasses 10.5 million hectares (Willer and Yussefi, 2000). Organic coffee holds a 2 ^...
Abstract. The author argues that organic-coffee certification enacted under the rubric of transna... more Abstract. The author argues that organic-coffee certification enacted under the rubric of transnational certification norms alters the logic and practice of economic management and governance in an Oaxacan (Mexican) peasant producers ' union. As the title indicates, these changes are productive of social and economic tensions. An economic and ethnographic analysis of `certification labor' demonstrates (a) that the work of certification is distributed within producer organizations such that village and regional leaders become burdened by significant new responsibilities, and (b) that practical changesöincluding a new producer logic (`market-price interdependence') and village certification-service providers (`peasant inspectors ' and `community technical officers')öhave a significant qualitative impact upon household and village economic governance. In addition, certification (c) affects the operation of statewide producer unions, altering the ways in which t...
Environment and Planning A, 2005
In the study of global standards, many paths lead back to Karl Polanyi's (2001) analysis of late ... more In the study of global standards, many paths lead back to Karl Polanyi's (2001) analysis of late 19th^early 20th century market utopian efforts to base the international economy on the gold standard. As national currencies were pegged to gold, governments newly stripped of control over monetary policy found it increasingly difficult to protect citizens from the wrenching economic dislocations occasioned by the knock-on effects of a static money supply. Although those powerful nations benefiting most from the single standard managed to preserve social peace, others experienced a widespread breakdown in economic order. Many responded with increased police power that, in some cases, proved fatal to democratic institutions (Polanyi, 2001, page 245; see Burawoy, 2003; Hart, 2004). With respect to contemporary agricultural standards, Polanyi's analysis of market regulation offers three relevant insights: first, social movements seeking to manage markets arise in potent, though discordant, coalitions of multiple class and state actors; second, the remaking of market form reshapes economic practice, altering, among other things, modes of transaction, ways of measuring, gathering, storing, and policing data, and ways of taking decisions; third, these remodeled markets are productive of far-reaching and disruptive changes in social and cultural relations. Drawing upon these insights, in this paper I will argue that agrofood standards are being progressively`globalized'. The standards language is being rewritten, or harmonized, to bring provisions into agreement across national and transnational contexts.
Economic Anthropology
The quest for gender economic equality is becoming a component of corporate and transnational ins... more The quest for gender economic equality is becoming a component of corporate and transnational institutional antipoverty initiatives in the Global South. Framed as “smart economics,” this approach explicitly ties women’s empowerment to economic growth. On one hand, this framework employs a discursive construction that depicts women as attentive, family-oriented entrepreneurs and caregivers who are more likely than their male counterparts to invest in their household and in their children’s future; on the other hand, it involves a set of practices that register and reward women’s participation. The smart-economics movement operates on both public and private registers, ranging from women-oriented government welfare programs to NGO-managed microcredit schemes and, in this article, corporate actors and public–private partnerships engaged in agricultural value chains. Here we examine recent smart-economic coffee industry initiatives, namely, a case study of microbatched “women’s coffee” projects such as Allegro Coffee’s Café La Dueña. We explore how coffee-market value-chain discourses and economic actions affect gendered ideologies and agricultural practices in coffee-producing communities. We compare the impact on members of an Oaxacan (Mexican) fairtrade, organic producer organization that has implemented a women’s microbatching coffee initiative relative to other organizations that have not adopted such programs. We find that although the program fails to demonstrate improvements in gender equity by reducing agricultural asset gaps or enhancing women’s economic decision-making power, landownership, or access to important agrotechnical services, it does lead to practical changes that are positively correlated with an increase in women’s organizational participation, an openness of both women and men to gender-equity programs and services, and women’s increased access to land titles. Smart-economic depictions of women as caring entrepreneurs also found a mixed reception in coffee communities: although women producers agreed with the notion that their coffee is superior, their risk aversion countered the entrepreneurial imaginary.
Econ Geogr, 2008
ABSTRACT This ethnographic case study of a rural production co-op in the indigenous community of ... more ABSTRACT This ethnographic case study of a rural production co-op in the indigenous community of Santa Cruz (Oaxaca, Mexico) documents men's efforts to enlist women's participation in men's co-op projects. Over an eight-year period, men initiated a number of production projects, only to see them fail when women refused to participate. I use data from participant observation, surveys, and interviews to construct gendered time-geographies of agricultural and co-op project labor. These reveal the existence of labor crises, moments in the agricultural calendar when men's labor is insufficient to cover both household and co-op tasks. Men's attempts to mobilize women's labor power were met with women's counterstrategies of resistance. Ultimately, women established their own co-op production section (bakery) when men opted to incorporate them into the co-op as decision makers. The analysis suggests, first, that development project dynamics are fluid and, within specific circumstances, can enhance women's social and economic position vis-à-vis men. Second, participation is always partial and contingent and best examined within a context of ongoing negotiations. Lastly, poststructuralist time-geographies may contribute to development analysis when conceived as both material and discursive practices bound to geographic imaginaries.
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2016
Agriculture and Human Values, 2016
In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexic... more In the mid-1990s, fairtrade-organic registration data showed that only 9 percent of Oaxaca, Mexico’s organic coffee ‘farm operators’ were women; by 2013 the female farmer rate had increased to 42 percent. Our research investigates the impact of this significant increase in women’s coffee association participation, assessing the extent to which it is correlated with reductions in the gen-der asset gap and increases in women’s voice and agency in their everyday lives. We explore gender equity among 210 members of two coffee producer associations in Oaxaca, Mexico. The data, gathered between 2014 and 2016, form part of a larger, comprehensive study on this topic involving close to 500 producers across four regions, five coffee producer associations, and multiple language groups. We find that female coffee organization members report high levels of household decision-making power and they are more likely than their male counterparts to report control over their income. These significant advances in women’s agency within the household are offset by the fact that the women experience significant time poverty as they engage in coffee production while bearing a disproportionate share of domestic labor obligations. This time poverty limits their ability to fully participate in coffee organizational governance.
"As Durand and Landa note, common property studies bring a new perspective to migration anal... more "As Durand and Landa note, common property studies bring a new perspective to migration analysis, shifting the focus to communal institutions and away from an exclusive focus on family-network processes. Though the privileging of family relations and networks has yielded tremendous benefits, it has tended towards an empirical and theoretical slighting of community relations: common property studies help to fill this lacunae by bringing attention to community governance mechanisms that both affect, and are affected by, migration."
Political Geography, 2002
This article examines the politics of migration in an indigenous Oaxacan village (Mexico), and fi... more This article examines the politics of migration in an indigenous Oaxacan village (Mexico), and finds that the village acts, with measured success, to shape the timing and rhythm of migration. Villagers regard migration as necessary yet problematic. Migration provides income for village families yet undercuts traditions of community service and disrupts the integrity of local development networks that link the community to NGOs, state bureaucracies, and product markets. As a consequence, villagers engage in a cultural politics of negotiation and contestation that moulds both the meanings of migration, and the village social practices that regulate migration. Regulation operates via the setting of norms for village communal labor participation: those who do not undertake assigned tasks (cargos and tequios) face loss of usufruct of communal lands. This finding of strong sending community agency is contrasted with recent migration studies that emphasize the agency of migrant networks and transnational spaces. The paper presents a case study of migration that examines the exercise of community agency via collective labor participation, and the study concludes by calling for a greater analytical focus on the cultural politics of sending communities.
Dialogues in Human Geography, 2014
Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, 2007
Handbook of Research on Fair Trade, 2015