Making cheese: Archaeology of a 19th century rural industry (original) (raw)
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Enterprise & Society, 7, 4: 705-739., 2006
This article traces the uneven development of English cheese-making, from its early commercialization to the eventual triumph of the “cheese factory.” The narrative shows how contemporary actors initiated and adapted to changes in technology, distribution, consumption, and regulation. It indicates that artisanal practices have both borrowed from, and become integrated with, industrial logics and strategies, exemplifying a process that Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin termed the “recombinablility and interpenetration” of different forms of economic organization [World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization (Cambridge. 1997), 2-3]. International comparisons are introduced in order to clarify the reasons for England’s halting and idiosyncratic transition to industrial-scale cheese-making.
The authors’ (2006) Enterprise & Society article is reproduced as part of a two-volume collection of 61 articles, dating from 1938 to 2011., 2013
This article traces the uneven development of English cheesemaking from its early commercialization to the eventual triumph of the 'cheese factory'. The narrative shows how contemporary actors initiated and adapted to changes in technology, distribution, consumption, and regulation. It indicates that artisanal practices have both borrowed from and become integrated with industrial logics and strategies, exemplifying a process that Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin termed the 'recombinablility and interpenetration' of different forms of economic organization [World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization, Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 2–3]. International comparisons are introduced to clarify the reasons for England’s halting and idiosyncratic transition to industrial-scale cheese-making.
Yard signs proclaiming, "Family Farms Not Factory Farms!" are a common site along rural highways in the Midwest. These signs are a direct response to the tremendous growth of corporate agriculture during the second half of the 20 th century and the concomitant decline of the traditional farming model in which a single family owns and operates a productive, commercial farm. While most lay people likely assume that "factory farms" are a fairly recent economic phenomenon, in reality land consolidation and corporate approaches to agricultural production have a long history that stretches back to the late 19th century in the Midwest. A recent cultural resources survey of the Howard Farms property in Lucas County, Ohio documented an early example of corporate agriculture in this region. This survey provides a starting point for the development of a research design focused on the transition from family-owned farms to corporate agricultural enterprises.
Neolithic cheese making: experimental archaeology and public engagement with replica vessels
The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is our most widely dis tributed domestic animal, and occurs around the world in a broad range of ecosystems and societies. However, the chicken was a surprisingly late addition to the domestic menagerie. By combining archaeology, anthropology and scien tific analyses, the AHRC-funded project "Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions" has been investigating the domestication, spread, uptake and subsequent uses of chickens across time and space. Researchers based in universities at Bournemouth (Maltby, Best, Pitt, Feider), Nottingham (Sykes, Miller, Lazutkaite), Oxford (Larson, Lebrasseur), Leicester (Thomas, Fothergill, Foster), York (O'Connor, Collins, Craig, Colonese) and Roehampton (Marvin, Capponi, Ontillera, Ramasawmy, Smith, Zoubek) are involved, covering a wide range of specialist skills. Only a brief introduction to such a huge project is possible here, but more information is available online at
Cultural Regulation, Geographical Indication and the (re) Signification of an Artisanal Cheese
Organizações & Sociedade, 2021
Laws and norms can change the production processes of an organization, with repercussions for the tangible and symbolic composition of its products. Based on this assumption of Cultural Studies, we seek to understand how the practice of cultural regulation by a group of small producers is (re)signifying the rennet cheese produced artisanally in the Agreste region of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. We use discourse analysis to analyze interviews and documents such as the decrees and regulations that deal with processing dairy products in Brazil, as well as those governing the process of Geographical Indication, and compare the cultural meanings that have emerged in two spheres of regulation: the public and the private. Findings reveal governmental characterization of artisanal rennet cheese has been justified by a discourse of “quality” at both the state and federal levels. However, the regulation put in place in the private sphere of the Producers Association makes use of differe...