Commodified Meanings, Meaningful Commodities: Re–thinking Production–Consumption Links through the Organic System of Provision

Abstract

Agro–food researchers have yet to systematically theorize how the social life of food intersects with a political economy of food production. Yet without such understanding, activists are unlikely to affect the politics of production in intended ways. It is crucial to understand how the meanings that animate the politics of consumption are translated and distributed as surplus value and rent, and, for that matter, how surplus value and rent value are translated into meanings. This paper is a preliminary attempt to further that understanding by considering these translations in organic food provision. It begins with some recent interventions in conceptualizing taste and then explores their significance in value creation and distribution. It then considers what they offer in understanding the taste for organics specifically. Ultimately, I argue that certain of these tastes present considerable, if different, problems for the commodification of organic food, which are only resolved by a re–making of organic meanings together with unintended distributions of value.