Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Constructing Credibility: Using Technoscience To Legitimate Strategies In Agrifood Governance, Carmen Bain, Elizabeth Ransom, Michelle R. Worosz

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Agrifood scholars working within a political economy framework increasingly draw upon the concept of governance to analyze the regulation of global agricultural and food systems. An important limitation of this approach is that it fails to explain how governance strategies are legitimated. Drawing on three diverse cases that span three continents, our paper examines how standards makers appeal to technoscientific norms and values to establish both credibility for their standards and their authority in constructing them. These cases explore the development and implementation of a standard requiring complete elimination of a tart cherry insect pest in the United States; the …