Sustainability and Scale: US Milk-Market Orders as Relocalization Policy

E Melanie DuPuis and Daniel Block
Additional contact information
E Melanie DuPuis: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 127 College Eight, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
Daniel Block: Department of Geography, Sociology, Economics, and Anthropology, Chicago State University, 9501 South King Drive, Chicago, IL 60628, USA

Environment and Planning A, 2008, vol. 40, issue 8, 1987-2005

Abstract: There has been a recent wave of political and theoretical interest in localism and relocalization as a political strategy in resistance to the hegemonic power of globalization. Some geographers and other observers of spatial politics have been skeptical of these efforts, questioning the effectiveness and the effects of relocalization movements. In response, DuPuis and Goodman have argued for a ‘reflexive localism’ that takes a more pragmatic approach, understanding the ways in which this form of politics can or cannot provide a powerful alternative to globalization. Building on current realist studies, this analysis seeks to build a more reflexive framework with which to understand the politics of localism. To do this the study draws upon the perspectives of political ecology and the politics of scale and uses a comparative historical methodology to look at one of the most effective forms of localized governance in US agriculture: the milk-market-order system. The analysis shows that market orders created economic enclaves that enabled particular agroecological practices, or ‘farming styles’. Market orders functioned as mesolevel institutions that both territorially fixed local agroecologies and mediated with institutions at other spatial scales, a process in which ‘local’, ‘state’, and ‘national’ were coproduced.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a39250 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:40:y:2008:i:8:p:1987-2005

DOI: 10.1068/a39250

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().