Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn the current polarizing political climate, what constitutes just has become increasingly questioned and debated in the public arena. Tyrants seem everywhere to shape people's understanding of who belongs in communities and nation‐states and, therefore, who should be given a voice and what should be valued. This paper unpacks the mechanisms of tyranny and the pursuit of justice in the global agri‐food system. The first section discusses justice and tyranny as sociological concepts and practice, followed by the second section that examins two types of tyrannies in the globalized agri‐food system: neoliberal capitalism and community. I argue that neoliberal capitalism and community are the logics for organizing social relations and the sites of enacting tyrannies and justice. Third, I argue that in the tension between capitalism and community in achieving justice, rural becomes critical both theoretically and empirically for understanding the current transformations and the future challenges for transforming agri‐food systems. Finally, the paper concludes with possible contributions of rural sociological imaginations to shaping the discourse of justice and explore the process of justice.

AbstractRapeseed has played an important role in the agriculture of the PRC for millennia as a source of edible oil, industrial products, organic fertilizer and, recently, animal feed. For the last 46 years, the PRC has experienced several dramatic shifts in the political and social environment for rapeseed research. This paper examines the scientific and technical literature on rapeseed since 1949 and identifies the relationship between agricultural research activities and major political and economic transitions in China. The analysis of the rapeseed literature shows: (1) how vulnerable agricultural research in the PRC has been to fluctuations in the political and economic environment, and (2) how the foci of rapeseed research shifted from the pre-reform to the post-reform era. This paper concludes with: (1) some observations about the differences in the role of agricultural research in a socialist and capitalist country, (2) implications about the relationship between political and economic reforms, and agricultural research.

Abstract Not all commodities are things, nor are all things available in society commodities. Then, what are commodities? Using the case of rapeseed and its products in China, this paper examines the role of grades and standards (G&S) in simultaneously determining the life of things as commodities and the position of humans as market participants. In the first section, we summarize our conceptual understandings of commodities. Next, the paper examines tests and trials to which rapeseed in China were subjected by the mid 1990s. We then discuss how G&S represent political processes among commodity chain actors for creating, legitimizing and maintaining the social relations between things and people. Lastly, we discuss our conclusion that the analysis of tests and trials helps us understand the process of commodification as simultaneous transformations of humans and things in a commodity chain while reorganizing linkages among these actors.

This article extends the concept of symmetry to ethics. Using the case of canola in Canada, the authors argue that grades and standards simultaneously subject humans and nonhumans to rites of passage that test their "goodness. " Then, they further develop a tentative typology of standards. The authors argue that these standards allow something resembling the neoclassical market to be established, create the conditions for economic analysis, and allocate power among human actors.

This study provides a cross-cultural test of Bavelas's situational theory of equivocation. Students from the United States and Japan were presented with one of four versions of a questionnaire, prepared in English and Japanese, that consisted of two hypothetical scenarios. Each scenario was altered to create either an avoidance-avoidance situation or a nonconflict situation. The imagined interaction partners in these scenarios were described as someone possessing status either equal to or greater than the students' status. For each scenario, subjects wrote down what they thought they would say in the situation and then responded to several items about their perceptions of the message and situation. Results were strongly supportive of the theory. Both American and Japanese students produced messages exhibiting substantial equivocation, but only when in an avoidance-avoidance conflict situation. Contrary to expectations, such situations did not elicit more equivocation from Japanese students than from American students; nor did relative status affect the use of equivocation. The equivocations of subjects were judged by themselves and by independent coders to be deceptive, though prosocial. Implications of these findings for the theory are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.