The theoretical objective of the workshop “Value and values in agro-food processes”  is to investigate connections and overlaps of different ‘values’ with exchange ‘value’ and to discuss both conflicts and positive synergies among them. ‘Values’ are understood to refer to political and moral orders socially and culturally defined, while the term ‘value’ refers to the exchange value linked to the various markets (labor, land, products, logistics and distribution) that are involved in the determination of prices in the provisioning chains and therefore impact the final price for consumers.
The approach of this workshop is supported by the importance of agro-food systems in social reproduction, as noted by the EU Horizon 2020 program “Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and the Bio-economy”. Within this program that is still in its first stages, organic farming and both economic and social sustainability of European farmers are essential. Moreover, it also takes into account relations with non-European producers and consumers in order to promote sustainable forms of agro-food systems on a global scale.
From the point of view of economic anthropology, it is important to address these processes from an ethnographic perspective that puts subjects’ experiences and aims at the centre, taking into account cultural and social contexts for action, practices and moral concerns in order to articulate them all at other scales with institutional and macroeconomic forces.

Source: http://actualites.ehess.fr/nouvelle6294.html

• Session 1. Political processes and agro-food systems
• Session 2. Moral Economies in agro-food processes: inside and outside the market
• Session 3. Social and cultural identities and the food chain
• Session 4. Mediation and mediators
• Session 5. Values and activism in agro-food
• Round Table: Value and values in agro-food processes

Jacqueline Nivard

Jacqueline Nivard, Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine

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