Naming Food After Places by Apostolos G. Papadopoulos Maria Fonte

Author:Apostolos G. Papadopoulos, Maria Fonte [Apostolos G. Papadopoulos, Maria Fonte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409488811
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2012-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

The traditional actors and their network: local food for local markets

The cottage-industry artisans who rejected the proposal made by the lecturer that they should set up a co-operative society still produce cured ham in Barrancos. How many of them there are is unknown: they produce illegally, operating on an informal basis, for the local market and by order for customers in neighbouring municipalities. Their cured ham is obviously not certified and is sold at a price less that half that of Barrancarnes’ Barrancos Cured Ham PDO. The municipal council has tried to persuade them to legalise their operations and set up shops selling directly to the local market (within a radius of 30 km).

Social, cultural and economic factors help to explain the refusal of the cottage-industry artisans to form a co-operative society and their preference for the current status quo.23 Firstly, they are advanced in years, with low educational qualifications or even with no schooling at all, and lacking in managerial capital. These are all factors that limit individual initiative. Secondly, each of these participants in artisan activity is convinced that it is he who makes the best product,24 and he therefore does not want to share the ‘the technological secret’ with the others. In other words they are lacking in trust, a necessary precondition for work on a co-operative basis. Thirdly, because their business has always been informal in character, they do not wish to be too well-known. Finally, they may not possess the economic capital required for investment in industry. Or they may simply think that the co-operative would not be the best solution for them, either because in Portugal there is no tradition of cottage-industry co-operatives, so that they have no other examples to follow and learn from. Or, simply because it does not fit with their world view or social identity.

In any case they see their own activity as being economically viable. Otherwise the municipal council would already have convinced them to invest in better equipment and buildings (if the small scale is maintained, not much money is required for the necessary investments), to legalise operations and set up shops to sell directly to the local market (local residents and visitors).25 To some extent the local small cottage-industry artisans are identifiable with the old/updated rural element or with rural protagonists currently providing, to cite Ploeg, ‘an intriguing “travelling” of the peasant principle’ (van der Ploeg 2005: 1).

Bearing in mind the sociology of food and recent debate on the relationship between ‘resistance, agency and autonomy’ (Ploeg 2005 and 2007, Friedland 2008, Long 2008) the individual response of the local ham processors can be assumed to be exemplifying what Friedland calls a ‘spontaneous resistant agency’. As he notes, ‘individuals and collectivities, whether consciously or not, may express agency in ways that pose no threat to existing ideas and practices, or in ways that reject existing hegemony’ (Friedland 2008: 62; italics ours). This may be the other face of the ‘peasant agency’ or ‘peasant principle’.

Either because (objectively) they cannot

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