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Historisk tidskrift 124:1 • 2004

Innehåll (Contents) 2004:1

Uppsatser (Articles)

Mat och identitet? Livsmedel och livsmedelskonsumtion. Internationella livsmedelsregimer och nationella/regionala reaktioner.

Ulf Jonsson

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Summary

Food and identity? Foodstuffs and Consumption. International Agro-food Regimes and National/Regional Responses

Food is not only a question of nutrition but to a large extent also of culture. Food preferences are constituted in long term processes of interaction between forces of change and historically and culturally formed preferences. Today countries and regions are under the influence of the same global market forces and the same global changes. However, homogenisation is far from complete. The impulses of rapid and thorough transformation induced by global market forces, market times, to use the conceptual apparatus of the Italian agrarian economist Maria Fonte, are countered by the force of tradition times, i e historically and culturally constituted preferences. This article focuses on the continuous co-existence of these forces in the European agro-food system since the late nineteenth century.

In the first part the concept of international agro-food regimes introduced by the sociologists Philip McMichael and Harriet Friedmann is discussed. A clearly increasing internal division of agricultural trade from the 1870s and onwards did not result in a homogenisation of European food consumption. On the contrary, we see the persistence of patterns that had developed over a considerable period of time.

The second part is concerned with a comparative study of post-war Sweden and France. To a large extent, similar global forces influence these societies. However, the response and the reaction differ considerably. This is especially true regarding the mounting critique of large-scale mass production and standardisation of food. In Sweden concerns with health and ecology form the core of the objections, while in France mass production is criticised on gastronomic grounds.

The third part is an intensive case study of gastronomic niche production in the French cheese industry. The role of Products of Designated Origin, Appellation d´Origine Controlée, AOC, is explored. This sector constitutes around 16 per cent of the French cheese production. To earn this label an entrepreneur cannot produce outside a designated geographical area and must adhere to specific methods of production. For most AOC-cheeses raw milk is required. Thus, the AOC-label is not a trademark and the property of an individual company. It belongs to the producers of a specific area as collective good as long as they adhere to the rules of the regulation. These cheeses have achieved a solid reputation of authenticity and local specificity in a world of increasing standardisation. These qualities are becoming more and more of a global asset, that adds to the prestige of French industry. At the same time, by imposing clearly defined restrictions on the expansion of production, the AOC-system tends to reduce the room of manoeuvre for the large companies and consequently opens up a space for small-scale producers. Not that the really important actors in French cheese industry are absent from this niche, but the system creates conditions for a peaceful co-existence between different actors. In a very subtle way the French cheese industry illustrates how the continuous co-existence of market times and tradition times is articulated in the present day global agro-food system.