Page 353 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

9781412934633-Chap-22 1/10/09 8:54 AM Page 324

324 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

by the need for collective action for survival Expanding on the tendencies of over-
and differences in access to power. accumulation and underconsumption, early
twentieth century, observers of the global
movements of capital, such as Hobson and
Lenin, argued that competition for profitable
THE MODERN FOOD SYSTEM markets led to tendencies towards concentra-
tion and centralization of capital, and to the
The modern food system has emerged and emergence of monopolies. The growing ten-
evolved gradually in the last 500 years. The dency to export capital led to imperialist
basic tenets of this period are broadly shaped expansion and colonialism. Rivalries for the
by the general characteristics of the capitalist control of territories among imperial powers
accumulation process identified with private and emerging nation states were responsible
ownership of means of production and gener- for armed conflicts at the regional or the
alized commodity relations. The expansion world level (Hobson, 1938; Lenin, 1970).
of commodity relations freed labour both
from feudal bondage and from access to and
control of means of production. In an
increasingly commodified economy, where FOOD REGIMES
producers lost their traditional rights of
access to land and where all means of pro- The dynamics of accumulation, the agents of
duction are privatized, labour itself became a expansion and the nature and patterns of
commodity. Day-to-day survival compelled political conflict have presented significant
people to sell their labour power in return for variations during different phases of the
a wage by entering into contractual relations global expansion of commodity relations
with the owners of the means of production. (Koc, 1994). Each of these stages, while
While driven by the coercive laws of com- reflecting the general laws of motion of the
petition among individual enterprises, the accumulation process, has been unique in
capitalist system simultaneously socialized terms of the dynamics of production and
the labour process and division of labour by distribution, and the patterns of socio-
emphasizing ‘working together’ and ‘co- political arrangements and state regulations
operation’ within the enterprise. (Aglietta, 1979; Koc, 1994; Lipietz, 1987;
Competition among individual producers for Van der Pijl, 1984). From a ‘world system’
the maximization of profit required each perspective, various observers (Friedmann
enterprise to find ways to increase the pro- and McMichael, 1989; Le Heron, 1993;
ductivity of labour by modernizing the social McMichael, 1994) have identified food
division of labour (Marx, 1977: 437). As all regimes that correlate with dominant eco-
enterprises operated under these competi- nomic trends, unique regulatory premises,
tive pressures, the anarchy of production historical characteristics, national and inter-
would necessarily lead to periodic crises of national policy features. While domestic
overproduction and cause a decline in rates political and social influences are responsible
of profit. This in turn created further pres- for variations in the patterns of capitalist pen-
sures for the spatial expansion of commodity etration and resistance to it, the food regimes
relations around the world. As Engels argued, concept allows us to see general economic
‘the contradiction between socialized pro- and political tendencies that have led to the
duction and capitalistic appropriation … current corporate global food system. In the
present[ed] itself as an antagonism between following section we will examine patterns
the organization of production in the individ- of competition, conflict and cooperation
ual workshop and the anarchy of production during the three food regimes in the twenti-
in society generally’ (1975: 61). eth century.