The Number is the Beast: A Political Economy of Organic-Coffee Certification and Producer Unionism

By T. Mutersbaugh. 2002

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Plant Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0b8ea12a830606b0182d0ec16dd4803a83a8c09a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. D. Klooster
2. A. Shreck
3. J. Guthman
4. Laura T. Raynolds
5. D. Murray
6. M. Goodman
7. C. Getz
8. Andrew Heller

In Plant Science

1. D. Klooster
2. M. Goodman
3. T. Mutersbaugh
4. A. Shreck
5. Chris Bacon
6. J. Guthman
7. D. Murray
8. Laura T. Raynolds

In Strategy and Management

1. D. Klooster
2. A. Shreck
3. T. Mutersbaugh
4. J. Guthman
5. D. Murray
6. M. Goodman
7. Laura T. Raynolds
8. C. Getz

Citations in the corpus

• Land-Change Science and Political Ecology: Similarities, Differences, and Implications for Sustainability Science (2008, background): “Among others, the driving factors examined include conservation regimes imposed by exogenous authority (41), rapid institutional changes in management of common pool resources through privatization and commoditization (82), and shifting of market governance and risk arrangements, especially in volat”
• The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks (2004, background): “…networks they must have strong cooperatives able to collectivize the work and costs of certification (Bray, Plaza Sanchez, & Contreras Murphy, 2002; Mutersbaugh, 2002; Nigh, 1997; Rice, 2001) and that often these cooperatives use resources derived from their involvement in social movement-based…”
• Environmental Certification of Forests in Mexico: The Political Ecology of a Nongovernmental Market Intervention (2006, background): “Others criticize organic coffee certification for denigrating the importance of the social capital of producer organizations (Bray, Sanchez, and Murphy 2002; Mutersbaugh 2002).”
• Participatory organic certification in Mexico: an alternative approach to maintaining the integrity of the organic label (2010, background): “Within these systems, only a small sample of a producer organization’s land is verified by a third party; consequently, the costs of certification are shared (Mutersbaugh 2002).”
• Understanding and (dis)trusting food assurance schemes: Consumer confidence and the ‘knowledge fix’ (2008, background): “Certification is beginning to be researched in the literature, but predominantly from the standpoint of farming and food production (e.g. Guthman, 2004; Mutersbaugh, 2002; Mutersbaugh et al., 2005; Klooster, 2005; Hughes, 2000).”
• Back to the Land: The Paradox of Organic Food Standards (2004, background): “Likewise, organic certification has brought increased work responsibilities and oversight to Mexican coffee cooperatives (Mutersbaugh, 2002).”
• The mirror of consumption: Celebritization, developmental consumption and the shifting cultural politics of fair trade (2010, background): “Several of the contributors to this special issue as well as other writers have been at the forefront of researching and commenting on numerous aspects of DC (e.g. Lyon, 2006; Mutersbaugh, 2002; Whatmore and Clark, 2006; Whatmore and Thorne, 1997).”
• Fighting Standards with Standards: Harmonization, Rents, and Social Accountability in Certified Agrofood Networks (2005, background): “…receipts (although the average is 3%); (c) in-house costs of agricultural extension staff, marketing, and administrative personnel consumes a similar figure; and (d) regional organizational costs connected to certification, such as special travel, total 3 ^ 10% of gross (Mutersbaugh, 2002; 2004).”
• Certified organic agriculture in Mexico: Market connections and certification practices in large and small producers (2005, background): “Mutersbaugh (2002) estimates that regional organizations alone require up to 40 labor days yearly from organization leaders, a service that is rarely paid because of indigenous service norms.”
• Regulating sustainability in the coffee sector: A comparative analysis of third-party environmental and social certification initiatives (2007, methodology): “A number of studies analyze the production impacts of particular coffee initiatives (Bacon, 2005; Bray et al., 2002; Mutersbaugh, 2002; Raynolds et al., 2004; Rice, 2001).”
• The 'Conventionalisation' thesis reconsidered: structural and ideological transformation of Australian organic agriculture (2005, background): “…such as the potential of organic standards and certification procedures established in the Global North to marginalise Southern producers (Mutersbaugh 2002, 2004) and the phenomena observed in some parts of northern Europe of large numbers of farmers reverting entirely to conventional…”
• What organic and Fair Trade labels do not tell us: towards a place‐based understanding of certification (2006, background): “Contextualizing the meaning of certified organic agriculture, Mutersbaugh (2002, p. 1165) describes it as ‘a system of production and distribution that organizes the movement of organic products [and which] seeks widespread support from those who seek socially and environmentally desirable alterna”