What makes organic agriculture move - protest, meaning or market? A polyocular approach to the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture

Summary

Many different actors have hopes and aspirations for the future of organic agriculture. They have different perspectives on organic agriculture with different understandings of what it is and what makes it move. Each perspective entails a certain understanding of organic agriculture featuring certain concepts and values and a particular logic or rationality. It is important to acknowledge this heterogeneity when investigating the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture. We suggest a polyocular approach that facilitates a comprehensive and balanced understanding of organic agriculture by enabling us to handle different perspectives reflexively. To illustrate this approach we describe three significant perspectives on organic agriculture based on protest, meaning and market. No perspective is the ‘right’ one and, we claim, different perspectives on organic agriculture cannot be merged to one. We hope that polyocularity as a general analytical tool, and the three specific perspectives, will be helpful in understanding the future development of organic agriculture and how it may be influenced.