Organic Agriculture Movement at a Crossroad - a Comparative Study of Denmark and Japan

Summary

Along with apparent institutionalisation of organic agriculture that took place in the last couple of decades, the role of organic agriculture organisations as a social movement actor has increasingly being put into question. Under this circumstance, there can be observed an evidence of “division” among these organisations at being foe or ally to this trend of institutionalisation. Why have such competing trajectories existed in this social movement field? And how have different trajectories evolved throughout the time? Through a comparative study of two organisations related to organic agriculture in Denmark and Japan, it argues that a cause of the discrepancy can be found in fundamentally different formulations of the concepts of organic agriculture and the related movement, and thus different organisational fields in which the organisations have been embedded. It further attests that the process of external institutionalisation, punctuated typically by the establishment of the national organic law, has affected the internal institutionalisation of both organisations, regardless of its self-determined orientation toward pro- or anti- institutionalisation. Yet, how far or how fast the internal institutionalisation process will develop may still depend on the orientation of an organisation, when it potentially can preserve substantial autonomy from such process by refraining itself from creating business-client relationship with its own constituency and from compromising direct participation of its constituency to collective actions.