Agri-environmental Governance as an Assemblage Multiplicity, Power, and Transformation Earthscan Food and Agriculture Series

In recent decades, the governance of the environment in agri-food systems has emerged as a crucial challenge. A multiplicity of actors have been enrolled in this process, with the private sector and civil society progressively becoming key components in a global context often described as neoliberalization. Agri-environmental governance (AEG) thus gathers a highly complex assemblage of actors and instruments, with multiple interrelations.

This book addresses this complexity, challenging traditional modes of research and explanation in social science and agri-food studies. To do so, it draws on multiple theoretical and methodological insights, applied to case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It elaborates an emergent approach to AEG practices as assemblages, looking at the coming-together of multiple actors with diverse trajectories and objectives. The book lays the foundations for an encompassing theoretical framework that transcends pre-existing categories, as well as promoting innovative methodologies, which integrate the role of social actors ? including scientists ? in the construction of new assemblages. The chapters define, first, the multiplicities and agencies inherent to AEG assemblages. A second set tackles the question of the politics in AEG assemblages, where political hierarchies interweave with economic power and the search for more democratic and participative approaches. Finally, these insights are developed in the form of assemblage practice and methodology. The book challenges social scientists to confront the shortcomings of existing approaches and consider alternative answers to questions about environmental governance of agri-food systems.

1. Introduction: agri-environmental governance as assemblage Part I: Assembling ontologies: multiplicities and agencies 2. Assembling payments for ecosystem services in Wales 3. Carolina dreamin’: A case for understanding farmers’ decision-making and hybrid agri-environmental governance initiatives as complex assemblages 4. Killing two (or more) birds with one stone: the case of governance through multifunctionality payments in Japan 5. Assembling halloumi: contesting the EU’s food quality label policy in the Republic of Cyprus 6. From ‘disciplinary societies’ to ‘societies of control’: an historical narrative of agri-environmental governance in Indonesia Part II: The politics of territorialisation 7. Assembling value in carbon forestry: practices of assemblage, overflows and counter-performativities in Ugandan carbon forestry 8. Not defined by the numbers: distinction, dissent and democratic possibilities in debating the data 9. Media, decentralization, and assemblage responses to water quality deterioration in Uruguay 10. The "dirty diarying" campaign in New Zealand: constructing problems and assembling responses 11. Beyond soyisation – Donau Soja as assemblage Part III: Assemblage for building new AEG practices 12. The politics of big data: corporate agri-food governance meets "weak" resistance 13. Assemblage and the epistemology of practice: imagining situated water governance

Jérémie Forney is Assistant Professor, Anthropology Institute, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Chris Rosin is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Tourism, Sport and Society, Lincoln University, New Zealand.

Hugh Campbell is Chair in Sociology, Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work, University of Otago, New Zealand.