Deskilling, agrodiversity, and the seed trade: A view from contemporary British allotments

Agriculture and Human Values

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 101-114

  Gilbert, Paul Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENT   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Agrodiversity; British allotments; Deskilling; Seed saving; Standardization

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874019794     PISSN: 0889048X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10460-012-9380-z     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Bai, Y., and P. Lindhout. 2007. Domestication and breeding of tomatoes: What have we gained and what can we gain in the future. Annals of Botany 100: 1-10.
2. Barry, A. 2006. Technological zones. European Journal of Social Theory 9: 239-253.
3. Benton, T. G., J. A. Vickery, and J. D. Wilson. 2003. Farmland biodiversity: Is habitat heterogeneity the key? Trends in Ecology & Evolution 18: 182-188.
4. Bernard, H. R. 2006. Research methods in anthropology. Plymouth: AltaMira.
5. Bernstein, J. H., R. F. Ellen, and B. B. Antaran. 1997. The use of plot surveys for the study of ethnobotanical knowledge: A Brunei Dusun example. Journal of Ethnobiology 17: 69-96.
6. Boster, J. S. 1984a. Classification, cultivation, and selection of Aguarana cultivars of Manihot esculenta (Euphorbiaceae). Advances in Economic Botany 1: 34-47.
7. Boster, J. S. 1984b. Inferring decision making from preferences and behavior: An analysis of Aguarana Jivaro manioc selection. Human Ecology 12: 343-358.
8. Brush, S., D. Tadesse, and E. van Dusen. 2003. Crop diversity in peasant and industrialized agriculture: Mexico and California. Society and Natural Resources 16: 123-141.
9. Carrier, J. G. 1995. Gifts and commodities: Exchange and Western capitalism since 1700. London: Routledge.
10. Ceccarelli, S. 1994. Specific adaptation and breeding for marginal conditions. Euphytica 77: 205-219.
11. Cleveland, D. A., and D. Solieri. 2007. Extending Darwin's analogy: Bridging differences in concepts of selection between farmers, biologists, and plant breeders. Economic Botany 61: 121-136.
12. Coomes, O. T., and N. Ban. 2004. Cultivated plant species diversity in home gardens of an Amazonian peasant village in Northeastern Peru. Economic Botany 58: 420-434.
13. DeSilvey, C. 2003. Cultivated histories in a Scottish allotment garden. Cultural Geographies 10: 442-468.
14. Dolan, C., and J. Humphrey. 2000. Governance and trade in fresh vegetables: The impact of UK supermarkets on the African horticulture industry. Journal of Development Studies 37: 147-176.
15. Dunn, E. C. 2003. Trojan pig: Paradoxes of food safety regulation. Environment and Planning A 35: 1493-1511.
16. Ellen, R. F. 1979. Omniscience and ignorance: Variation in Nuaulu knowledge, identification, and classification of animals. Language in Society 8: 337-364.
17. Ellen, R. F., and S. J. Platten. 2011. The social life of seeds: the role of networks of relationships in the dispersal and cultural selection of plant germplasm. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17: 563-584.
18. European Commission. 2009. Commission Directive 2009/145/EC of November 26 2009. Lex: Official Journal of the European Union 312: 44-45.
19. European Commission. 2008. Commission Directive 2008/62/EC of June 20 2008. Lex: Official Journal of the European Union 162: 13-19.
20. FERA (Food and Environment Research Agency). 2011a. Guidelines for making a National List Application in respect of A Vegetable Conservation Variety. Fera Website. http://www. fera. defra. gov. uk/plants/plantVarieties/nationalListing/documents/guidelinesVegConservation11. pdf. Accessed 11 July 2011.
21. FERA (Food and Environment Research Agency). 2011b. Guidelines for making a National List Application in respect of An Amateur Vegetable Variety. Fera Website. http://www. fera. defra. gov. uk/plants/plantVarieties/nationalListing/documents/guidelinesAmateurVegConservation11. pdf. Accessed 11 July 2011.
22. Fitzgerald, D. 1993. Farmers deskilled: Hybrid corn and farmers' work. Technology and Culture 34: 324-343.
23. Franklin, S., C. Lury, and J. Stacey. 2000. Global nature, global culture. London: SAGE Publications.
24. Gell, A. 1986. Newcomers to the world of goods: Consumption among the Muria Gonds. In The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 110-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25. Gibson, R. W. 2009. A review of perceptual distinctiveness in landraces including an analysis of how its roles have been overlooked in plant breeding for low-input farming systems. Economic Botany 63: 242-255.
26. Gilbert, P. 2010. Seed saving, fidelity management, and varietal diversity dynamics on contemporary British allotments. Unpublished MSc Thesis: University of Kent at Canterbury.
27. Gudeman, S. 2009. Necessity of contingency: Mutuality and market. In Market and society: The great transformation today, ed. Chris Hann, and Keith Hart, 17-37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28. Gudeman, S., and A. Rivera. 1990. Conversations in Colombia: The domestic economy in life and text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29. Hames, R. 1983. Monoculture, polyculture, and polyvariety in tropical forest swidden cultivation. Human Ecology 11: 13-34.
30. Harvey, J. H. 1998. The English nursery flora 1677-1723. Garden History 26: 60-101.
31. Heckler, S., and S. Zent. 2008. Piaroa manioc varietals: Hyperdiversity or social currency. Human Ecology 36: 679-697.
32. Humphries, J. 1990. Enclosures, common rights, and women: The proletarianization of families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Journal of Economic History 50: 17-42.
33. Iskandar, J., and R. F. Ellen. 1999. In situ conservation of rice landraces among the Baduy of West Java. Journal of Ethnobiology 19: 97-125.
34. Jaffe, J., and M. Gertler. 2006. Victual vicissitudes: Consumer deskilling and the (gendered) transformation of food systems. Agriculture and Human Values 23: 143-162.
35. Jordan, J. A. 2007. The heirloom tomato as cultural object: Investigating taste and space. Sociologia Ruralis 47: 20-41.
36. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. 1995. Theorizing heritage. Ethnomusicology 39: 367-380.
37. Kloppenburg, J. R. 2004. First the seed: the political economy of plant biotechnology, 1492-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
38. Louette, D. 1999. Traditional management of seed and genetic diversity: What is a landrace? In Genes in the field: On-farm conservation of crop diversity, ed. Stephen B. Brush, 109-142. Florida/Ottowa/Rome: Lewis Publishers/IDRC/IPGRI.
39. MacArthur, R. H., and E. O. Wilson. 1967. The theory of island biogeography. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
40. Major, J., C. R. Clement, and A. DiTommaso. 2005. Influence of market orientation on food plant diversity of farms located on Amazonian dark earth in the region of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. Economic Botany 59: 77-86.
41. Mincyte, D. 2010. Subsistence and sustainability in post-industrial Europe: The politics of small-scale farming in Europeanizing Lithuania. Sociologia Ruralis 51: 101-118.
42. Moskowitz, M. 2009. Calendars and clocks: Cycles of horticultural commerce in nineteenth-century America. In Time, consumption, and everyday life: Practice, materiality, and culture, ed. Elizabeth Shove, Frank Trentmann, and Richard R. Wilk, 115-128. Oxford: Berg.
43. Mosse, D. 2007. Comment on Glenn Davis Stone, Agricultural deskilling and the spread of genetically modified cotton in Warangal". Current Anthropology 48: 92-93.
44. Miller, D. 2002. Turning Callon the right way up. Economy and Society 31: 218-233.
45. Nazarea, V. D. 2005. Heirloom seeds and their keepers: Marginality and memory in the conservation of biological diversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
46. Platten, S. J. 2012. Plant exchange and social performance: Implications for knowledge transfer in British allotments. In Cultivating community, identity, and transition: Socio-cultural aspects of homegardens and gardens, ed. Serena Heckler, x-xx. Oxford: Berghahn Books. (forthcoming).
47. Pratt, J. 2009. Incorporation and resistance: Analytical issues in the conventionalization debate and alternative food chains. Journal of Agrarian Change 9: 155-174.
48. Quiros, C. F., S. B. Brush, D. S. Douches, K. S. Zimmerer, and G. Huestis. 1990. Biochemical and folk assessment of variability of Andean cultivated potatoes. Economic Botany 44: 254-266.
49. Schuiling, D. L. 1995. The variability of the sago palm and the need and possibilities for its conservation. Acta Horticulturae 389: 41-66.
50. Shigeta, M. 1996. Creating landrace diversity: The case of the Ari people and Ensete (Ensete ventricosum) in Ethiopia. In Redefining nature: Ecology, culture, and domestication, ed. Roy F. Ellen, and Katsuyoshi Fukui, 233-268. Oxford: Berg.
51. SI (Statutory Instrument). 2011. No. 464. Seeds, England: The Seeds (National Lists of Varieties) (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
52. SI (Statutory Instrument). 2009. No. 1274. Seeds, England: The Seed (Conservation Varieties Amendments) (England) Regulations 2009.
53. SI (Statutory Instruments). 2002. No. 3175. Seeds, England: The Vegetable Seed (England) Regulations 2002.
54. Stickland, S. 2008. Back garden seed saving: Keeping our vegetable heritage alive, 2nd ed. Bath: Eco-logic Books.
55. Stone, G. D. 2007. Agricultural deskilling and the spread of genetically modified cotton in Warangal. Current Anthropology 48: 67-103.
56. van Heerwaarden, J., F. A. van Eeuwijk, and J. Ross-Ibarra. 2010. Genetic diversity in a crop metapopulation. Heredity 104: 29-39.
57. Wiltshire, R. 2010. A place to grow. London: Local Government Association.
58. Wood, D., and J. M. Lenne. 1997. The conservation of agrobiodiversity on-farm: Questioning the emerging paradigm. Biodiversity and Conservation 6: 109-129.
59. Zeven, A. C. 1999. The traditional and inexplicable replacement of seed and seed ware of landraces and cultivars: A review. Euphytica 110: 181-191.