THE MAKING OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN CHINA: BOUNDARIES, STANDARDS, AND CONTROVERSIESBy Xueshi Li The controversy over whether there is authentic organic food in China has emerged as a response to the rising concerns over health, environmental deterioration, and food safety. This study examines how organic agriculture is defined, debated, and contested among various state and non-state actors, based on ten months of fieldwork in Beijing. Specifically, the chapters examine the following questions--What actors and institutions are involved in developing discourses of organic agriculture? What knowledge (scientific, traditional, or local etc.) is referred to in defining the "authenticity" of organic agriculture? What discourse(s) is (are) used in discussing boundaries between organic agriculture and conventional agriculture? This study uses a number of conceptual frameworks to address the questions, such as "boundary object", "boundary work," "boundary and arena analysis" and "boundary organization." It analyzes organic agriculture food governance through the boundary literature to show how social actors mobilize knowledge to govern. Based on fieldwork materials, the study shows that, at the current stage, Chinese organic agriculture is a boundary object in terms that it is allows interpretive flexibility of social actors; thus different groups are able to work together without consensus. While it is intertwined with the interpretive flexibility of social actors, the authenticity of Chinese organic agriculture will always remain problematic as the result of a lack of concrete formal and informal standards that define authenticity.
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