The Moral Ecology of Organics

Mary Richardson

The issue of the relationship between humans and the environments in which they live has long been central to anthropological inquiry. However, it has taken on increasing relevance as the survival of human societies is threatened by the destruction of the non-human world. This raises a number of ethical issues that are being explored increasingly particularly under the name of bioethics. However, the literature on agricultural ethics is mostly limited to the debate over livestock practices, and alternative agriculture is only beginning to receive attention from social scientists interested in ethical issues. Yet values often lie behind the choice to adopt non-conventional approaches to farming. This research focuses on knowledge, practice and values among organic farmers in Québec. It uses qualitative research methods (including about 40 in-depth face-to-face interviews) with organic farmers from four large regions in Québec to develop an anthropological approach to organic agriculture as both social movement and embodied practice.

In this paper I will explore the ethics of responsibility – for various life forms, for wild and domesticated “nature,” and for human communities – embodied by organic farmers in their daily work and in their ways of producing and sharing various forms of knowledge. I will also discuss other ethical, socio-ecological and political values, such as caring for others, caring for the land, community involvement, education and health promotion that can found among organic farmers in Québec. Far from a uniform social and ethical landscape, farmers’ views of ideal practice, their spiritual convictions, and their commitment to specific forms of organic farming vary widely. Those points of divergence and convergence are part of the wealth of material that I will draw on in exploring the tensions between the local and the global, between the production imperative and respect for natural processes, between innovation and conformity to a highly regulated legal environment, and between scientific knowledge and empirical, embodied knowledge.

Full Paper

Source
Presented at the Social Research in Organic Agriculture Symposium. Guelph, Ontario. January 2005


Author Location and Affiliation
Department of Anthropology, Université Laval,mryrchrdsn@yahoo.ca


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