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Craig Upright, Review of Globalizing Organic: Nationalism, Neoliberalism, and Alternative Food in Israel, Social Forces, Volume 100, Issue 2, December 2021, Page e24, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab086
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When applied to food products, the term “organic” is both seductive and elusive. It is an adjective that provides a high-value marker in the grocery market. Consumers are generally not as well versed about the distinct processes that qualify for inclusion, and their desires to purchase and consume such products often stem from multiple (and perhaps contradictory) personal values: ideological, environmental, political, or related to status affirmation or virtue signaling. Socially constructing this term involves connecting specific agricultural practices to particular social values, although it is nearly impossible to capture these nuances with the binary distinction embodied by a regulatory organic label.
In Globalizing Organic, Rafi Grosglik is studying the social actors who shaped the field of the Israeli organic food market over the past 50 years: farmers, processors, marketers, retailers, consumers, legislators, and media figures. He wants to find out how these actors translated global conceptions into their local political, social, and economic environments. But this is not a straightforward task. As Grosglik points out early in this work, most of the organic food grown in Israel is exported to other national markets, so neither the food chains nor the actors’ interests in these markets are necessarily linear or directly connected.
