Certification Regimes in the Global Agro-Food System and the Transformation of the Nature-Society Relationship

Ecological Modernization or Modernization of Ecology?

in Nature and Culture
Author:
Md Saidul Islam School of Social Sciences and Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore msaidul@ntu.edu.sg

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Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of environmental certification regimes in the global agro-food system—a trend characterized as an example of the ecological modernization approach—which emerged largely because of the rise of consumer sovereignty and the neoliberal push for environmental and social “quality” in food production and processing. Based on a robust analysis of global aquaculture, the article argues that the environmental certification regimes privilege some actors, species, and cultures while marginalizing others. While the fundamental tenet of the ecological modernization approach is to shape capitalism by ecological principles, I argue instead that through environmental certification, ecology or nature itself is largely shaped, transformed and restructured to fit into and thereby serve neoliberal global governance and accumulation in a normalized manner. The example of certification regimes is therefore more like a “modernization of ecology” rather than ecological modernization.

Contributor Notes

Md Saidul Islam is Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences and Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). He is a former Visiting Scholar of MIT. His research interests include environmental sociology and international development focusing on industrial aquaculture, global agro-food system, climate change, food security, and environmental sustainability. He has published seven books and more than four dozen articles and book chapters on these topics. He also taught at the College of William and Mary in the United States, York University in Canada, and Nankai University in China. ORCID: 0000-0002-6217-0430. Email: msaidul@ntu.edu.sg

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