The Dictionary of Human Geography

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The tensions between these two impulses

have proved potentially creative, and geog-

raphers’ efforts to recognize and work through

them have been a major contribution to the

interdisciplinary field of agro-food studies.

These efforts bring quite different levels of

analysis into common focus to examine the

social and economic connections between,

for example, global and local networks,

corporateandhousehold actors, production

andconsumption processes. The influential

collection of essaysGlobalising food, edited by

David Goodman and Michael Watts (1997),

exemplifies these contributions. But, as this

same volume indicates, the tensions between

the two impulses in agricultural geography

have also generated some significant analytical

disagreements and silences, including a grow-

ing divergence between North American

and European agro-food research in terms of

theoretical influences, analytical foci and pol-

icy engagement. Crudely put, the divergences

revolve around the extent to which the social,

political and cultural diversity of food produc-

tion and consumption processes are admitted

into the compass and terms of analysis.

However, there is arguably a more widely

shared sense emerging among geographers

and others about the need to direct attention

to (at least) three critical issues that have

been eclipsed and/or marginalized by the

terms of political economic analysis. First,

there is the question of ‘nature’andfarm-

ing’s impact on valued environments, cul-

minating in the reorientation of agricultural

subsidies (notably the European Common

Agricultural Policy) towards the promotion

of environmental rather than productivity

outcomes (Lowe, Clark, Seymour and

Ward, 1998). Second, there is the rise of

consumptionas a key focus of analysis, not

least in the political significance of consumer

anxieties around industrial agriculture asso-

ciated with a series of ‘food scares’ (Fried-

berg, 2004). Linking these two themes is a

growing interest in so-called ‘alternative food

networks’ or ‘quality foods’ such as fair-

trade, organic and animal welfare foods.

Here, attention focuses on the bodily cur-

rency of agro-food networks as they connect

the health and well-being of people (both as

food consumers or producers), the animals

and plants that become human foodstuffs,

and the ecologies that they inhabit (Stassart

and Whatmore, 2003). sw

Suggested reading

Freidberg (2004).

agricultural involution A term coined by the

anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1963) torefer to

the intensification and elaboration of the agrar-

ian labour process without substantial gains in

per capita output. Based on his studies of rice

paddy production in post-colonial Java and

concerned with prospects fordevelopment,

Geertz posited that rice production there hin-

dered themodernizationprocess. Without the

application of new methods, it absorbed

virtually all existing labour, so that productivity

merely kept up with population growth. His

thesiscanbecontrasted withtheboserup thesis

(Boserup, 1965), which sees population growth

as inducing technological change. (See also

intensive agriculture.) jgu

Suggested reading

Harriss (1982).

Agricultural Revolution A collection of so-

cial, technological and productivity changes,

which took place somewhere between the

sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and

which collectively revolutionized English agri-

culture. These changes are generally associ-

ated with theindustrial revolutionand are

widely thought to have promotedindustrial-

ization, both by reducing agriculture’s share

of the workforce and by enabling a much

larger population to be fed. The same term is

also sometimes used to describe similar agri-

cultural changes in Scotland and Wales in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well

as in Continental Europe in the nineteenth

century. Whilst there is general agreement

amongst historians and historical geographers

that an Agricultural Revolution took place in

England, there is profound disagreement both

as to when and where it took place, and as to

what it entailed.

Writers on the Agricultural Revolution have

drawn attention to one or more of three major

areas of change (Overton, 1996):

(1) A change in the social organization of

agriculture, usually described as a shift

frompeasantagriculture to agrariancap-

italism, a process sometimes termed an

‘agrarian revolution’. This process had

two central features. First, there was a

long-term shift away from production

for use to production for sale; such

commercialization clearly began in the

medieval period and may have been

essentially completed before 1700. Sec-

ond, there was a shift away from the

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AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION