ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the politics of regulation and governing that emerge at the intersection between food standards and environmental sustainability. One of the most prominent areas of research increasingly evident in the ‘food networks’ literature is that relating to food standards. Lawrence Busch and Keiko Tanaka’s work on canola, for instance, provides the most frequently cited exemplar of how food standards might be interpreted within the broader Latourian tradition of networks theory. Nevertheless, there are some limitations to this analysis. An intriguing mention of the Foucauldian concept of ‘disciplining’ commodities is evident, but not explicated, in the work by Busch and Tanaka. This chapter provides the opportunity to examine the ‘disciplining’ of commodities through a case study of how the organic social movement sought to create a form of governing over organic products.
