ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a research project that explores the evolution of the Swiss dairy industry, in particular its industry milk chain, after the removal of the national quota system in 2009. It identifies two coexisting ontologies of a regional cheese: the market cheese and the cooperative cheese. Both are enacted in networks of relations through repeated processes of meaning, attribution and translation. After the deregulation of the milk market, Prolait was directly confronted with the general unsustainability of the food system in which it was embedded, above all regarding the economic and social sustainability at the level of the dairy farms. The Swiss dairy industry research project applied classical qualitative research methods. However, from conception to the last phases of the project, the intention was to remain receptive to significant shifts in connections, relations and practices.
