Review of From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research, Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16, by Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds

Tanaka, Keiko

English

eGrove (Univ. of Mississippi)

Journal of Rural Social Sciences Volume 26 Issue 2 Volume 26, Issue 2 Article 9 8-31-2011 Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research. Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16 Keiko Tanaka University of Kentucky Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss  Part of the Rural Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Tanaka, Keiko. 2011. "Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research. Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16." Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 26(2): Article 9. Available At: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol26/iss2/9 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Population Studies at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Rural Social Sciences by an authorized editor of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss.edu. Journal of Rural Social Sciences, 26(2), 2011, pp. 147–150.Copyright © by the Southern Rural Sociological Association Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura andMark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and ClassicalThemes in Rural Sociological Research, Research in Rural Sociology and Development,Volume 16. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010 (275 pp.),ISBN 978-0-85724-281-3, US$124.95. Reviewed by Keiko Tanaka This edited volume, published in the Research in Rural Sociology andDevelopment series, is a product of the XII World Congress of Rural Sociology, heldin 2008 in South Korea. I was delighted to read a few chapters, which were basedon the paper presentations I had listened to and read in Goyang as a participant ofthe meeting. I congratulate the four editors for their fantastic editorial work with18 manuscripts written by authors from across the globe (15 countries) with variedEnglish writing skills. As expected from any edited book, the intellectual merits ofthe chapters are uneven. By keeping the length of each chapter relatively short,however, the editors ensured that all the manuscripts met a high standard of qualityin presenting arguments grounded in appropriate theory-framing and empiricaldata. As emphasized in the first page of the Introduction, this book is not a typicalconference proceeding, but a collection of quality research papers from 13 differentcountries, including five on Europe, seven on Asia and the Pacific, three on LatinAmerica, and one on Africa. All manuscripts went through a rigorous peer-reviewprocess. The book is divided into four thematic sections: (1) Sociology ofAgriculture, (2) Development, Rural, Community, and Migration, (3) Consumption,and (4) Natural Resources and Rural Women. By organizing the book thematically,rather than geographically, each section allows readers to compare conceptualapproaches to a given theme among three to six case studies included in the section. Readers will soon discover that despite the diverse sociohistorical and geophysicalcontexts of the agrifood system, farming, and rural communities in these countries,farmers, rural residents, urban consumers, and citizens across the globe sharesimilar challenges (e.g., depeasantization, aging, food safety, migration, ruralidentity, and natural resource management), which have resulted from agrarianrestructuring during the last five decades. Under pressure to make agriculture,fisheries, and forestry more competitive and efficient (see Chapter 5 for the case ofthe global poultry industry), there has been tremendous creativity and resilience put1471Tanaka: Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio KawamurPublished by eGrove, 2019148 JOURNAL OF RURAL SOCIAL SCIENCESforth to preserve farming and the rural economy as viable loci for economic,cultural, and social production. Such examples as joint farming in Norway (Chapter1), Résau Semences Paysannes in France (Chapter 2), the Noh-no kai in Japan(Chapter 4), and the Rural Heroines Exciting Network in Japan (Chapter 18) showthe importance of building networks, or “social capital,” among those who sharecommon interests. The case studies from the above chapters and also from Chapter7 by Chiengthong give a life to repesantization as a sociologically valuable conceptby illuminating how the state, corporate, community-based organizations haveplayed important roles enabling and constraining farmers and rural residents inpursing their livelihoods. In the U.S. and Europe, the (re)building of the local food economy has becomepart of growing social movements to improve the advanced capitalist system of foodproduction and consumption. Yet, these movements are often grouped largely intotwo categories – one that emphasizes food consumption as a sign of distinction (i.e.,foodies) and the other that focuses on food as a human right (i.e., food sovereignty).In Part III: Consumption, two case studies of direct marketing illustrate that both inJapan (Chapter 12) and Vietnam (Chapter 13), direct marketing has become animportant entrepreneurial strategy for farmers as well as a response by consumersto address their concerns with food quality and safety. In Chapter 14, Moralespresents an interesting example of how the state, through state-owned companiesfor food distribution (i.e., Mercal C.A. and PDVal), plays a vital role in theproduction and distribution of food in society, notably to ensure food access amonglow-income households by maintaining affordable food prices and consistent foodquality.The changing sociocultural and geophysical landscapes of rural communities isanother overarching topic in the book. Ashwood (Chapter 8) and Cavalcanti(Chapter 9) present theoretically engaging discussions that problematize theclassification and categorization of “rural” and “community” respectively, not onlyin the appropriation of their representations, and therefore, meanings, but also inthe control of the economic, political, sociocultural, and moral resources associatedwith these terms. The complexity and fluidity of rural “otherness” is addressed byMurakai et al. (Chapter 11) in a case study of migration of retirees to ruralHokkaido in Japan and also in two case studies about immigrants in rural Australia(Chapters 10 and 17). The Japanese case studies in this collection (e.g., Chapters 3, 4, 18) particularlyshow important roles which women play in reorganizing producer-consumerrelationships and redefining the meaning of farming and “rural” through “Chisan2Journal of Rural Social Sciences, Vol. 26 [2019], Iss. 2, Art. 9https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol26/iss2/9 BOOK REVIEWS 149ChishÇ” (local production, local consumption) initiatives. erni Isteni’s study ofthe fertility behavior of the farm population in Slovenia (Chapter 6) suggests thatfor many farm couples, the reproduction of offspring becomes more than a strategyfor household survival and continuance of kinship lineage; it also expresses thecommitment of farm couples to the welfare of their community and to thepreservation of rurality as a space for investing in economic, political, sociocultural,and moral resources.In the last section, Chapters 15 and 16 both emphasize the importance ofcapacity building in environmental governance. Chapter 15 cites instances ofsustainable forestry management in post-socialist Croatia and Albania, whileChapter 16 examines community-based water governance in Ghana. These casestudies, along other studies published elsewhere, remind us of the importance ofhistorical context in which the organizational capacity has emerged for naturalresource management. The book will be particularly useful to those of us, including myself, who teachundergraduate and/or graduate seminars on the sociology of globalized food andagriculture in U.S. universities and colleges. The book provides rich case studies ofthe challenges which rural communities and the agrifood sector outside the U.S.face, including agricultural sustainability, aging of farming population, the role ofrural women, and management of communal resources. Because these case studiesemploy a diverse range of theoretical and methodological approaches, the book canbe used as a textbook for research design courses in rural sociology. Moreover, therelatively short length of each chapter makes the book accessible for upper-levelundergraduates who have already taken an introductory course on the sociology offood and agriculture.There are two minor weaknesses of this collection. First, I was disappointedthat none of the work by Korean scholars (whose country held the XII WorldCongress) was included in this collection. Second, the intellectual merit of this bookwould have been greater if the editors had provided a concluding chapter thatsynthesized the theoretical and methodological issues raised from diverse casestudies across the world.Overall, this is a remarkable collection of rural sociological studies on a widerange of topics and issues, which is generally hard to find in English publications.This edited book makes a significant contribution to the literature of the sociologyof food, agriculture, and rurality.3Tanaka: Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio KawamurPublished by eGrove, 2019150 JOURNAL OF RURAL SOCIAL SCIENCESAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYKeiko Tanaka is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University ofKentucky. Her research focuses on the role of scientific knowledge and experts inglobalizing the agrifood system and enabling/constraining alternative foodeconomy. With her graduate students, she currently conducts research on variousaspects of Kentucky’s local food economy. Contact information: Keiko Tanaka,Department of Community and Leadership Development, University of Kentucky,Lexington, KY 40546-0215 (email: ktanaka@email.uky.edu).4Journal of Rural Social Sciences, Vol. 26 [2019], Iss. 2, Art. 9https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol26/iss2/9

Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research. Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16

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Alessandro Bonanno, Hans Bakker, Raymond Jussaume, Yoshio Kawamura, and Mark Schucksmith, eds., From Community to Consumption: New and Classical Themes in Rural Sociological Research. Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Volume 16

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