Cooper, Tamsin Camille; (2003) A critical examination of the social processes underpinning agricultural change: A case study of the viticulture sector, Languedoc, Mediterranean France. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The thesis addresses a series of questions surrounding the social processes underpinning contemporary agricultural change in Western Europe. An actor-centred approach is employed to collect field evidence as a means of investigating the local social processes involved in the negotiation of change and to capture its contested nature. A case study approach is adopted, examining recent change in the viticulture sector of the Languedoc, Mediterranean France. The investigation centres on a viticultural cooperative, Les Vignerons du Pays d'Enserune, and its territorial and production partners up to the regional level. It explores how the actors of this local network are negotiating the shift from the production of table wine to wine of a higher quality, and from a productivist to a multifunctional agricultural regime. The thesis privileges the voices of local actors but seeks to use the empirical material collected to contribute to broader academic debates about agricultural change. Conceptualisations of change in the recent literature focus on a particular organising heuristic, namely the post-productivist transition, which has been developed in, and applied to, the industrialised farming regions of Northern Europe. It is suggested that a hybridisation can be achieved between local interpretations of change and this meta-narrative leading to a more nuanced understanding of the processes of change which, in turn, serves to imbue the notion of the post-productivist transition with enhanced explanatory power.

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