Premium
The farming of trust:
Author(s) -
SESHIA GALVIN SHAILA
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12704
Subject(s) - certification , transparency (behavior) , organic certification , audit , business , bureaucracy , agrarian society , state (computer science) , agriculture , organic farming , public relations , politics , faith , political science , accounting , law , geography , computer science , archaeology , algorithm , philosophy , theology
Certification is increasingly used in diverse spheres of social, political, and economic life, in which it is associated with transparency projects and audit cultures. In the Doon Valley of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, the state government has supported certified organic agriculture since the early 2000s. Although practices of document keeping and inspections required by organic certification were intended to make agrarian practices legible and transparent, in practice they often failed to do so. Officials charged with conducting certification ultimately framed organic agriculture as a moral enterprise, finding sentiments of viśvās (trust, belief, or faith) to be crucial to their work. Rather than producing certainty and transparent knowledge, certification practices may generate forms of uncertainty that compel, and rely for their resolution on, sentiments of trust. [ organic agriculture, certification, audit, transparency, trust, bureaucracy, India ]