Becoming Organic: Nature and Agriculture in the Indian Himalaya

by Shaila Seshia Galvin

Overview

A rich, original study of the social and bureaucratic life of organic quality that challenges assumptions of what organic means

Shaila Seshia Galvin examines certified organic agriculture in India’s central Himalayas, revealing how the fraught concept of organic is less a material property of land or its produce than a quality produced in discursive, regulatory, and affective registers. Becoming Organic is a nuanced account of development practice in rural India, as it has unfolded through complex relationships forged among state authorities, private corporations, and new agrarian intermediaries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300215014
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Series:	Yale Agrarian Studies Series
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Shaila Seshia Galvin is an assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at the Graduate Institute of International Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. She has worked with the Institute of Development Studies, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the UK Food Ethics Council.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction: Remaking the Agrarian on a Himalayan Frontier 1

1 Fertile Ground 44

2 The Limits of Transparency and the Farming of Trust 81

3 Becoming Basmati 111

4 Market Imaginaries and the Horizons of Aspiration 147

5 Exhibiting Organic Uttarakhand 175

Epilogue: Promises of Transformation 210

Notes 223

Glossary 259

Bibliography 261

Index 285

Editorial Reviews

Becoming Organic is an outstanding, historically grounded work scrutinizing the processes through which “organic” as a characteristic of agricultural produce is assembled.”—­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Marc Edelman, City University of New York
 

“What does certified organic agriculture look like in a region that has never undergone agricultural modernization? Through this beautifully written ethnography, Galvin shows us that becoming organic is more than adopting a set of agronomic practices.”—Julie Guthman, author of Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry

“This is a remarkably well written, nuanced ethnography of how farmers in the Uttarakhand Himalaya of India ‘became organic,’ exploring the relationship between organic and industrial/conventional agriculture.”—Ian Scoones, author of The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Transformation
 

“In this carefully researched and beautifully written book, Shaila Seshia Galvin carefully unfolds how the quality called ‘organic’ is constructed in everyday practices of state officials, farmers, and corporation representatives.”—Shafqat Hussain, author of The Snow Leopard and the Goat: Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas

“The ‘organic’ is often identified with an absence, specifically of pesticides. Galvin’s beautiful ethnography attends instead to presence, illuminating the situated labors that bring the organic into being in the Indian Himalaya.”—Sarah Besky, author of Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea

From the Publisher