6533b85afe1ef96bd12b9cd0

RESEARCH PRODUCT

L’organisation des circuits courts par les intermédiaires.

subject

description

The dissertation deals with the institutionalisation of proximity in agri-food markets and the place occupied in this process by non-economic intermediaries (employees of associations, researchers, members of staff from the ministry of Agriculture, advisers of the chambers of agriculture). By varying the scales of investigation, from the national to the departmental level, and by articulating qualitative and quantitative methods, this work points out the paradox that constitute the development of those intermediary agents, as proximity is progressively defined and objectified as a virtuous component of the merchant relationship. On the basis of a sociology of merchant institutions attentive to study concurrently historical and social conditions of market constructions and their specific operating logics, we aim to restore the struggles for the monopoly of the legitimate definition of “short supply chain”, understood as a category of merchant organization. In the context of reconfiguration of alliances which previously framed and ranked agri-food markets, the analysis shows that the linking of farmers and consumers in market exchange rests on the reduction of their social and political distance. But finally, the structuration of “short supply chain” is only allowed because of the self-empowerment of intermediary agents contributing to legitimize and define them, as in the same time they make invisible their own practices. Therefore, by gaining a reticular position on those markets, the intermediaries contribute to redefine the frontiers of the producers’ space.