Value struggles: Looking at capitalism through the wine glass

Value struggles: Looking at capitalism through the wine glass

Stefano Ponte (Professor of International Political Economy at Copenhagen Business School)

Discutant : Andy Smith

Abstract:

Understanding contemporary capitalism and the inequalities it engenders requires an explicit engagement with struggles that characterize value creation, appropriation and redistribution and the different forms of power that underpin them. These dynamics take place through a variety of material, symbolic and experiential undertakings. Value is not only embedded in the physical manifestations of convenience, taste, texture and intrinsic quality – but also through immaterial content, such as branding, singularity or the geographic origin of products and the experiences they are connected to, such as gastronomic tourism. Drawing insights from political economy and the sociology of value, valuation and justification, Value struggles explains the imbrication of ‘value chains’ with ‘chains of values’ through the wine glass. Ideational and performative processes are tightly embedded in the very material actions of growing grapes and making, trading, distributing and consuming wine. They also inform valuation processes through imaginaries of terroir and nature, taste and aesthetics, sustainability and authenticity, and the supposed beauty of vineyards and wine tourism destinations. The production, trade and consumption of physical wine are thus deeply enmeshed in specific winescapes – actual places and landscapes that can be visited, but also escapist imaginaries of taste and belonging that allow us to ignore the possible exploitation of labour and nature that may lurk inside the wine bottle or behind the tasting room. Through the analysis three sites of value struggle (place, nature and people) in global, South African and Italian winescapes, Value struggles provides a poignant example of how power is exercised in contemporary capitalism, by whom and with what consequences for producers, workers and nature – both in the global South and the global North.

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