Values, the politics of their mobilization and ideological identification: examples from the agri-food industry in the EU

Résumé :

This chapter presents a generic perspective on politics envisaged as a process fuelled above all by values and their confrontation over the structuration of socio-economic activity. Values are central firstly because they determine what social actors consider fair and right. Secondly, values have social effects because, through the development and the promotion of “value hierarchies”, certain individual, collective or public actors work to change or reproduce the institutions that delimit, but also render possible and predictable, durable socio-economic relations. Indeed, be it at the local, national or EU scales, it is value hierarchies which provide the basis for the ideological identities that in turn fuel and legitimate both the actors engaged in collective and public action and the public policies this process generally entails. This perspective is illustrated using empirical examples from the agri-food industry in Europe, and in particular two of its contrasting sets of market institutions: those of the milk sector and local food chains.