Cognitive Representations and Institutional Hybridity in Agrofood Innovation

Abstract

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: (1) the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and (2) the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation.

Qualities of food

“…But those paradigms are emergent, historical and transitory, involving a process of qualification -or quality making-knowing -shared by a given provisioningconsuming system. Allaire and Wolf (2004) identify two main contemporary cognitive paradigms, locked in conflict, and producing many 'quality hybrids'. The one follows the logic of decomposition, a kind of Taylorisation of food production and consumption, where each input to food production and consumption is seen as an object of innovation.…”

“…While some approaches discussed above seem to allow for an infinite differentiation of products, I emphasise the critical role of integrative capacities which sustain quality systems and product networks at different levels, from the individual producer or consumer competence-building to policy design. Following Allaire and Wolf (2001), two alternative cognitive paradigms are introduced which function as meta-routines in the process of quality creation. I call them the logic of decomposition and the logic of identity.…”

“…I emphasise that the analyst, in so doing, works in the same way as do ordinary consumers, to whom quality representations are fetishistic heuristics rooted in fetishistic metrics and mottoes. We are confronted here with qualification resources that have an identity power or which bring 'transcendent' qualification (Allaire and Wolf 2001). Within the identity paradigm, for example, origin cannot be reduced to the physical characteristics of the product.…”

“…The decomposition paradigm gives valuable representations to the evolution of information structures in the agriculture and food global system of innovation premissed on the collection of highly detailed data through continuous automated monitoring at all stages of production and marketing. According to this paradigm the creation of new products, markets and consumption arenas is predicted by permutations within rapidly expanding databases (Allaire and Wolf 2001). Communication technologies in the production and marketing domains, such as bar-coding, electronic data interchange and precision farming, contribute to an overall database integration.…”

AgroEcological Transitions : changes and breakthroughs in the making

“…As a result of these processes, Allaire and Wolf (2004) describe two emerging paradigms within food innovation: the first one corresponds to the segmentation of products, mainly within supermarkets and long food chains, and the second one to the valorisation of strong identities, mainly in short food chains, like farmer markets.…”