The right to certify? A grassroot response to standardization
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The right to certify? A grassroot response to standardization
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                                           2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196




                                                                    RESEARCH REPORT

The right to certify?
A grassroot response to standardization
Alexander KOENSLER
Queenʼs University, Belfast
Fabrizio LOCE-MANDES
Queenʼs University, Belfast
Andrea ZAPPA
Terra/Terra




ABSTRACT: Who should have the right to certify? As the influence of certifications of all
kinds increases and penetrates in more and more realms of life, the Peasant Activism
Project investigates forms of resistance of neo-rural activists against the politics of
transparency. Certifications and standards implemented in the name of transparency
often favor large agribusiness. Uncovering the forces that restructure social control in
the name of the moral imperative of transparency, this research report presents a circu-
lar and collaborative conversation between the team of the Peasant Activism Project and
Andrea Zappa who represents an Italian network of small-scale farmers and food pro-
cessors. The focus is on experimental practices of the Participatory Guarantee (PG) that
farmers and food processors use to ensure the safety and quality of their products in-
stead of other, more standardized means of certification. Its goal is to restore trust-
based personal relations instead of implementing top-bottom forms of control. This is-
sue touches the possibility of realizing similar models of cooperation and sharing, al-
though in academic research: is it possible to practice forms of neo-humanistic hori-
zontality that spare social research from some of the risks inherent in the demands for
disclosure and popularization made by research councilsʼ third-mission policies?

KEYWORDS: PEASANT ACTIVISM, FOOD SAFETY, TRANSPARENCY, GENUINO CLANDESTINO, ITALY.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Alexander Koensler, Fabrizio Loce-Mandes,
Andrea Zappa
The right to certify? A grassroot response to standardization
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3279
184                             ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA



Introduction: A Kafkaesque layering of complications
   Who should have the right to certify the quality and safety of food
products, to determine its standards? In Italy, the acclaimed heart of food
activism, the rapidly growing campaign Genuino Clandestino (“Genuinely
Clandestine”) questions the para-state capabilities to decide what is is safe,
secure and healthy. The campaign unites independent small-scale farmers
who claim to produce “genuine” and “natural” food and, yet, their products
often remain at the margins of official legal standards according to European
Union (EU) safety and quality regulations. Small-scale cheese laboratories
may not be fitted with the latest materials, products may not have under-
gone expensive checks and so on.
   This campaign shows: Small-scale farmers and neo-rural activists are par-
ticularly vulnerable in front of an increasingly invasive governance of trans-
parency. The Peasant Activism Project1, hosted at Queen’s University Belfast
and realized in cooperation with University of Perugia, has carried out long-
term ethnographic fieldwork with activists, farmers and consumers associ-
ated with local networks of Genuino Clandestino and, among publications,
produced an ethnographic documentary. The core innovation of our study
derives from its renewed political understanding of food activism. Despite
some works on the politics of food or the political aspects of food activism,
and despite its relative global resonance and notable celebrated exceptions
(e.g. Mintz 1985), anthropological writing on food is usually still anchored in
questions of symbolic aspects of identity and culture, often overlooking is-
sues of governance or political economy. By contrast, we consider campaigns
such as Genuino Clandestino in relation to broader issues of governance, sov-
ereignty and citizenship.
   The various standardization policies implemented over the last decades in
the agri-food sector had a profound impact on how we define farmers, what
we consider to be “safe” food, and how we manage rural landscapes. A
Kafkaesque layering of administrative complications characterizes everyday
life of most farmers (and more and more other professions, such as univer-
sity professors or hospital nurses): streamlined certification processes are
presented as indisputable, motivated by apparently objective and/or com-
mon-sense criteria, while in fact concealing well-defined political interests.

1. The Peasant Activism Project is financed by the Economic and Social Science Research
Council (ESRC) in the United Kingdom, hosted by Queenʼs University Belfast and imple-
mented in cooperation with the University of Perugia (Grant number ES/M011291/1). The
official website is: www.peasantproject.org.


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THE RIGHT TO CERTIFY?                                                                    185


Due to its required investments, hygienic regulations of food production are
considered often as favoring large businesses, while implemented in the
name of food safety. To investigate such politics of transparency is the core
objective of the Peasant Activism Project. Politics of transparency are under-
stood as a key-element in the restructuring of social control through prac-
tices such as certifications and standardizations (Han 2012; Fung, Graham,
Weil 2007). Drawing on writing from Political Anthropology, the project fo-
cuses on the effects of the politics of transparency, often hidden behind the
paradigm’s guise of objectivity. Based on an ethnographic inquiry into novel
forms of resistance to the official transparency-driven governance, the pro-
ject also aims to contribute to renewing conventional, more culturalist per-
spectives in food anthropology (Koensler 2016).

Responding to standardization
   One way to respond to these developments in agriculture is the Particip-
atory Guarantee (PG), one way in academia is the valuation of face-to-face
relations in ethnographic filmmaking. In what follows we present a circular
conversation2 between Andrea Zappa (who represents Terra/Terra, an Italian
network of small-scale farmers and first processors), Fabrizio Loce-Mandes
(post-doctoral fellow in visual anthropology of the project) and Alexander
Koensler (project coordinator). The dialogue evolves around experimental
practices of grassroot responses to standardization, both with the Participat-
ory Guarantee (PG), a grassroot attempt that goes beyond the scope of tradi-
tional certifications, and with face-to-face relations during screening and
debate sessions of our ethnographic documentaries 3. As the PG aims to es-
tablish a community of producers and consumers, it revitalizes alternative
certification practices (Koensler 2015), food sovereignty activism world-
wide, such as Via Campesino and others (Edelman 2014). From here, the con-
versation touches upon the possibilities of realizing similar models of co-
operation and sharing in the academia.


2. The conversation took place on 20 th July 2018 in front of the cow stable of Andrea Zappa
in Southern Umbria. As decided in various movement assemblies, Andrea Zappa is a place-
holder for someone who speaks in public in the name of Terra/Terra, a local network of
small-scale farmers and neo-rural activist part of the national movement Genuino Clandesti-
no. This is a selected transcription of a three hours conversation. Parts of the conversation
have been translated by Eleonora Branchesi. We thank the anonymous reviewers and the
editors of Anuac for their constructive feedback on this short writing experiment.
3. The project team has produced two documentaries, An Experimental Path (38’) and De-
Commodifying Foodways (71’). More information can be found at the project’s website sec-
tion: www.peasantproject.org/gallery/documentaries.

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186                             ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA


   Andrea Zappa (Andrea): Many among us had been organic farmers work-
ing with the official Organic Certification (the so-called “Euro-leaf”, trans-
latorʼs note). We realized over time that this certification has a number of
problems. Official organic certifications are business-oriented. Obtaining an
official certification allows you to apply for financial aid for organic farming.
We were small-scale farmers instead, we are different.
   My own experience, for example, is not just a personal story, it is rather a
collective one. I was in a group that left the city towards the end of the ʼ80s.
We wanted to live in the countryside, together. What we had in common was
the ideal of sharing life, as well as our common political experience in Auto-
nomia Operaia4 and as part of the early squatting movement in Rome. We
wished for ourselves a better quality of life, happier personal relations. We
soon realized that our dream did not fit with the intensive farming models,
the agro-industrial business. We had to do something different. We tried to
build up a reality where food is produced collectively, through horizontal re-
lations.
   Fabrizio Loce-Mandes (Fabrizio): Okay, but how did you Alexander come
up with the idea to conceptualize a research project around this form of act-
ivism?
   Alexander Koensler (Alexander): Clifford Geertz once wrote, possibly in-
spired by Wallace Stevens, «rationalists wearing square hats sitting in square
rooms thinking square thoughts, they should try sombreros». Along these
lines, I am interested in experimental forms of activism. In the realm of so-
called “food-activism”, for example, that means to go beyond what Slow
Food and the organic farming movement do. People like Andrea, if you think
about it, develop original and experimental approaches to food sovereignty.
   Fabrizio: And why do you think this is important to study?
   Alexander: For two reasons: Firstly, the very idea of a Participatory Guar-
antee subverts a growing paradigm of transparency that pervades all aspects
of the contemporary world. Now, anything must have some sort of seal of
quality or warranty. Transparency becomes an instrument to govern people
through apparently objective processes. This is still not fully understood
yet, also academic writing on the subject is growing. Power is still located in
obvious structures or institutions; authority used to be seen as lying within
the king or head of the state, or, if you want, within democratic processes.
However, a moral imperative of transparency seems to take over. A great

4. Autonomia Operaia, literally “Worker’s Autonomy”, is an Italian workerist, Marxist-au-
tonomist political movement that had its apical moments in the ‘70s.


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THE RIGHT TO CERTIFY?                                                                187


deal of contemporary decisive power is accumulated within often invisible
agencies and institutions that make decisions in the name of transparency.
This applies across many sections of society, take for example ANVUR 5. All
these certifying agencies hold the power to decide who is in and who is out
of the system. Upon scrutiny, one will notice that the process of making
something transparent is always a top-down one and that this state of affairs
is never called into question. Now, the idea of Participatory Guarantee is
subverting this dynamic. It is a form of resistance to the hegemonic
paradigm of transparency. Thus, studying these practices can serve us to
better understand some aspects of our governance today.
    The second reason: The PG seems to indicate a turn within the realm of
political imagination. Compared to the recent past, todayʼs political imagin-
ation seems to most people somewhat exhausted. It seems that viable al-
ternatives to the established system are hardly to imagine. It is difficult to
argue against this. Consider the state of political institutions. Now, neo-rur-
al activism and experiments such as the PG revive the political imagination,
but in another way around. Whereas in the past a utopia would be estab-
lished first, and then laboriously pursued, here we look at utopias in the
making. It is very much unlike what happened in the 1970ʼs, when well-
formed utopias of communist or socialist society were thought of as being
laid out there in theory, and the challenge was to turn them into a reality.
What we found here instead is what we in our video called an experimental
path, may be towards a yet unknown utopia based on imaginative practices.
It is a process, a path along which our political imagination unfolds.

“Cold” and “warm” modalities
   Andrea: Here you touched on a crucial point: the operational modality of
the State - and what we are doing instead. The State is founded on a “cold”
modality: There are institutions, controlled from above by higher institu-
tions and in turn controlling lower institutions below them. That is the way
how it is supposed to assure food safety. This system doesnʼt even always
work, as we know. When I used to be a certified organic farmer myself, I have
spent much more time on paperwork than, say, turning my animals out to
pasture. You lose your connection to the territory, to nature, to food, to the
flora and fauna. We are trying to turn this around. With the Participatory
Guarantee we open a fracture into this system. The PG is not something that
exists in isolation: rather, it is integral to a set of practices - a path - that we
are following and experimenting with.

5. ANVUR is the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research
Systems in Italy.

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188                              ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA


    Fabrizio: If we turn back to the question of the political imagination, what
is the ideological environment in which the Terra/Terra network developed?
   Andrea: There is a story here, too. We started to look for ways to sustain
ourselves as soon as we had enough products to sell - mind you, it was not
much. It was the ‘80s, and the first organic shops were popping up. So, we
first sold our goods to them. At one point we realized that the retail price
was twice than what we had sold for, if not more than that! That is when we
began to try and find alternative models of sustenance. At that time, we
would be traveling to Rome a lot. Our paths crossed with those of other com-
rades who also had decided to establish themselves in the countryside. We
decided to join our efforts. And since we had renewed our relations with
some centri sociali6 in Rome we brought our goods to their spaces. The Forte
Prenestino, a self-managed space in Rome, was one of such centers. We or-
ganized fairs about self-production economy. We included more and more
people in our debates, and Terra/Terra was born. It was only a matter of time
before we reached other areas of the city. You see, organizing a network of
neo-rural farmers was a matter of necessity. We needed to build a collective
path towards peasant resistance.
   Fabrizio: And what can be the role of such an experiment?
   Andrea: The Participatory Guarantee (or Participatory Certification) is a
set of practices that we established within the Terra/Terra network. There
are two main functions to it. The first one is most obvious: we still need to
provide some form of guarantee to the people who buy our products in city
markets. Whereas if there is something like the official organic certification,
people are comforted. Even though, in fact, they have no clue of what the jar,
piece of cheese, loaf of bread they buy actually contains. The second reason
why the PG is vital is that it allows us to aggregate more, to share more, to
better raise awareness about our territories.
   Fabrizio: And how does it work?
   Andrea: The heart of the PG is a public visit at the farm or food processing
reality that wants to became part of Terra/Terra. The peasants who want to
enter the network organize this public tour, which other peasants from the
network attend. Producers from the area who are not involved in the net-
work - especially those whose line of work is akin to that of the peasants in


6. Centri sociali are autonomous, self-managed nonprofit spaces that offer social, cultural
and political services. They are often squatted buildings, not rarely tolerated by municipal
authorities. The history of centri sociali is rather unique, although it features some common-
alities with squatted places throughout Europe.


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THE RIGHT TO CERTIFY?                                                                         189


question - are also invited as observers, as well as co-producers 7. For ex-
ample, we rear sheep and make cheese. So, it is other shepherds and cheese-
makers who visit us. It is them who have the knowledge to determine wheth-
er we work in the right way, whether we perform good farming practices.
This is also an occasion for mutual exchange: we ask each other questions
and advise each other about the minutiae of our work. Which rennet to use,
whether we add ferments, how we manage the steps of processing and so on.
This is so much more than what we would have if all the relation among us
would remain limited to meeting at the market. Once you come here, to my
home, you see my workshop where I make milk, you see my animals - well,
once you do this, the relationship between us changes completely.
   Fabrizio: Did you establish any limitations, or shared values, that are ne-
cessary to obtain it? And how do you evaluate the goodsʼ origin, and the
work that goes into their production?
   Andrea: The path towards the PG starts with an email from a peasant or
farming reality to the networkʼs office. The office sends them self-declara-
tion forms, one for each kind of product they want to certify. The goal is to
understand what kind of farm they are: whether they hire hands, whether it
is a family-run, collective, or cooperative business, etc. Once they have de-
clared all this, they come to one of our assemblies to introduce themselves
in person. Then a public visit is scheduled. This tour is the most crucial step.
There are no fixed prerequisites: as we like to say, the path towards a PG is
always under way. It is a process during which we need to make contact with
each other and come to a shared understanding. There is no rule saying in
advance that you need to have this and that. I am saying, beyond the very
basic requirements of being anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, and of
selling exclusively oneʼs own products, of course. Actually, we had some
cases of peasants who contacted us without having understood who we
were: during the visit we would see, for example, that they were using
chemicals on their vegetable patches, and such. We did not say that they
couldnʼt possibly enter the network: instead, we explained that, if they
wanted to, we could help them find a way to remove chemicals from their
farming.

Potential and limitations of participatory guarantees
  Fabrizio: Can the PG come to terms with the problem of undocumented
and seasonal labor, which are so common in agriculture?

7 “Co-producers” is the common expression to describe those who show their support by attending
markets as purchasers, taking part to visits etc.

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190                             ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA


   Andrea: This was a challenge for us at Terra/Terra. We discussed the issue
of working conditions for a long time. We realized how hard it is to face this
subject in agriculture. We are against undocumented labor, as we oppose the
exploitation of all people as a general principle. After a great deal of discuss-
ing, we came to accept the presence of subordinate work, under some condi-
tions. The farmer reality must show that workers are not merely hired hands,
but that they are involved as peers in the farming project. This follows from
our belief that peasantsʼ agriculture should serve the collectivization of
wealth. It is crucial to recreate collectiveness: spaces where wealth can be
found that is redistributable to all.
   Fabrizio: How did the PG evolve in light of all these considerations?
   Andrea: We continually put our practices to the test, even at a national
level: we take part of the national working group on Participatory Guaran-
tees of the Genuino Clandestino national meetings. I will try to explain what
the underlying issue is, and how we deal with it. Take our farm, for example.
We could have organic feed four our animals neatly delivered to us, tidily
packaged and stocked in a truck, and what not. Well, I have never done this
in the thirty years that I have been doing my job. I have always used a
grinder: I power it through the tractorʼs engine or plug it in the electric sock-
et and grind my grains into a flour. I collect the seeds from the vicinity. I do
all this because I want raw materials to be locally sourced. If our aim is to
build solidarity and trust in the area, we just cannot buy organic feed that
comes from who knows where. And there is more. I own five cows and 11,12
acres of land. We decided to put the land to pasture, which means we cannot
use it to grow our own animal feed. There are two reasons why we took this
decision. The first one is that we respect our animals and want them to live
as healthy a life as possible. This way they can graze freely, they can scratch
against a tree, they can seek shade or look for the type of grass they like.
They enjoy a measure of freedom.
   The second reason why we put the land to pasture is that we cannot afford
new machines to work it, our tractor is thirty years old. This kind of things
affect our decisions heavily. So, we decided to put to practice what we had
learned from Genuino Clandestino: inspired by the discourse over food sover-
eignty, we too decided to build local communities in local territories. There-
fore, we put ourselves in touch directly with the other peasants we knew in
the area: it is preposterous that one of us should sell their goods to a trader
for say, €5, only so that he may then sell it to another among us for €20. By
doing so, we tightened our relations with the group of local producers. This
may seem to contradict the practice of the PC, but I think it is well motiv-


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ated. It is a critical situation. Personally, I do not want to buy organic feed is
obtained from seed of unknown origin - not to mention the fact that it would
raise the price of cheese. What I want is to value the creation of relations
within a local space. This is what really makes us different from the cold sys-
tem of rules and guidelines.
   Fabrizio: Is there any chance that the PG may undergo a process of institu-
tional recognition?
   Andrea: Terra/Terra is not at all interested in that. Nor is there any in-
terest among the people of Mercato Brado, which is another network I am in-
volved with, based in the Terni area. See, for us the PG is a practice - a tool -
that we use to achieve something. Our reasoning is very different from that
of large-scale farming businesses, so we are not interested in institutional
validation. I believe there will always be regulations that favor large busi-
nesses while preventing people like us with a flock of thirty sheep from
bringing cheese to a market - because, with a flock of thirty, you simply do
not have enough assets to make the required investments. So, again, no. We
are not interested in existing in an institutional form. The movement goes
on, ‘genuine’ and ‘clandestine’. Should laws be emanated that regulate our
practices, we shall be at the market no matter whether or not they protect
us. We cannot do otherwise, or weʼll die. Processing 5 tons of milk per day is
a very different deal than processing 50lts. Because to process 5 tons, the
processor must necessarily have somebody bring milk to the processing
plants: this requires transportation in bulk tanks, milk refrigeration, fuel
consumption. Those working with 50lts do it in a workshop which is just a
few yards away from the milking barn - and that is the added value.
  Fabrizio: Do you believe the research we carry out can have an impact in
other parts of society? Say, upon legislators?
   Alexander: I somewhat agree with Andrea: there is something vital and
emblematic in the lack of interest in recognizing the PG by governmental
authorities. Research funded by major research agencies in the UK and
Europe today is subject to so-called “impact” or “dissemination” strategies,
to justify the expenditure in the eye of taxpayers. Impact here is generally
conceived in a rather mechanistic way: the researcher is supposed to archive
some kind of social change, but I do not think this lies within our capacities
as social researchers, if we want not go back to colonial interpretation of an-
thropology, for example. In our case, we developed a different approach. Our
research resembles Andreaʼs sentiment: «we will go ahead in any case» with
or without institutional recognition. This is the reason why we did not dis-
tribute our documentary on the internet or in social media. We go where


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192                             ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA


people discuss about food, governance and politics and we can talk with
them, face to face. We also bring along one or two of the protagonists of our
documentary. Thus, we end up usually with rather deep conversations. This
is our alternative impact strategy.

Research as an artisan artifact, passing from hand to hand
   Andrea: I think that the idea of making a documentary that raises aware-
ness through personal relations - that is, the idea of entering public spaces
to screen it together with the protagonists and discuss it, gives it an added
value. It can be done regardless of institutional validation.
   Fabrizio: That is certainly the case. Evidently, the visual medium alone,
distributed on content sharing internet platforms, cannot communicate all
the information we collected during our ethnographic research. It only
scratches the surface of the topic. The format we choose instead, where
screenings are combined with a presentation of our research allows us to
open an in-depth discussion.
   Andrea: Maybe one day a politician will drop by and learn a thing or two.
   Alexander: Okay, everyone is welcome. But that is not one of our chief
purposes, though. We conceived of our documentary in the same way the
neo-rural protagonists of Terra/Terra conceive their products: it is an artisan
artifact that passes from hand to hand, sparking an interest; it is much alike
the PG in that it raises the other personʼs awareness by establishing a con-
tact - it is a warm relation. Not an extraordinary feat. Although, in its mod-
esty, this project was approved precisely because the idea of escaping certain
system dynamics was innovative, as I mentioned earlier.
   Fabrizio: And the analogies run even deeper than that. The way we con-
ceived our researchʼs impact shows parallels with the associative practices of
the communities we worked with. We developed this research in an age
when scientific research clings onto impact scales and researchers are en-
couraged to maximize their impact using tools that deploy cold relations,
such as websites. As Alex said, our research output is made available in
much like the same way the farmersʼ products are: people stop at the market,
ask questions about processing directly to the processor, gather information
about the farmersʼ exchange network, learn about the PG. This, however,
does not unfold along a unidirectional, chronologically path. Screening
events for our ethnographic film work the same way. We facilitate forms of
interpersonal exchange similar to those of Terra/Terra’s farmers. We present
the research project and describe the stage it is at; we introduce the protag-


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onists who in turn tell their stories, their path towards the PG. The public
watches the documentary and asks questions, most times in an informal set-
ting. Thus, people who take part to a screening leave the room bringing an
experience with them, because everything is based on personal relations.
Much like after an open visit for the Participatory Guarantee, you go home
and tell what you learned to friends, family, and acquaintances. In this way
the presentation and screening morph into something different, that goes
well beyond the simple visual product or film screening. Making an impact
through, letʼs call them, “warm” relations. We reach fewer people, but touch
them at a deeper level.
   Andrea: I would not say fewer, though, that is a relative estimation. They
were an occasion for different communities to come together, which was ex-
tremely useful to spread knowledge of the Participatory Guarantee. People
might start considering that maybe there are indeed alternative ways, that
they might want to learn more about the realities that surround them. They
ask questions to themselves, gradually stepping out of the “cold” schematic
modality of thinking we had mentioned. Going back to question of what is
your impact, well, I see an analogy with what we do at our markets, i.e. es-
tablishing relations with urban communities there. The more we succeed in
adding something to the market, in bringing about information and educa-
tion about food, aggregation and exchange, the more our practices are ac-
cessible to the public. This explains why we keep our practices so open-en-
ded: we want to leave room for new horizons and possibilities.
   Alexander: Yet, one must guard against some risks that are common when
seeking an impact. There are the pitfalls of the cultural industry. We were
suggested, for example, to craft short three-minute videos to upload on You-
Tube. At first glance, this might sound like a good idea. But three minutes is
nothing if you want to understand a complex message. It is not our aim to
reach this kind of dissemination. We prefer to engage in discussions that
may take hours, animated by personal relations because they really get to
peopleʼs imagination, they spark something that lasts longer than what they
would get from watching a one-minute video. It is the same problem as with
all industrial products for mass distribution: you can sure make a lot of
money with them, but then... what else?
   Andrea: Yes, we all need to sit together and think things through. Like
when you screen your film within some marginal, local reality where you can
hope to intercept maybe twenty people at most... but those twenty get in-
volved: they discuss patiently and ask questions to each other and to them-
selves, furthering the conversation. It is the kind of circumstance where one

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194                              ALEXANDER KOENSLER, FABRIZIO LOCE-MANDES, ANDREA ZAPPA


can make meaningful contact with other social realities and exchange in-
formation. Had you not been this way, and had we not been this way, this
whole business here – this relation – wouldnʼt have been born.

Final considerations
   “Cold modalities” of standardization permeate more and more all realms
of contemporary life, farming is only one example. The ever-rising number
of regulations in matters of health, sanitary, and quality certifications (or-
ganic, PGI, PDO) cannot be analyzed disjointedly from the systemic trend to-
ward the inclusion of more and more products in the commodification pro-
cesses. As a result of this trend, objects become more and more fluid, i.e. sal-
able and re-salable at all times; increasingly subject to mutual comparison;
progressively more capable of generating profit (asset making). In other
words, the demand for transparency constitutes a precondition for the ex-
pansion of financial capitalism in the agri-food sector (Epstein 2006; McMi-
chael 2006). This is the reason behind the accusations farmers and activists
raise against the way official certifications are regulated, which they regard
as frustration- and alienation-inducing.
   This conversation highlights how the capability of social actors to respond
and resist to the demand for standardization represents the forefront of mo-
bilization in the era of transparency (Koensler 2018). The subversive charac-
ter of the PG can be illustrated in a comment made by one of the founders of
Genuino Clandestino, which we collected during an assembly:
      Nowadays industries and retail chains offer somewhat trendy product lines us-
      ing slogans that imitate the original mottos of our movement: “short produc-
      tion cycle”, “zero food-miles”, “ci metto la faccia” (“I put myself on the line”,
      t/n) ... They took them for marketing purposes because they carry great com-
      municative power. Our power, instead, is the power of the network, the com-
      munity, of the people who believe in our project. This they cannot copy, this
      they cannot take. While they have consumers, we have co-producers.

   Based on this attempt to distinguish between commercialization and
community, it might be possible to conclude: If the vanguard of power dy-
namics proceeds by means of the promotion of transparency through stand-
ardization, then the vanguard of political mobilization advances by re-defin-
ing transparency. In this context, the example of the Participatory Guarantee
of the neo-rural network Terra/Terra can reach far beyond the realm of agri-
culture and food production and can offer, for instance, new insights also
into the practices of restitution in academia.



2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196
THE RIGHT TO CERTIFY?                                                              195




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                                       2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196
                                           2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196




 Alexander KOENSLER, PhD University of Siena 2009, is a Research Fellow at the
 Queen’s University of Belfast and coordinates the pluriannual Peasant Activism
 Project: An Ethnographic Study funded by the Economic and Social Research Coun-
 cil, UK (www.peasantproject.org). He has carried out long-term field research in
 the Negev desert related to the Bedouin-State conflict, experimental activism and
 the production of claims. He held research and teaching positions at the Univer-
 sity of Perugia, the University of Münster and Ben-Gurion University. His work has
 appeared in numerous international journals and he is author of Israeli-Palestinian
 Activism: Shifting Paradigms (Routledge, 2015).
 alexanderiht@yahoo.de
 Fabrizio LOCE-MANDES, PhD University of Perugia 2015, has carried out ethno-
 graphic research on social movements in the field of disability and Public Health.
 Recently he concluded a Postdoctoral research for Queen’s University of Belfast on
 political activism related to food certification in the Peasant Activism Project. He
 has about ten years of research and studies in Medical Anthropology and special-
 ized also in Visual Anthropology, applying his skills in film-making to long-term
 ethnography. He has carried out a long-term ethnographic fieldwork related to
 deafness in multiple social spaces, including associations, state institutions, and
 hospitals, as well as research related to the Cochlear Implant.
 fabriziolocemandes@gmail.com
 Andrea ZAPPA is a placeholder name for someone who speaks in public in the name
 of the network of Terra/Terra, one of the local networks that compose the national
 neo-rural movement Genuino Clandestino.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Alexander Koensler, Fabrizio Loce-Mandes,
Andrea Zappa
The right to certify? A grassroot response to standardization
2018 | ANUAC. VOL. 7, N° 1, GIUGNO 2018: 183-196.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3279
