Value struggles and place: Looking at tradition,authenticity,and heritage through the wine glass

Abstract

Wine is one of the most fragmented and diversified agro-food industries in the global economy, and one that is not yet utterly dominated by large corporate interests. It is also where all sorts of antagonisms to the power of capital are happening, and where the expansion of uniform and branded offerings is counterbalanced by alternative discourses and practices that attempt to instil appreciation for how ‘place’ can deliver a large range of different wines. At the same time, a large proportion of wine has industrial and ‘placeless’ qualities – just like in many other commodities circulating globally through value chains. In this article, I draw on the sociology of value to explore how different ‘worlds of valuation’ shape the ways place becomes a site of value struggles in wine, particularly through contested notions of tradition, authenticity, and heritage. I conclude that capital accumulation along value chains is based not only on superior bargaining power and regulatory and institutional setups that benefit capital against smaller producers and labour but also on the normative work around conflicting worlds of valuation related to place.