Individual choice and social values: Choice in the agrifood sector

Abstract

In his celebrated 1951 work, Social Choice and Individual Values, economist Kenneth Arrow asked how the values of individuals might be aggregated into a social choice. Today, we live in a world in which choice is celebrated as a virtually undiluted good. Indeed, in the agrifood sector in much of the world, there is considerable evidence that the range of choices has increased markedly in the last 30 years. In much of the world today, we can choose from a vast array of items in the local supermarket, as well as from a range of restaurants that differ on price, quality, and ethnic or regional specialties. Consumer choice is also seen as a means of promoting fair trade, animal welfare, geographically specific food and agricultural products such as wines and cheeses, and fair labor practices, as well as protecting the environment and biodiversity, among other things. In short, choice is seen as both “revealing preferences” of consumers as well as their ethical stances with respect to various issues facing the world today. But all this assumes that choices are individual. It not only accepts the methodological individualism common to mainstream economics and psychology as a research strategy, but assumes that it provides an adequate means of understanding and organizing the world. However, if we reject that individualism as both research strategy and social project, and grant that humans are social beings, then appropriate food choices are learned through a complex process of interaction. One might say that the Arrow points the other way: individual choices are and must be based on socially held, shared values. Governing this process requires rethinking and revisioning the future of agriculture and food.