From Richard LeHeron

Hi Ian and all

First, many thanks to Ian and to the contributors to the blog, for the range of very insightful points posted. I have found them most helpful in clarifying questions, especially around the limits to knowledge production strategies, alternative visions of P-C relations and political and ethical activity generally. Second, I need to declare my post-structural political economy/ecology approach, which I have been working with for most o the 2000s (see Le Heron 2007a for some further thoughts on this). This does mean I keep seeing some old political economy concerns popping up for renewed attention! And a lot of other dimensions too, such as timulating knowledge exchange and different decision making situations, very post-structural stuff. Third, these remarks are a pretty loose set of reflections, but here goes.

I'll open with where I was at in November 2007 (Le Heron 2007b) with respect to following. I had been heavily influenced by Ian's efforts to open up new kinds of spaces in global commodity chains and different kinds of pedagogic practices and so when I found myself thinking through the expansion from New Zealand of Fonterra the big NZ dairy corporate, I began to wonder whether there was merit in using practices of following (at least in the NZ context and current moment) to explore organisations and organisational emergence. This is going beyond ethnography, things and commodities. I led a World University Network seminar that outlined some dimensions that I felt might be productive in terms of following organisations. Since then I have been actively considering following as a problematic, both questioning how we are representing and enacting worlds. Ian and Ian et al. and the PIHG trilogy 'following', 'mixing' and 'afters' has enlarged my understandings, it has brought me up short

I have a number of concerns for the dialogue, mostly different to those posed so far.

What is the institutional and disciplinary context in which the trilogy is set - an arbitrary three years following a journal cycle, or is it more? Is this three-part conception actually limiting where our discussion goes? I believe it is a very valuable way forward in many settings, especially the performative. So, where is the discussion on the internationally significant experiments with cross-boundary dialogue in the UK around agriculture and food? Following attempts to mix, such as RELU or BRASS, would give a different spin on afters. Such questioning may not be the emphasis of the two PIHG papers, but an example of their wider work. Le Heron and Lewis (2007) make some suggestions about considering the changes in curriculum in sub-disciplinary areas mindful of changes in the globalising higher education scene.

Does mixing have more potential to do work if we thought about it more as meeting and working with others? I see mixing as being a metaphor too of contestation, how to work in 'rooms', everyday. Not just lenses, windows, eating others. How have people been trained to think seems to loom large in all this? Much is 'not-mixing' rather than 'mixing'. How do we take and mix Barbas, Bost and Cook et al. and others into decision making contexts, is a challenging question for afters. Again angles on this hae been dealt with in Le Heron (2009).

Why are geographers hesitant to engage with bigger actors in the agri-food scene? A rather different food geography I found myself involved in was a co-presentation at the recent New Zealand Geography Conference. Stuart Gray, a senior manager from Fonterra and I 'followed' Fonterra's development out of NZ by creating a conceptual space that we both inhabited. Through this we looked at all sorts of mixing/non-mixing as Fonterra has engaged via strategic partnerships in different dairy spaces, so reshaping the globalising dairy supply chain.

Afters? I also find myself wondering if this playful idea is shutting down following, as it could imply the end of a meal, in the sense of a stimulus followed by a response.

Where has 'following' been taking me (us), what political/ethical subject positions and subjectivities have I found myself in, through different sorts of interventions (especially beyond text)? This is perhaps the more interesting question that I think should be further addressed. At the moment the discussion has remained in representational space; reporting on the 'how we tried but succeeded/failed' stuff is what is urgently needed. Additional/new/may be trznsformational knowledge, about capacities and capabilities as well.

Cheers
Richard

References

Gray, S. and Le Heron, R. 2008 Globalising New Zealand ? Fonterra and shaping the future New Zealand Geographer Keynote Address, New Zealand Geographical Society conference, Wellington, 3 July

Le Heron, R. (2007a) Globalisation, governance and post-structural political economy: perspectives from Australasia, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 48, 1, 26-40

Le Heron, R. (2007a) Following the globalising organisation: towards a politics of emergence, Presentation to World University Network seminar, 6 November, University of Sheffield {pasted below}

Le Heron, R. (2009) Food and agriculture in a globalising world, in Castree, N. Demeritt, D. Liverman, D. and Rhoads, B. (eds) Companion to Environmental Geography, Blackwell, Oxford, forthcoming

Le Heron, R. and Lewis, N. (2007) Globalising economic geography in globalising higher education, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 31, 1, 5-12


Following the globalising organisation: towards a politics of emergence

Richard Le Heron
School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science
University of Auckland
and
Leverhulme Visiting Professor
Department of Geography
University of Sheffield

Abstract
I take the idea of ‘following’ and ask what new political and ethical spaces might open up were such a methodology applied to other actors/actants, such as big or small globalising organisations. In doing so, I make a number of connections to wider work on diverse economies and socio-cultural and ecological dimensions. The presentation focuses on actor net-working notions and emphasises structural conditions, connectivities and possibilities, situated contestation over investment in particular contexts involving geographically distributed actors, and in-the-making negotiation of outcomes. In the presentation I work the example of Fonterra (see Campbell and Le Heron 2007; Gray et al. 2007, 2008; Greenaway et al. 2002), the globalising New Zealand dairy co-operative, to illustrate how following the emergence of an organisation and a globalising industry both problematises many conventional assumptions about and strategies for the production of knowledge and at the same time offers multiple sites and issues for new styles of political and ethical engagement.

Sections of the seminar
Background, researchers and introduction
Following as a methodological intervention
Fonterra as a globalising organisation
Followings – relational journeys
Understanding emergence
Towards a politics of emergence

Background to the seminar
The genesis of the presentation is my interest in developing economic geography practices for a globalising world (Le Heron and Lewis 2007). Two influences in particular bear on this interest – the experiences of lived economic geographies in the New Zealand context and my professional engagement with a slowly globalising (as distinct from internationalising) economy geography community. The example of expansion of Fonterra, the New Zealand dairy corporate, has encouraged me to look more closely at how geographers at large might engage with contemporary developments. My post-structural political economy work (Larner and Le Heron 2002; Le Heron, 2006, 2007) leads me to conclude that we need both representational knowledge (which we are good at producing) and performative knowledge (where we have few capacities/capabilities and experience). ‘Following the globalising organisation’ is a contribution in this spirit.

My current understanding regarding food and agriculture
In the 21st century food and food actors are both shaped by, and constitutive of, two mega-regulatory trajectories; political and economic developments in the neo-liberalising global economy and the rise of new moral economies around the rights and responsibilities of individuals and institutions with respect to food. These dynamics and the resulting natures and experiences of food can be understood geographically and historically, as well as materially and discursively. How attuned are we to this new reality when attempting to produce knowledge about food?

The world foodscape is increasingly dominated by globalising entities: big supermarkets; big producers, processors and traders; big public regulators and private auditors; and big citizen and consumer NGO and social movement voices. Focusing on Fonterra in the New Zealand context as a globally interesting illustration makes sense – because of my long association with dairying, Fonterra’s size and global reach and the blend of research expertise brought by various research teams in New Zealand to the ‘followings’ of Fonterra.

Main arguments
A brief introduction to following: Following as a methodological intervention has slowly gained legitimacy within economic geography. Researchers working on agriculture and food and the geography of development have led this initiative. In his recent review, Cook et al. (2006) begins his review by juxtaposing his experiences with Shelley Sacks’s wonderful exhibition, Exchange Values: Images of Invisible Lives, featuring banana growers in the Caribbean that was held in Birmingham in 2004 (which I shared with him on one day), with his own imagining of what one might encounter by going to any supermarket before opening time. Sacks’s point and the one Cook et al. picks up on is voicing … the personal experiences that are hidden and embedded in preparing the world we encounter in daily life. His project is aimed at ‘encouraging people living in different parts of the world to better imagine, feel, discuss, appreciate and maybe try to improve their relations with one another’ (Cook et al., 2006, 662)
Assemblying resources: My view is that following as a knowledge production strategy can be taken further and that there is much available that we can harness for this task. In suggesting that the organisation is a suitable focus I realise that there are risks of black-boxing the organisation. But providing organisations are understood relationally, that is as fields of coalitions, with organisational and geographical reaches that are multi-scalar and changing, then we can use organisations are a vehicle for generating different and diverse points of entry into processes and the nature of connectivity.

Conditions of possibility in knowledge production: Focusing on possibilities is a challenging idea, for at least four reasons. First, it disturbs the notion that the world can be represented in some straightforward, clear and stable way. Second, if there are possibilities then how we move from possibilities to the choice and exercise of an option becomes a central interest in knowledge production. Third, the geography of who and where connected actors are becomes integral to any consideration of possibilities. Fourth, in this rather more complicated field both politics and ethics enters. Both are about influencing outcomes, somewhere, involving people and things and ideas.

Followings as relational journeys
In considering any organisation the organisational and geographical reach will undoubtedly involve a variety of encounters, with connections obvious and less obvious amongst people and places. My suggestion is that thinking of followings emphasises the multi-faceted, open ended and expanding nature of the methodology. One might begin with one focus but find a whole host of additional directions to investigate and fresh possibilities to ‘meet’ others. Using followings as a strategy with respect to Fonterra has been surprisingly effective in explicating New Zealand related connectivities.

Understanding emergence
Why am I arguing that the notion of emergence is so important to any enquiry? The concept implies several things: yet to be completed nature, uncertainties, complexities, interdependencies, constitutive effects. It can also imply in-the-making decisions and constitutive processes, through new new possibilities, from new lines of political and ethical engagement.

Towards a politics of emergence
The italicised word towards highlights the preliminary nature of this direction. Two quotes are especially helpful in opening up the encounters of followings to political and ethical concerns. JK Gibson-Graham and other post-structural political economy style thinkers encourage us to engage in ‘the politics of trying to imagine and practice development differently’ (Gibson-Graham, 2005, 6) (emphasis added as these dimensions are key to taking followings forward). Elsewhere (Amin and Thrift, 2005, 236) contend we widen our horizons, through imagining the ‘possibility of learning from a politics of working through inevitably difficult coalitions’.

Some references
Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2005) ‘What’s left? Just the future’, Antipode, 220-238
Campbell, H. and Le Heron, R. (2007) ‘Big Supermarkets, Big Producers and Audit Technologies: the Constitutive Micro-Politics of Food Legitimacy Food and Food System Governance’, In Lawrence, G. and Burch, D.(eds) Supermarkets and Agri-food Supply Chains, Edward Elgar, 131-153
Gibson-Graham, J-K (2005) A Postcapitalist Politics. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Gray, S. Le Heron, R. Stringer, C. and Tamasy, T. (2007) ‘Competing from the edge of the global economy: the globalising world dairy industry and the emergence of Fonterra’s strategic networks’, Die Erde 138, 2, 1-21
Gray, S. Le Heron, R. Stringer, C. and Tamasy, C. (2008) ‘Does geography matter? Growing a global company from New Zealand’, In Stringer, C. and Le Heron, R. (eds) Agri-Food Commodity Chains and Globalising Networks, Ashgate, Aldershot, forthcoming
Greenaway, A, Larner, W and Le Heron, R (2002) ‘Reconstituting motherhood: Milk Powder Marketing in Sri Lanka’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, 6, 719-736
Larner, W., Le Heron, R. (2002) ‘From economic globalisation to globalising economic processes: Towards post structural political economies’, Geoforum, 33, 4, 415-419
Le Heron, R. (2006) ‘Towards governing spaces sustainably – reflections in the context of Auckland, New Zealand’, Geoforum, 37, 441-446
Le Heron, R. (2007) ‘Globalisation, governance and post-structural political economy: perspectives from Australasia’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 48, 1, 26-40
Le Heron, R. and Lewis, N. (2007) ‘Globalising economic geography in globalising higher education’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 31, 1, 5-12