Much research about organic foods standards and certification in the United States employs a critical political economic perspective to interrogate links between certification politics and the “conventionalization” of organic agriculture. While helpful, this literature tends towards a dualistic framework, which emphasizes conflicts between movement-oriented and agribusiness wings of the organic community but obscures deliberative processes that sustain the organic market as an alternative economic space. This article develops a different approach by taking up E. Melanie DuPuis and Sean Gillon’s invitation (...) to “begin a conversation about the everyday forms of civic engagement” involved in the governance of the organic foods market and other alternative economies (DuPuis and Gillon in Agric Hum Values 26:43, 2009). I merge DuPuis and Gillon’s analysis of civic “modes of governance” in the organic sector with a theory of deliberative discourse developed by the cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander. I then apply this approach to examine a 2017 dispute about whether hydroponic growing operations were eligible for certification under the National Organic Program rules. The data indicate that (1) several features of this dispute did not follow the lines of movement/agribusiness conflict emphasized by political economic research and (2) both supporters and opponents of hydroponic certification drew from a common discursive repertoire to advocate for their preferred outcomes. I argue that while this common repertoire does not prevent conflict over the organic standards, it does sustain the importance of civic—as opposed to purely economic or technical—considerations in the sector’s governance. (shrink)

Scholars have established that cultural codes and styles of expression in civil society must be recognized as informal mechanisms of exclusion, calling into question the possibility of the Habermasian normative ideal of the public sphere. This article joins theoretical discussions of how to remedy this problem. Going beyond Alexander's model of "multicultural incorporation" and borrowing from Sewell's theory of the duality of structure, we develop a theoretical framework of code hybridization to conceptualize how civil society participants achieve civil solidarity amid (...) multiple, potentially contradictory cultural legacies. Code hybridization is a process whereby social actors not only incorporate the cultural codes of subordinate groups into the public sphere, but in doing so also potentially transform dominant codes. We conceptualize code hybridization in terms of three analytic steps: enlargement of the terrains of signification; reinterpretation of codes; and mixing of schemas. The resulting hybridized schemas and frameworks are particularly useful cultural tools for developing visions of civil inclusiveness for young, unstable civil societies. Using a brief comparative study of the representation of women in political cartoons in Hong Kong and Taiwan, we offer a concrete example of code hybridization—a process linking the codes of liberty and caring while producing alternative and more inclusive narratives during moments of political agitation. (shrink)