Ken MacDonald

Within France, the Languedoc-Roussillon region (now part of Occitanie) is home to about one third of the nation's area of certified organic vineyards. Each year, the world's largest organic wine fair, Millésime Bio, takes place in the city of Montpellier. This trade fair is an important site where organic wine is not only sold but also given meaning in the market, and importantly, differentiated from but made com- mensurate with conventional wine. In this paper, we exam- ine processes and practices of ‘qualifying’ organic wine, including by means of relational processes of association and dissociation. Drawing on collaborative event ethnogra- phy and other qualitative methods, we focus on individual and institutional actors engaged in creating forms of com- modified meanings that circulate with organic wine. In Languedoc-Roussillon, these meanings reflect and reinforce a longer-term so-called shift to quality in wine production, yet also emphasize continuity over change, particularly through emphasis on ongoing role of artisanal, independent growers. We argue that qualification thereby works not only through association with independent growers but also by dissociation, specifically from Languedoc-Roussillon's agrarian tradition of generic wine production and from the central role played by wine cooperatives in the social repro- duction of the region's small-holding grower class.

Highlights
• Transition toward quality wine production in the Midi region of southern France reflects wider norms in French quality agro-food production and regulation but also departs from it.

• Diverse practices and policies comprising a move toward more sustainable wine production in the Midi are highly relevant to the shift to quality wine making but are not synonymous with it.

• The Midi shift to quality wine production involves a dynamic re-articulation of independent and cooperative modes of vinification and includes important changes to cooperative practices and governance.

• Cooperative growers have been slower than independent growers in the uptake of more sustainable agronomic practices, owing in large measure to economic and logistical challenges.

• In-depth profile of three ethnographic subjects highlights ways that individuals negotiate and give shape to broad changes in the Midi winescape but also the ways these individuals make choices constrained by broader social, institutional and environmental context.

Over the past two decades, the incorporation of market logics into environment and conservation policy has led to a reconceptualization of “nature.” Resulting constructs like ecosystem services and biodiversity derivatives, as well as finance mechanisms like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, species banking, and carbon trading, offer new avenues for accumulation and set the context for new enclosures. As these practices have become more apparent, geographers have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research that has highlighted the effects of “green grabs”—in which ‘‘green credentials’‘ are used to justify expropriation of land and resources—in specific locales. While case studies have begun to reveal the social and ecological marginalization associated with green grabs and the implementation of market mechanisms in particular sites, less attention has been paid to the systemic dimensions and “logics” mobilizing these projects. Yet, the emergence of these constructs reflects a larger transformation in international environmental governance— one in which the discourse of global ecology has accommodated an ontology of natural capital, culminating in the production of what is taking shape as “The Green Economy.” The Green Economy is not a natural or coincidental development, but is contingent upon, and coordinated by, actors drawn together around familiar and emergent institutions of environmental governance. Indeed, the terrain for green grabbing is increasingly cultivated through relationships among international environmental policy institutions, organizations, activists, academics, and transnational capitalist and managerial classes.

This edited volume explores how NGOs have been influential in shaping global biodiversity conservation policy and practice. It encapsulates a growing body of literature has questioned the mandates, roles, and effectiveness of these organizations – and the critique of these critics. This volume seeks to nurture an open conversation about contemporary NGO practices through analysis and engagement.