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This collected volume analyses labelling as a political and economic operation. It gathers contributions that focus on various domains, including the agri-food sector, the construction sector, eco-labelling, retail, health public policies and the energy sector, considering the use of labels for various objectives, such as providing legal and technical data on consumption products, certifying their quality, and indicating the approval of professional or political authorities. These practices are tied to both public and private interventions that make civic concerns visible and aim to govern them. The book considers 'labelling the economy' as an operation that introduces political questions into the economic realm, while also importing economic modes of reasoning into governance interventions. In doing so, the book considers the sociotechnical apparatus on which any label relies as a nexus where economic and political considerations are brought together.
List of contents
1. Introduction Labels in economic and political life: Studying labelling in contemporary markets.- 2. Contested Terrain: The Ongoing Struggles over Food Labels, Standards and Standards for Labels.- 3. Labelling agroecology: A study of valuation processes in developing countries.- 4. Energy and sustainability labels in the commercial office market in the UK.- 5. The Role of Standards and Exemplars in Consolidating Labels for Sustainable Construction.- 6. The sign, beyond the signal. How the State, small businesses and a frog participated in labelling in the home retrofit market.- 7. Governing by labels? Not that simple. The cases of environmental and nutritional policies in France.- 8. A European market for green certificates? The failed disentanglement of immaterial labels from the materiality of electricity.- 9. The Tower of Labels. Labeling goods in the US Grocery Store (1922-2018).
About the author
Brice Laurent is senior researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at the Ecole des Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, France.
Alexandre Mallard is Director of the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at the Ecole des Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University, France.
