5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The values in agrifood contexts often include intangible principles like solidarity, equality, sustainability, and mutual trust, but their exact meanings and implications can vary widely. Alternative food initiatives like community-supported agriculture, food co-ops, farmers' markets, and the slow food movement advocate these values beyond economic considerations, which they believe are underrepresented in the mainstream food system. Addressing the shortcomings of the mainstream food system, which is often criticized for contributing to multiple global crises, requires integrating the values upheld by these alternative food initiatives on a broader scale.

Scaling alternative food initiatives necessitates an engagement with the use and benefits of standardization. Agrifood standards can generalize and aim at ensuring quality in various forms, including ecological, traditional, and regional aspects, within the corporately governed food system. However, sociologists have highlighted the challenges and unintended consequences of standardization endeavors and scaling efforts in numerous ways.

This session aims to explore these complex interrelations, clarify the meanings of values within agrifood contexts and where valuing modes arise, and examine the possibilities for standardization. Together the contributors of this session will deepen the theoretical and/or empirical understanding of the values and modes of valuing they uphold within agrifood studies, as well as the connections between values, standards and scaling.