Club apples: a biology of markets built on the social life of variety

Abstract

Club apples are patented apple varieties, often grown by members of a co-operative who plan the production and marketing of the apples. Drawing on ethnographic work, this paper will use club apples as a case to demonstrate that varieties have shaped the development of the apple industry in ways that resist institutional pressures to commodify the biological features of the apple. Club apples extend social boundaries around varieties in ways that grant growers more control over the market life of the apple and more economic power. The productive opportunities availed in the aliveness of biological materials can be seen to shape competition and the contours of economic markets.

Keywords:

• materialism
• institutions
• co-operatives
• plant patents
• markets
• agriculture

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jane Collins, Jess Gilbert, Joe Conti, Keith Woodward, Loka Ashwood and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts on this paper. A special thanks to Michael Bell, Madeleine Fairbairn and Zenia Kish for their support and advice throughout the research and writing process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Notably, sexually reproducing plants and their seeds could not be protected under patent law until 1970 and, while the Act of 1930 played a part, these two kinds of crops have a markedly different history of patent use (see Kloppenburg, 2005).

2. All names in this paper are pseudonyms chosen by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 1230494] and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 752-2009-0169].

Notes on contributors

Katharine A. Legun

Katharine A. Legun is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where she teaches in social theory, environmental sociology and economic sociology. Her current research looks at the relationship between (biological) materials, economic agency and market institutions. She completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the results of her dissertation work are represented in this paper.