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Labeling the Good: Alternative Visions and Organic Branding in Sweden in the Late Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Oskar Broberg
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The past decade's rapid expansion of a global market for organic food has set powerful economic and political forces in motion. The most important dividing line is whether organic food production should be an alternative to or a niche within a capitalist mode of production. To explore this conflict the article analyzes the formation of a market for eco-labeled milk in Sweden. The analysis draws on three aspects: the strategy of agri-business, the role of eco-labeling, and the importance of inter-organizational dynamics. Based on archival studies, daily press, and interviews, three processes are emphasized: the formative years of the alternative movement in the 1970s, the founding of an independent eco-label (KRAV) in the 1980s, and a discursive shift from alternative visions to organic branding in the early 1990s following the entry of agri-business.

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Enterprise & Society , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 811 - 838
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2010. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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