Heeding Cultural Prerogatives: The Evolving Politics of Wine Regulation in France

摘要

In France, wine's cultural value, identified here as the 'politics of terroir,' produces regulatory protection that contravenes the neoliberal principles implicit in economic globalization. The rise of political terroir as chronicled in this thesis illustrates how and why such seemingly irrational anti-liberal sentiment can come to play an important role in national politics. The national trade policies that derive from this type of cultural politics often impact the global economy and its institutions. Imperiled Western and European agricultural products, one of which is French wine, presently play a key role impeding global free trade. Still, the political history of French wine tells us that some products, along with their attendant models of organization and production, can become deeply embedded in national identity, thereby making resistance to market adjustment especially fierce. Indeed, this account affirms that global policy makers should not soon expect rational adaptation to liberal markets where culturally valuable agricultural goods are threatened.