Doctoral Dissertation Research: Territorial Economy and the Politics of Agro-Industry in California's North Coast Wine District

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Previous research on industrial districts has shown that interaction, cooperation, and collaboration are crucial elements to innovation and regional industrial success. However, this previous research has focused primarily on the regional organization and operation of craft and manufacturing industries; it has not examined how social power and strategy are fundamental to regional industries or investigated how the institutions and practices of industrial districts might operate in an agro-industrial context. This doctoral dissertation research project will contribute to this field by investigating the contemporary policies, politics and operation of agro-industry in California. It will focus on the North Coast Wine District, in particular, Napa and Sonoma counties. The project will determine the character and extent of cooperation, learning and interaction often identified in the research literature with craft industries. It seeks to understand the more complex interaction of industrial districts. The research will highlight how social power derived from economic performance underpins the operation of the industry. It will also delineate how political action, self-organization, community participation, governance, leadership and cooperation are necessary for industrial preservation in a rapidly changing production region like the North Coast Wine District, a region under significant and increasing development pressure and experiencing related development and land-use conflicts. Data will be collected through a survey and interviews with winery owners, grape growers, and vineyard managers. Additional interviews will be conducted with other industry representatives, government officials, and activists. This information will be combined with material collected from archival sources (government documents, library collections, and other records), and with statistical analysis of regional and industrial indicators. A commodity chain approach will be used to map the regional supply, production and distribution networks of a random sample of wine firms to determine their geographic extent. In addition, an ethnographic approach will be used to trace the professional histories of winery entrepreneurs, grape growers and vineyard managers to measure the extent of their interaction, learning by doing, formal industry participation, and understand the industry's power relations. Comparative case studies will round out the analysis by exploring how industry participants and other regional centers of power, such as new rural residents, tourists, developers, and other farmers, conflict in some cases, and collaborate in other cases involving industry-related policy development and land use in the two counties. The project is expected to provide new knowledge of the North Coast wine industry, its regional context, and its social basis. It will contribute to on-going theoretical debates and understandings of the process of regional agro-industrial development and change in rural areas. It will inform and assist rural policy makers by examining what kinds of practices and policies generate competitive industry, innovation and regional learning, and what sorts of processes are capable of negotiating conflicting development objectives among diverse interests. More generally it will provide new information on how rural regions and industries respond to broader forces like globalization and urbanization. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.