‘Meet the New Boss … Same as the Old boss?’ Technology, toil and tension in the agrofuel frontier

• Published date: 01 July 2015
• Author: David Tyfield,Brian Garvey,Leonardo Freire Mello
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12048
• Date: 01 July 2015

‘Meet the New Boss . . . Same as the Old

boss?’ Technology, toil and tension in the

agrofuel frontier

Brian Garvey, David Tyfield and

Leonardo Freire de Mello

Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and

environmentally beneficial solution to oil dependence. The pro-

motion of sugar-derived ethanol as a substitute for petroleum

has thus been key to state development and international trade

policies by Brazil and the European Union, respectively, and

subsequent investment by leading energy and food transna-

tional corporations has transformed socio-spatial relations in

the new sites of production. Brazilian rural worker testimo-

nies, however, point to large-scale labour exclusion rather than

reform and a deepening, rather than disruption, of historic

power inequalities in the sector. Labour contestation chal-

lenges a converging institutional discourse of responsible tech-

nological innovation and social upgrading associated with

emerging commodity chains and the ‘green’ economy. Although

corporate and statutory response has been market-orientated

certification and ‘more technology’ the idea of the ‘techno-

institutional fix’ provides a power relation-attentive analysis

that invites the further exploration of socially committed alter-

natives to food and energy production.

Keywords: labour, agroenergy, Brazil, technology, rural,

commodity chains.

Introduction

In the wake of the global financial crisis, policy concerns regarding resource security

are accompanied by changing relations between states and (global) markets and cor-

porations. Peak oil horizons and transnational mandates for reducing the rateof green-

house gas emissions have coaxed governments and private corporations to pursue

sources and markets for new energy forms. At the same time, energy and mineral

extraction are stronglylinked to current and prospective state developmental strategies

amongst emerging nation-states. New models of state–capitalrelations in, for example,

Brazil and China, are also thereby gaining greater influence over global political eco-

nomic trends and norms. This is true also in the pivotal socio-economic arena of

Brian Garvey (brian.garvey@strath.ac.uk) is a Research Fellow in the Department of Human

Resource Management,University of Strathclyde. David Tyfield(d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk) is a Reader

in the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University.Leonardo Freire de Mello (leonardo.mello@

ufabc.edu.br)is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering, Modelling andApplied Social

Sciences, Federal University of ABC Region, São Paulo.

New Technology, Work and Employment 30:2

ISSN 0268-1072

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ‘Meet the New Boss . . . Same as the Old boss?’ 79

technological ‘innovation’ that has been given an elevated role as key both to resolving

the current challenges (of economic growth, climate change, resource security) and to

the continuation of national development projects.

The promotion of high-end technologies linked to ‘sustainable development’, lower

carbon outputs and hence the ‘green’ economy reflect an institutional aspiration that

further economic growth (or socio-economic development more broadly) does not

simply exacerbate other problems, such as pollution and climate change. In addition,

issues of work and employment were, for the first time, formally incorporated into the

climate agreements atthe Rio+20 United Nations Conference. There is, therefore, a new

transnational emphasis upon ‘green’ innovation being ‘responsible’ in vaguely speci-

fied ways: protecting the environment and upgrading marginalised land, providing

development and decent work in rural areas and assisting towards povertyeradication

(EC, 2009; ILO and UNEP, 2012).

In the European Union’s turn to the southern hemisphere to source the biomass

required to meet Kyoto renewable fuel targets, nowhere has this emphasis been more

evident than in the institutional discourses promoting the emerging global commodity

chain (GCC) for ethanol as a substitute for fossil fuel (Franco et al., 2010). Boasting the

world’s first integrated energy matrix and a world leader in sugar-derived ethanol

production, the Brazilian government’s enthusiasm for agrofuelhas been paralleled by

global organisations promoting business, jobs, the environment, trade and develop-

ment (EC, 2009; IEA, 2011a; ILO and UNEP, 2012).

Research objectives

Against the backdrop of a threefold increase in international investment in Brazil’s

ethanol sector, a reconfiguration of social and spatial relations and subsequent market

concentration by transnational oil and food majors, this paper questions the converging

institutional discourse of responsible technological innovation and social upgrading

associated with the emerging commodity chain for ethanol. By taking a more systemic

and power relation-attentive analysis of the sectors’ development, the studyasks firstly,

(1) how do systematic blind spots in even sophisticated theoretical perspectives con-

cerned with technological change and GCCs risk making invisible the reproduction of

highly unequal power relations in locales of biofuel production with significant impli-

cations regarding the actual (social) ‘responsibility’, and how work is organised and

experienced? Secondly, by turning specifically to capital, state and labour relations in

the modern history of the ethanol sector, the study considers the familiar, but crucial

role that innovation and technology play under capitalism in transgressing challenges

to profit accumulation presented by labour (e.g. Burawoy, 1979; Mandel, 1980;

Braverman, 1998; Harvey, 2014: Ch. 8) and questions, (2) how does a new technological

and institutional ‘fix’ for agrofuels represent a continuation (rather than a disruption)

of market, territorial, wealth and power concentration by oil majors, albeit through a

diversification into non-fossil fuels? Thirdly, in light of specific worker contestation

within the emerging ethanol commodity chain and the massive exclusion of Brazilian

rural labour in particular, the paperoutlines the corporate response by the ‘new bosses’

to social and environmental concerns through market certification and more technol-

ogy the paper and explores (3) how are powerful corporations with increasing control

over leading technologies reworking state–capital relations, requiring new techno-

institutional fixes amidst market and political instability? Finally, we highlight how,

despite growing power asymmetries between capital and labour, social innovations by

rural workers protesting the hegemonic model of monoculture are embracing modern

technology in these regions of production. In doing so they offer a disruption to

incumbent models of agrofuel production and invite further investigationof socially as

well as ecologically committed alternatives.

In what follows, the recent theoretical developments in relation to two key concepts

that underpin this study are considered, namely techno-institutional lock-in (Unruh,

2002) and GCCs (e.g. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994), but where both of these are read

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd80 New Technology, Work and Employment