Managing collective symbolic capital through agro-food labelling: Strategies of local communities facing neoliberalism in Spain

This paper explores the strategic relevance for communities of properly managing collective symbolic capital under a neoliberal context, focusing on the impact of neoliberal policies in the capacity of communities to control the appropriation of value of their agro-food productions. The current economic crisis in Spain increases the pressure on the social and economic reproduction of the lower classes within local communities, and threatens the virtuous balance between the management of common resources and the collective symbolic capital associated with them. Entrepreneurial and institutional logic favors the capturing of collective symbolic capital by local bourgeoisies and transnational companies, while depleting the local common resources that had been exploited sustainably by local communities for centuries. The case study of the cultivation of clams in Carril, Spain, illustrates this process, while the conclusions from previous research on other Spanish agro-food systems are presented to provide a comparative analysis and potential development alternatives based on different strategies for the management of collective symbolic capital.