Institutional Bricolage and Collective Action: A Case Study of a Farmers’ Producer Organisation in Tamil Nadu, South India

Farmer Interest Groups (FIGs) are conceived as fundamental institutional mechanisms at the village and cluster levels to strengthen the Farmers’ Producer Organisations (FPOs) by pooling their existing resources, gaining better access to other resources and sharing mutual benefits. However, diverse stakeholders could perceive the notion of collective engagement differently. Whether they are actors representing the state, community or other civil society organisations, their respective values, interests, knowledge and power relations could vary, resulting in social discontinuities rather than the intended innovation outcome. Often, such collectives could end up pursuing specific neoliberal functions rather than empowerment as such. This article examines the nature of such interfaces in a women’s FIG promoted by an FPO in Tamil Nadu, South India. Guided by the critical institutionalism and situated knowledge perspective, this article explores how the FPO, as a dynamic institution, mediates relationships between the members’ local contexts, the state and the market. Further, this article highlights the nature of the agency women farmers’ exercise in responding to the resulting institutional dynamics and uncertainties. Insights from this article could enable us to understand the diverse contextual factors that shape farmers’ collective, specifically women, in shaping social change and institutional innovation.