Ferne Edwards | University of Surrey (original) (raw)
Papers by Ferne Edwards
Corrigendum to “Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation” [Environ. Sci. Policy, 156 (2024) 103735]
Environmental science & policy, Jun 1, 2024
Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation
Environmental science & policy, Jun 1, 2024
Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation ... more Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation towards a more just and sustainable food system. Scholars argue that food policy integrationpolicies that unite numerous foodrelated actionsis required to overcome dominant siloed and fragmented approaches and to tackle environmental and economic crises. However, what is being integrated and how such integrations contribute to food system transformation remain unexplored. This paper aims to disentangle frames and approaches to food policy integration through a critical analysis of literature on integrated policies and food system transformation. Complemented by a systematic literature review for "food system" and "polic* integrat*", overlapping approaches and gaps between these literatures are revealed over the last twenty years. We use the prisms of processes ("how" food policy integration is being practiced), placement ("where" crossovers between sectors in governance institutions and where synergies between objectives can be created) and things ("what" specific aspects of the food system and related sectors exist within integrated policies and leverage points to trigger transformative dynamics) to explore how policy integration and food system transformation intersect within current debates. Our findings reveal cross-cutting themes and distinct theoretical frameworks but also identify substantial gaps, where frames of food policy integration often remain within their disciplinary silos, are ambiguous or ill-defined. We conclude that to achieve policy integration as a tool for food system transformation, a new research and policy agenda is needed that builds on diverse knowledges, critical policy approaches and the integration of food with other sectors.
Teaching & learning inquiry, Apr 23, 2024
Skills in interdisciplinary collaboration are required to address many complex problems facing so... more Skills in interdisciplinary collaboration are required to address many complex problems facing society. As such, interdisciplinarity is a critical competency for students to develop. However, teachers' effectiveness in teaching interdisciplinarity is often hindered by silo structures within university faculties. To address this in the Experts in Teamwork (EiT) programme, a MSc in a Norwegian university that develops students' interdisciplinary teamwork skills through projects that address real-world challenges, a community of practice (CoP) evolved among teachers from different EiT classes. Over 20 months, CoP members participated in digital and in-person discussions, lecture exchanges, student and professional conferences, and coevaluation of student work, with an aim of better understanding interdisciplinarity and approaches for teaching it to students. The success of the CoP in achieving these aims was evaluated through a series of focus groups consisting of members of the CoP. The CoP achieved some success in fostering pedagogical conversations that were transformative for participants' understanding of interdisciplinarity in their practice. Participants reported that CoP participation influenced their interactions with students, ultimately helping students to develop a better understanding of interdisciplinarity. However, participants reported limitations in the CoP as a professional development resource, citing its newness and the required time commitment. Participants felt that these issues could be addressed via greater institutional support.
Urban Natures
Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and... more Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and undisciplined. Recently, however, the push towards greener cities has evolved into a more cohesive movement. Drawing from multidisciplinary case studies, Urban Natures examines the possibilities of an ethical lively multi-species city with the understanding that humanity’s relationship to nature is politically constructed. Covering a wide range of sectors, cities, and urban spaces, as well as topics ranging from edible cities to issues of power, and more-than-human methodologies, this volume pushes our imagination of a green urban future.
Repositioning Craft and Design in the Anthropocene
Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal, Mar 28, 2023
Terms of engagement: mobilising citizens in edible nature-based solutions
Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Jun 22, 2023
Alternative Food Networks
Springer eBooks, 2019
The ‘food, senses, and the city’ nexus
Routledge eBooks, Jan 14, 2021
Food Resistance Movements
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Review: Edible Medicines: An Ethnopharmacology of Food, by Nina L. Etkin
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2008
Mapping the Edible City: Making visible communities and food spaces in the city
Gleaned, grown and gifted : the significance of social food economies in productive cities
As cities house more than half of the world's population they have become a focal point for c... more As cities house more than half of the world's population they have become a focal point for concerns regarding sustainable and equitable futures, with the environmental consequences of consumerism and food insecurity being of particular concern. Rather than believe that cities are the cause of all that is unsustainable, this dissertation tenders the concept of the 'productive city' - that cities can contribute to food security and environmental sustainability by becoming both food consumptive and productive sites. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) offer alternative pathways of food procurement and environmental awareness that could provide solutions to future issues of urban food sustainability. AFNs emerged in the 1990s as a reaction against the globalization, standardization, and unethical nature of the capitalist industrial food system. However, celebrations of AFNs have been criticised for: their numerous exclusionary dynamics, the lack of distinction between various forms and what is happening in the Global North and South, and the corrosive influence of the capitalist market on activist goals. Acknowledging these limitations, this thesis focuses on a form of food procurement that is often hidden or overlooked: urban, non-capitalist food economies. In this dissertation I ask: What is the significance of non-capitalist food economies for food security, sustainability and social change towards the productive city? It describes qualitative and ethnographic research undertaken among three communities that engage in the gleaning, growing, and gifting of foods in Sydney, Australia, and compares these three approaches with the Venezuelan food sovereignty movement that represents part of the transition from capitalism to socialism. Integrating the findings helps to overcome the limitations of class, race and place present in AFN literature. The study reveals that various non-capitalist food economies exist in cities in the Global North and South. In Australia, initiatives are disparate and random with the majority of [...]
Proceedings of DRS, Jun 16, 2022
Urbanization pressures are creating conditions for greater urban density. However, cities are hom... more Urbanization pressures are creating conditions for greater urban density. However, cities are home for both humans and a diversity of nonhuman natures, where heightened proximity between species can cause friction and conflict. This paper explores possibilities for convivial multispecies cohabitation in more-than-human cities. It grounds more-thanhuman theory through the application of three case studies-birds, bees and bats-based in the city of Trondheim, Norway. Drawing on three related studies, these creatures help illuminate what kind of spaces, needs and considerations are required beyond a human-centric focus in the urban environment. Issues to consider include disease, insecure land access and unpredictable and complex feedback loops, while benefits from nonhuman natures include sources of wellbeing, food and wonder. Relevant concepts include agency, assemblage, and urban acupuncture. The paper also develops the concept of 'multispecies productivism' and offers a suite of suggestions for design interventions.
Speculative design for envisioning more-than-human futures in desirable counter-cities
Cities
The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints ... more The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints of nature, such detached and dualistic anthropocentric perceptions tend to universalize, marginalize and de-politicize the value and possible co-benefits of human/nonhuman nature connections. Recognising a need to re-conceptualise the city as a multispecies space, we analyse outcomes from an interdisciplinary Master's subject that sought to encounter, restore, protect and co-exist with more-than-human species. Students were encouraged to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries to develop innovative strategies that could reconfigure human/nonhuman relationships within the city of Trondheim, Norway. Through their work, visions of alternative, possible futures emerged. Such alternative visions can be powerful: speculation can challenge and transform the linear, dualistic understandings of the city, and shape and redirect innovation practices. This article explores students' visions of multispecies cities to consider their contribution to just and sustainable transitions literature, analysing them with respect to design for sustainability transitions, teaching transdisciplinarity and the concept of the counter city.
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Within the broader framework of the EU-H2020 EdiCitNet project—a large-scale collaborative projec... more Within the broader framework of the EU-H2020 EdiCitNet project—a large-scale collaborative project with a multi-stakeholder approach—there is the opportunity to observe participatory planning approaches to mainstream nature-based, edible solutions to solve specific social urban problems in an international group of six cities—Berlin (Germany), Carthage (Tunisia), Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Spain), Letchworth (United Kingdom), Šempeter pri Gorici (Slovenia), and Lomé (Togo). One year after the project started, the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to transfer most participatory planning processes to online platforms. This new format presented challenges to planning and voluntary stakeholder engagement due to different capacities regarding technical requirements as well as location-specific social circumstances. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the potentials and trade-offs in shifting to online participation and who gets to participate under digital Participatory Action Researc...
A short overview of food mapping: Developing a cross-disciplinary approach
Routledge eBooks, Aug 22, 2022
In many ways, the expansion of commercial for-profit, P2P social dining platforms has mirrored th... more In many ways, the expansion of commercial for-profit, P2P social dining platforms has mirrored those within mobility and accommodation sectors. However its dynamics and impacts have received less consideration to date, with a notable paucity of attention to the hosts of social dining events. The aim of this paper is to address this research lacuna. Through its exploration of the social dining platforms VizEat in Athens and Eatwith in Barcelona, this paper identifies, analyses and compares the social practices of hosts around their social dining events in two key tourist destinations in Europe. Data is gathered through multiple methods from participating in and observing social dining events in each city to interviews with key stakeholders in the P2P social dining process (such as hosts, platform employees and ambassadors). The research reveals how dynamic rules, tools, skills and understandings shape and reshape the performance of hosting social dining events. It exposes tensions and ongoing negotiations between hosts and guests regarding matters of authenticity and privacy, an uneven risk burden between hosts and platforms with regards liability and scant regard for matters of sustainability. As a result there is little alignment between P2P social dining and the goals of sustainable tourism.
Cities , 2023
The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints ... more The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints of nature, such detached and dualistic anthropocentric perceptions tend to universalize, marginalize and de-politicize the value and possible co-benefits of human/nonhuman nature connections. Recognising a need to re-conceptualise the city as a multispecies space, we analyse outcomes from an interdisciplinary Master's subject that sought to encounter, restore, protect and co-exist with more-than-human species. Students were encouraged to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries to develop innovative strategies that could reconfigure human/nonhuman relationships within the city of Trondheim, Norway. Through their work, visions of alternative, possible futures emerged. Such alternative visions can be powerful: speculation can challenge and transform the linear, dualistic understandings of the city, and shape and redirect innovation practices. This article explores students' visions of multispecies cities to consider their contribution to just and sustainable transitions literature, analysing them with respect to design for sustainability transitions, teaching transdisciplinarity and the concept of the counter city.
Introducing Food Resistance Movements
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resi... more Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resistance movements resist capitalist processes that perpetuate social and environmental injustices. This chapter contextualises food resistance movements within alternative food network literature. It recognises four key trajectories: alternative food networks from Europe, North America, the Global South, and social welfare approaches. Food resistance movements seek to establish alternatives that prioritise social justice and environmental sustainability values that go beyond elitist, individualist, racist and capitalist approaches. This book focuses on urban-based food resistance movements, representing potentially powerful sites for social mobilisation, experimentation and impactful solutions. After introducing the book’s case studies, this chapter situates the research approach in cultural anthropology to give a holistic and direct voice to participants from these diverse practices.
The Food Sovereignty Movement in Venezuela
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capita... more Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capitalist-based economy to ‘Socialism of the Twenty-First Century’, based on social equality, inclusion, endogenous development and participative democracy. This chapter describes fieldwork from 2009 until 2012 on collaborative grassroots-government food programmes in three cities—Ciudad Bolívar, Merida and Caracas. It provides a brief history of Venezuela and its three food pathways (Indigenous, informal and independent). The government-led food sovereignty programmes are then analysed, focusing on strategies of land reform, urban productive programmes, subsidised and regulated supermarket chains, eateries and the provisioning of free food. While these strategies could not be fully realised due to subsequent nationwide unrest, this chapter highlights both potential strategies and considerations for instigating large-scale food systemic change.
Corrigendum to “Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation” [Environ. Sci. Policy, 156 (2024) 103735]
Environmental science & policy, Jun 1, 2024
Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation
Environmental science & policy, Jun 1, 2024
Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation ... more Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation towards a more just and sustainable food system. Scholars argue that food policy integrationpolicies that unite numerous foodrelated actionsis required to overcome dominant siloed and fragmented approaches and to tackle environmental and economic crises. However, what is being integrated and how such integrations contribute to food system transformation remain unexplored. This paper aims to disentangle frames and approaches to food policy integration through a critical analysis of literature on integrated policies and food system transformation. Complemented by a systematic literature review for "food system" and "polic* integrat*", overlapping approaches and gaps between these literatures are revealed over the last twenty years. We use the prisms of processes ("how" food policy integration is being practiced), placement ("where" crossovers between sectors in governance institutions and where synergies between objectives can be created) and things ("what" specific aspects of the food system and related sectors exist within integrated policies and leverage points to trigger transformative dynamics) to explore how policy integration and food system transformation intersect within current debates. Our findings reveal cross-cutting themes and distinct theoretical frameworks but also identify substantial gaps, where frames of food policy integration often remain within their disciplinary silos, are ambiguous or ill-defined. We conclude that to achieve policy integration as a tool for food system transformation, a new research and policy agenda is needed that builds on diverse knowledges, critical policy approaches and the integration of food with other sectors.
Teaching & learning inquiry, Apr 23, 2024
Skills in interdisciplinary collaboration are required to address many complex problems facing so... more Skills in interdisciplinary collaboration are required to address many complex problems facing society. As such, interdisciplinarity is a critical competency for students to develop. However, teachers' effectiveness in teaching interdisciplinarity is often hindered by silo structures within university faculties. To address this in the Experts in Teamwork (EiT) programme, a MSc in a Norwegian university that develops students' interdisciplinary teamwork skills through projects that address real-world challenges, a community of practice (CoP) evolved among teachers from different EiT classes. Over 20 months, CoP members participated in digital and in-person discussions, lecture exchanges, student and professional conferences, and coevaluation of student work, with an aim of better understanding interdisciplinarity and approaches for teaching it to students. The success of the CoP in achieving these aims was evaluated through a series of focus groups consisting of members of the CoP. The CoP achieved some success in fostering pedagogical conversations that were transformative for participants' understanding of interdisciplinarity in their practice. Participants reported that CoP participation influenced their interactions with students, ultimately helping students to develop a better understanding of interdisciplinarity. However, participants reported limitations in the CoP as a professional development resource, citing its newness and the required time commitment. Participants felt that these issues could be addressed via greater institutional support.
Urban Natures
Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and... more Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and undisciplined. Recently, however, the push towards greener cities has evolved into a more cohesive movement. Drawing from multidisciplinary case studies, Urban Natures examines the possibilities of an ethical lively multi-species city with the understanding that humanity’s relationship to nature is politically constructed. Covering a wide range of sectors, cities, and urban spaces, as well as topics ranging from edible cities to issues of power, and more-than-human methodologies, this volume pushes our imagination of a green urban future.
Repositioning Craft and Design in the Anthropocene
Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal, Mar 28, 2023
Terms of engagement: mobilising citizens in edible nature-based solutions
Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, Jun 22, 2023
Alternative Food Networks
Springer eBooks, 2019
The ‘food, senses, and the city’ nexus
Routledge eBooks, Jan 14, 2021
Food Resistance Movements
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Review: Edible Medicines: An Ethnopharmacology of Food, by Nina L. Etkin
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2008
Mapping the Edible City: Making visible communities and food spaces in the city
Gleaned, grown and gifted : the significance of social food economies in productive cities
As cities house more than half of the world's population they have become a focal point for c... more As cities house more than half of the world's population they have become a focal point for concerns regarding sustainable and equitable futures, with the environmental consequences of consumerism and food insecurity being of particular concern. Rather than believe that cities are the cause of all that is unsustainable, this dissertation tenders the concept of the 'productive city' - that cities can contribute to food security and environmental sustainability by becoming both food consumptive and productive sites. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) offer alternative pathways of food procurement and environmental awareness that could provide solutions to future issues of urban food sustainability. AFNs emerged in the 1990s as a reaction against the globalization, standardization, and unethical nature of the capitalist industrial food system. However, celebrations of AFNs have been criticised for: their numerous exclusionary dynamics, the lack of distinction between various forms and what is happening in the Global North and South, and the corrosive influence of the capitalist market on activist goals. Acknowledging these limitations, this thesis focuses on a form of food procurement that is often hidden or overlooked: urban, non-capitalist food economies. In this dissertation I ask: What is the significance of non-capitalist food economies for food security, sustainability and social change towards the productive city? It describes qualitative and ethnographic research undertaken among three communities that engage in the gleaning, growing, and gifting of foods in Sydney, Australia, and compares these three approaches with the Venezuelan food sovereignty movement that represents part of the transition from capitalism to socialism. Integrating the findings helps to overcome the limitations of class, race and place present in AFN literature. The study reveals that various non-capitalist food economies exist in cities in the Global North and South. In Australia, initiatives are disparate and random with the majority of [...]
Proceedings of DRS, Jun 16, 2022
Urbanization pressures are creating conditions for greater urban density. However, cities are hom... more Urbanization pressures are creating conditions for greater urban density. However, cities are home for both humans and a diversity of nonhuman natures, where heightened proximity between species can cause friction and conflict. This paper explores possibilities for convivial multispecies cohabitation in more-than-human cities. It grounds more-thanhuman theory through the application of three case studies-birds, bees and bats-based in the city of Trondheim, Norway. Drawing on three related studies, these creatures help illuminate what kind of spaces, needs and considerations are required beyond a human-centric focus in the urban environment. Issues to consider include disease, insecure land access and unpredictable and complex feedback loops, while benefits from nonhuman natures include sources of wellbeing, food and wonder. Relevant concepts include agency, assemblage, and urban acupuncture. The paper also develops the concept of 'multispecies productivism' and offers a suite of suggestions for design interventions.
Speculative design for envisioning more-than-human futures in desirable counter-cities
Cities
The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints ... more The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints of nature, such detached and dualistic anthropocentric perceptions tend to universalize, marginalize and de-politicize the value and possible co-benefits of human/nonhuman nature connections. Recognising a need to re-conceptualise the city as a multispecies space, we analyse outcomes from an interdisciplinary Master's subject that sought to encounter, restore, protect and co-exist with more-than-human species. Students were encouraged to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries to develop innovative strategies that could reconfigure human/nonhuman relationships within the city of Trondheim, Norway. Through their work, visions of alternative, possible futures emerged. Such alternative visions can be powerful: speculation can challenge and transform the linear, dualistic understandings of the city, and shape and redirect innovation practices. This article explores students' visions of multispecies cities to consider their contribution to just and sustainable transitions literature, analysing them with respect to design for sustainability transitions, teaching transdisciplinarity and the concept of the counter city.
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Within the broader framework of the EU-H2020 EdiCitNet project—a large-scale collaborative projec... more Within the broader framework of the EU-H2020 EdiCitNet project—a large-scale collaborative project with a multi-stakeholder approach—there is the opportunity to observe participatory planning approaches to mainstream nature-based, edible solutions to solve specific social urban problems in an international group of six cities—Berlin (Germany), Carthage (Tunisia), Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Spain), Letchworth (United Kingdom), Šempeter pri Gorici (Slovenia), and Lomé (Togo). One year after the project started, the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to transfer most participatory planning processes to online platforms. This new format presented challenges to planning and voluntary stakeholder engagement due to different capacities regarding technical requirements as well as location-specific social circumstances. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the potentials and trade-offs in shifting to online participation and who gets to participate under digital Participatory Action Researc...
A short overview of food mapping: Developing a cross-disciplinary approach
Routledge eBooks, Aug 22, 2022
In many ways, the expansion of commercial for-profit, P2P social dining platforms has mirrored th... more In many ways, the expansion of commercial for-profit, P2P social dining platforms has mirrored those within mobility and accommodation sectors. However its dynamics and impacts have received less consideration to date, with a notable paucity of attention to the hosts of social dining events. The aim of this paper is to address this research lacuna. Through its exploration of the social dining platforms VizEat in Athens and Eatwith in Barcelona, this paper identifies, analyses and compares the social practices of hosts around their social dining events in two key tourist destinations in Europe. Data is gathered through multiple methods from participating in and observing social dining events in each city to interviews with key stakeholders in the P2P social dining process (such as hosts, platform employees and ambassadors). The research reveals how dynamic rules, tools, skills and understandings shape and reshape the performance of hosting social dining events. It exposes tensions and ongoing negotiations between hosts and guests regarding matters of authenticity and privacy, an uneven risk burden between hosts and platforms with regards liability and scant regard for matters of sustainability. As a result there is little alignment between P2P social dining and the goals of sustainable tourism.
Cities , 2023
The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints ... more The city has long been regarded as the domain of humans. Residing above the physical constraints of nature, such detached and dualistic anthropocentric perceptions tend to universalize, marginalize and de-politicize the value and possible co-benefits of human/nonhuman nature connections. Recognising a need to re-conceptualise the city as a multispecies space, we analyse outcomes from an interdisciplinary Master's subject that sought to encounter, restore, protect and co-exist with more-than-human species. Students were encouraged to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries to develop innovative strategies that could reconfigure human/nonhuman relationships within the city of Trondheim, Norway. Through their work, visions of alternative, possible futures emerged. Such alternative visions can be powerful: speculation can challenge and transform the linear, dualistic understandings of the city, and shape and redirect innovation practices. This article explores students' visions of multispecies cities to consider their contribution to just and sustainable transitions literature, analysing them with respect to design for sustainability transitions, teaching transdisciplinarity and the concept of the counter city.
Introducing Food Resistance Movements
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resi... more Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resistance movements resist capitalist processes that perpetuate social and environmental injustices. This chapter contextualises food resistance movements within alternative food network literature. It recognises four key trajectories: alternative food networks from Europe, North America, the Global South, and social welfare approaches. Food resistance movements seek to establish alternatives that prioritise social justice and environmental sustainability values that go beyond elitist, individualist, racist and capitalist approaches. This book focuses on urban-based food resistance movements, representing potentially powerful sites for social mobilisation, experimentation and impactful solutions. After introducing the book’s case studies, this chapter situates the research approach in cultural anthropology to give a holistic and direct voice to participants from these diverse practices.
The Food Sovereignty Movement in Venezuela
Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias, 2023
Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capita... more Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capitalist-based economy to ‘Socialism of the Twenty-First Century’, based on social equality, inclusion, endogenous development and participative democracy. This chapter describes fieldwork from 2009 until 2012 on collaborative grassroots-government food programmes in three cities—Ciudad Bolívar, Merida and Caracas. It provides a brief history of Venezuela and its three food pathways (Indigenous, informal and independent). The government-led food sovereignty programmes are then analysed, focusing on strategies of land reform, urban productive programmes, subsidised and regulated supermarket chains, eateries and the provisioning of free food. While these strategies could not be fully realised due to subsequent nationwide unrest, this chapter highlights both potential strategies and considerations for instigating large-scale food systemic change.
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks, 2023
This book examines food resistance movements as a form of alternative food network, charting the ... more This book examines food resistance movements as a form of alternative food network, charting the author’s journey as a cultural anthropologist through three food resistance movements. In Australia, freegans’ consumption of ‘garbage’ in the food waste movement of the early 2000s reveals the extent of food going to waste from commercial sources while people go hungry. In contrast, Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement is part of a national transition from a capitalist to socialist economy, highlighting processes of decentralisation, collectivisation, and government-grassroots’ coalitions. The study of autonomous spaces in Catalonia illuminates how food sharing can enable people to live their politics, as well as the centrality of issues around urban governance, consumption, technology and use of space to food resistance efforts. This engaging volume brings an important and engaging contribution to current discussions around the transition to just and sustainable food systems.
Food, Senses and the City
Food, Senses and the City, 2021
This work explores diverse cultural understandings of food practices in cities through the senses... more This work explores diverse cultural understandings of food practices in cities through the senses, drawing on case studies in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.
The volume includes the senses within the popular field of urban food studies to explore new understandings of how people live in cities and how we can understand cities through food. It reveals how the senses can provide unique insight into how the city and its dwellers are being reshaped and understood. Recognising cities as diverse and dynamic places, the book provides a wide range of case studies from food production to preparation and mediatisation through to consumption. These relationships are interrogated through themes of belonging and homemaking to discuss how food, memory, and materiality connect and disrupt past, present, and future imaginaries. As cities become larger, busier, and more crowded, this volume contributes to actual and potential ways that the senses can generate new understandings of how people live together in cities.
This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of critical food studies, urban studies, and socio-cultural anthropology.
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 2021
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices breaks new ground in critical food studies, applyin... more Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices breaks new ground in critical food studies, applying degrowth principles specifically to food practices. The second title in the Routledge Environmental Humanities series following Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities, this collection showcases case studies from four continents from 30 experienced researchers and practitioners.
Food for Degrowth is relevant to anyone interested in food provisioning using degrowth principles, as in a household, community or region. It addresses socio-political, gender and economic issues related to food sovereignty and food security, alternative food networks and community supported agriculture, appropriate technology, advertising, utopian visions and social change. It provides a cross-disciplinary perspective, drawing from social and political sciences with insights also gleaned from practitioners and activists.
Introducing Food Resistance Movements
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks, 2023
Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resi... more Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resistance movements resist capitalist processes that perpetuate social and environmental injustices. This chapter contextualises food resistance movements within alternative food network literature. It recognises four key trajectories: alternative food networks from Europe, North America, the Global South, and social welfare approaches. Food resistance movements seek to establish alternatives that prioritise social justice and environmental sustainability values that go beyond elitist, individualist, racist and capitalist approaches. This book focuses on urban-based food resistance movements, representing potentially powerful sites for social mobilisation, experimentation and impactful solutions. After introducing the book’s case studies, this chapter situates the research approach in cultural anthropology to give a holistic and direct voice to participants from these diverse practices.
Future Directions for Food Resistance Movements
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks, 2023
Chapter 6 synthesises areas for future research across the case studies to identify the next step... more Chapter 6 synthesises areas for future research across the case studies to identify the next steps for achieving just and sustainable food system change. Key research questions include: How can benefits from formalising alternative food networks be enjoyed without becoming co-opted? Do (or should) alternative food networks have a natural lifespan? How can formal processes be sufficiently adapted to learn from both success and failure? What approaches can best replicate initiatives across and between cities whilst retaining the integrity of their core principles and identity? This chapter closes by emphasising the need to support food resistance movements’ efforts in uncertain times, where anthropology—as one of many disciplines in inter and transdisciplinary approaches—can support greater understanding of the complex factors towards facilitating such change.
Reflections on Food System Transitions
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Fodd Networks, 2023
Chapter 5 reviews the case studies to decipher emerging themes, patterns, strategies and concerns... more Chapter 5 reviews the case studies to decipher emerging themes, patterns, strategies and concerns that have developed within and between food resistance movements. It asks, what have food resistance movements achieved and what can be learnt from their experiences? Drawing on new social movement and transitions theories, it focuses on the food waste movement to examine trajectories of socio-environmental change over almost two decades. Food resistance movements often reach beyond awareness and behaviour change to consider pathways of formalisation, integration within planning and policy, maintenance through care and governance, failure, technological innovations and commercialisation. Opportunities for scaling ‘out’ and ‘up’ are examined through processes of diversification, hybridisation and replication. This chapter closes on possibilities for translocal movements and linkages between the Global North and South.
The Food Sovereignty Movement in Venezuela
Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks, 2023
Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capita... more Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement was part of a national strategy to transition from a capitalist-based economy to ‘Socialism of the Twenty-First Century’, based on social equality, inclusion, endogenous development and participative democracy. This chapter describes fieldwork from 2009 until 2012 on collaborative grassroots-government food programmes in three cities—Ciudad Bolívar, Merida and Caracas. It provides a brief history of Venezuela and its three food pathways (Indigenous, informal and independent). The government-led food sovereignty programmes are then analysed, focusing on strategies of land reform, urban productive programmes, subsidised and regulated supermarket chains, eateries and the provisioning of free food. While these strategies could not be fully realised due to subsequent nationwide unrest, this chapter highlights both potential strategies and considerations for instigating large-scale food systemic change.
Future directions for food, the senses and the city
Food, Senses and the City, 2021
This book has carved out a space to bring together theories and approaches to study food, the sen... more This book has carved out a space to bring together theories and approaches to study food, the senses, and the city. The chapters presented in this volume represent urban centres from around the world and the diasporas that take their meals travel with them. The chapters’ approaches draw the reader in to experience – to touch, taste, smell, see, and hear – a range of urban cultural cuisines. This final chapter explores the contributions of these narratives – it summarises their key themes, approaches and concepts; it responds to key debates in sensory anthropology; and it identifies areas for future research. It demonstrates how the nexus of ‘food, the senses and the city’ can bring people ‘home’, contributing to novel methodologies and building new knowledge across disciplines to establish new connections to urban food practices through the senses.
Humming along: Heightening the senses between urban honeybees and humans
Food, Senses and the City, 2021
The local food movement has emerged in recent decades as a response to climate change and industr... more The local food movement has emerged in recent decades as a response to climate change and industrial agriculture where people seek to improve their health and respond to environmental, social and economic issues by taking back control over their food sources (Goodman et al. 2011; Cockrall-King 2012). Urban beekeeping is part of this sustainable food movement, where spurred on by global threats to bee populations, there has been an escalation in beekeeping as a hobby. However, while much has been written on peoples’ desire to reconnect to their food supply, and relocating this production to the city, little literature has explored the role of the senses in guiding this shift. Recognising cities both as places of refuge and conflict, new understandings are required to navigate increased human/nonhuman proximities. This article argues that the senses offer an important source of knowledge to help ease tensions between binaries of city/country, consumption/production, and human/nonhuman, offering a pathway to reconnect to place, and to both human and nonhuman ‘others’. By learning to listen to bees and to each other, this chapter advocates for a more-than-human methodology of the senses towards creating a convivial, multi-species cities.
The food, senses and city nexus
Food, Senses and the City, 2021
Food practices enter, move through, settle, disrupt and redesign cities in novel ways: as communi... more Food practices enter, move through, settle, disrupt and redesign cities in novel ways: as community gardens and foraging sites, as health food stores and farmers’ markets, as freegan and vegan forms of protest and dietary reformation, as social treatise at the shared table, or by passing through as food trucks or as new forms of food delivery. Each engagement produces tactile, affective, visceral and embodied relationships between people, place and products that can instigate and uphold social relationships whilst embodying shifting values, meanings and politics. Peoples’ engagement with food in turn influences the shape and feel of the city. Acknowledging the senses through urban food practices thus serves as an essential means in which to link people to each other and to where they live. This chapter explores the nexus of ‘food, senses and the city’ in theory and practice. It reviews the ‘sensory turn’ in the social sciences, to acknowledge key debates and concepts, and to recognise research methodologies that go beyond the written word. This chapter ends with a summary of the volume’s sections that engage with themes of migration, memory, home, inclusion, politics and care.
Gleaning from Gluttony: An Australian Youth Subculture Confront the Ethics of Waste
Taking Food Public: Redefining foodways in a changing world, 2011
Green Food: An A-Z Guide, 2010
The seed industry is dominated by a monopoly of multinational corporations that control the major... more The seed industry is dominated by a monopoly of multinational corporations that control the majority production and distribution of seed crops. The top 10 seed companies in the world in 2006 accounted for more than half of the commercial seed market worldwide. Many of these corporations also dominate the combined pesticide, food, pharmaceutical, and veterinary product industries, satisfying every aspect of the commodified agricultural industry. Such aggregate companies include the world's top three: Monsanto, Dupont, and Syngenta.
Green Politics: An A-Z Guide, 2010
A counterculture represents a cultural group whose lifestyle is opposed to the prevailing culture... more A counterculture represents a cultural group whose lifestyle is opposed to the prevailing culture. Countercultures construct an alternative culture that contests mainstream societal beliefs and values while desiring to influence social change. According to Ken Goffman, aka R. U. Sirius, a U.S. writer, countercultures share the characteristics of the following principles and values: they assign primacy to individuality at the expense of social conventions and governmental constraints, they challenge authoritarianism, and they embrace individual and social change.
Health of People, Places and Planet. Reflections based on Tony McMichael’s four decades of contribution to epidemiological understanding, 2015
In this chapter, we draw inspiration from Tony McMichael’s research on the implications of climat... more In this chapter, we draw inspiration from Tony McMichael’s research on
the implications of climate change for human health and well-being and his exhortations to pay attention to the big picture. As a consequence, we use historical and contemporary materials to reflect on how Australia’s cultural history has contributed to the development of our somewhat relaxed attitudes and practices in relation to increasingly hot weather and climate change.
We consider the historical experiences of European settlers who arrived from the
northern hemisphere with little understanding of hot weather and attempted to impose themselves on a foreign landscape. They developed a stoic approach to hot weather; something to be endured, if they were to survive. Over time, a more compromising attitude has developed as Australians gradually, and partially, adapt their clothing, behaviour, housing and location of residence to cope with the bodily discomforts of heat. Now they rely on techno-fixes, such as air conditioning, to manage hot weather, with unhelpful implications for climate change mitigation. Instead of relying on individual behaviour change, we nominate three policy domains where action is urgently required.
Untamed Urbanisms: Practices and Narratives on Socio-environmental Change for Urban Sustainability, 2015
The current global industrial food system is being challenged by incidents of insecurity, as food... more The current global industrial food system is being challenged by incidents of insecurity, as food supply is at risk from weather extremes in times of climate change, as fluctuating prices dictated by the global market result in food riots around the world, and as food scares from hidden production processes cause consumer concern and food loss. Rather than recognize the industrial food system as the only food procurement option, in this chapter I draw attention to the persistence of non-capitalist food economies and the emergence of new, innovative models. These untamed – in the sense of unfunded, unregulated and diverse – social food economies are found in cities both where issues of food insecurity and sustainability are paramount, and where the people and resources required to resolve these issues can be found. I tell the stories of people who are gleaning, growing and gifting foods in Sydney, Australia, to ask how social food economies contribute to secure and sustainable food systems.
Sustainability Citizenship and Cities: Theory and Practice, 2016
Food security has emerged as a major, global-scale challenge for citizens of cities in the twenty... more Food security has emerged as a major, global-scale challenge for citizens of cities in the twenty-first century. Developing alternative food economies is a key aspect of evolving sustainability citizenship, enhancing collective resilience, sharing practices and more
sustainable localised urban economies. This chapter explores the emergence of alternative food economies in Sydney (Australia) and in three Venezuelan cities, including its capital, Caracas. In both Oceanic and Latin American settings, social food economies enable citizens to assert independence from commercial agricultural systems and to gain more control over food procurement while addressing food security and urban sustainability concerns. Such economies facilitate and enable the growth of those responsible and collaborative, environmentally and socially ethical skills that characterise sustainability citizenship.
Encyclopaedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2016
The term “Alternative Food Networks” (AFNs) describes the practice and an academic body of work s... more The term “Alternative Food Networks” (AFNs) describes the practice and an academic body of work surrounding the emergence of alternative
food practices that emerged in the 1990s as a reaction against the standardization, globalization, and unethical nature of the industrial food
system. Common examples include community supported agriculture, farmers’ markets, fair trade, urban agriculture, specialized forms of
organic agriculture, direct farm retail, and the slow food movement. AFNs seek to diversify and transform modern food provisioning by
connecting ethical producers and consumers in more local, direct ways. They build on an ethics of environmental sustainability, social justice, and animal welfare. AFNs endorse the creation of new exchange models that support a return to community food production and demonstrate a commitment to social, economic, and environmental justice along the food chain. Produce from AFNs is often considered to be fresh, diverse, organic, quality, and “slow,” while networks are perceived as small-scale, short, traditional, community, local, and embedded. Goodman et al. (2011) chart two significant historical trajectories of AFNs that emerged from Western Europe and North America, resulting in different foci, objectives, and understandings. These trajectories are joined by AFNs from around the world. This entry discusses AFN trajectories and their common characteristics of quality, embeddedness, locality, and directness. Various criticisms have been raised in AFN literature about the conflation of AFN types and characteristics, their predominance
towards exclusivity, racism and elitism, and the impact of the capitalist market on their goals toward their desire to create an alternative
food system.
Encyclopaedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2016
The Venezuelan food sovereignty movement represents an attempt by the government to establish a n... more The Venezuelan food sovereignty movement represents an attempt by the government to establish a national food system that strives to provide equitable food access by offering multitiered, decentralized strategies supported by legislation. The movement emerged during Hugo Chavez’s period as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It encompasses aspects of land reform, agroecology, and distribution and is supported by principles of independence from corporate control, equality, social inclusion, shared wealth and resources, endogenous development, and participatory democracy. The food sovereignty movement represents a strategy toward greater social equality. The desire for food sovereignty arose from a history of political and economic instability that created the conditions for Dutch disease, inflation, unequal land distribution, urbanization, and poverty. While the exact outcomes of Venezuela’s food movement remain unclear, its multiple strategies offer an attempt to incorporate social, cultural, and environmental ethics within a national food system.
The SAGE Handbook of Nature, 2018
The European honeybee is one of the most critical of all insect pollinators, with much of the wor... more The European honeybee is one of the most critical of all insect pollinators, with much of the world’s crops dependent on their pollination contributing to dietary diversity. However, in Australia, resisting the implications of connected landscapes implicit in ecology, conservationists consider the European honeybee to
be an exotic pest, contesting commercial beekeepers’ rights to access resources
from forests and national parks. This chapter asks: What should be done when
invasive species provide valuable ecosystem services and potentially threaten
native species?
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 2021
The chapter suggests future research directions in food for degrowth studies. A range of theoreti... more The chapter suggests future research directions in food for degrowth studies. A range of theoretical and mainly transdisciplinary practical approaches and key research questions to advance food for degrowth futures are considered. The collection is based on case studies clustered by scale and content. First, activism within the household where ‘frugal abundance’ is practised. Case studies use research methods from autoethnography, interviews and surveys, analysed in statistical and qualitative ways. These methods are typical throughout the collection although the last part is characterised by a higher degree of critical methods, including critical discourse analysis. In Part I, themes of household self-provisioning and reconnection to food sources are interrogated, and conceptualised as ‘neo-peasantry’, ‘quiet’ food self-provisioning, as extensions of traditional practices, and in contemporary theoretical critiques, especially extending concept of ‘caring’ as well as sharing. Similarly collective endeavours emphasise important social and economic dimensions of food for degrowth, providing insights from diverse community supported agriculture style models in Hungary, Italy and Catalonia. The part on networks identifies reciprocal exchange and solidarity as key tenets for degrowth. Approaches of hybridisation of alternative food practices (Budapest), technological application (Catalonia), and processes of multi-level governance internationally are explored. The final part explores the power of narrative with respect to degrowth examinations of the circular economy, food waste and decolonialisation, and competing discourses within degrowth of citification versus densification. This chapter proposes a range of research questions around accessibility, visibility, temporality, spatiality, boundaries and processes, transformation, postgrowth, qualitative and quantitative measures and assessments.
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 2021
There is growing recognition that radical, long term change is required to address inherent issue... more There is growing recognition that radical, long term change is required to address inherent issues in the industrial food system. New principles and practices are needed to create fair, sustainable and healthy food approaches. Actions for degrowth often begin at the grassroots, grounded in everyday actions that promote just and sustainable alternatives. However, limited resources often result in actions with bounded geographical reach and lifespan. Formal efforts to address food insecurity and sustainability by governments, NGOs and corporations have benefits, offering legitimacy and visibility by providing resources, institutionalisation and legislation. However, large-scale approaches often lack transversality, overlooking important local concerns and needs. This chapter explores multi-level governance approaches that bring together bottom-up and top-down approaches to foster engaged and enduring food alternatives. Strategies of cross-sector platforms, methods of convergence, and the role of municipalities are examined in two projects: the Portuguese rights to food nutrition network AlimentAção! that promotes sustainable and healthy local food projects, and EdiCitNet, a food sustainability network that supports the uptake of innovative and inclusive urban food practices. This chapter contributes to sustainable food literature and practice by examining key junctures across different levels of governance to sustain healthy and just degrowth alternatives for transformative change.
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 2021
In recent decades there has been a rise in the use of digital technologies to support food sharin... more In recent decades there has been a rise in the use of digital technologies to support food sharing activities, such as the community supported agriculture (CSA) model. These alternative distribution networks provide ethically sourced and sustainable produce. The physical and virtual networks of CSAs are based on principles of the social and solidarity economy, a socio-political movement that shares degrowth principles by promoting equitable wealth, democratic relationships and protection of ecosystems. However, while digital technologies support alternative exchange, controversies remain on the potential political implications of their application. This chapter investigates the uptake of digital platforms by CSAs to explore their application, barriers and outcomes for degrowth. The analysis draws on extensive mapping of cooperatives across Catalonia and is grounded in participant-observation of a CSA in Barcelona. This research highlights the role of platform cooperativism to support collaborative online sharing and ensure critical technology adoption for degrowth at the same time as preventing vertical power relations.
Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, 2021
Degrowth as a concept, approach and practice challenges growth and excessive consumption to advoc... more Degrowth as a concept, approach and practice challenges growth and excessive consumption to advocate for practices that limit socio-metabolic energy and material flows with respect to planetary limits. This chapter introduces a collection offering a sample of food for degrowth research studies and themes. Key degrowth concepts, such as ecological and political principles of frugal abundance, autonomy, commoning, conviviality, decolonising productivist imaginaries and open relocalisation are explained. The chapter positions degrowth with respect to alternative food network practices and literature. Each chapter in the collection is reviewed. Authors explore frugal abundance, nonmonetary economies and the concept of ‘permacultural neopeasantry’, resistance to neo-imperialist forces in the Global South, digital technologies for food organisations, governance bridging policy and self-conscious grassroots action. There are detailed accounts of lowly visible and unconscious degrowing, conscientious initiatives to establish degrowth, post-communist contexts, challenges involving decolonisation and ecofeminist themes of care. Utopian perspectives are raised, the tensions of hybrid niche farming aspiring to beyond-market practices within market contexts are identified, the ingrained cultural barriers of conventional ideas, say of ‘ugly food’, are examined, and a thought experiment using empirical studies of food literature explores whether a city of several millions can be self-provisioning in food.
‘The Politics of the Pantry: Stories, food, and social change’ by Michael Mikulak
Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, 2018
Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, 2018
‘Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America’ by Alex. V. Barnard
British Journal of Sociology, 2017
Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies, 2011