scholarly journals Exploring the transformative potential of urban food

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hebinck ◽  
O. Selomane ◽  
E. Veen ◽  
A. de Vrieze ◽  
S. Hasnain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Potential Change ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Research Reporting ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
Food Research ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Food Policies

AbstractUrban food is a key lever for transformative change towards sustainability. While research reporting on the urban food practices (UFPs) in support of sustainability is increasing, the link towards transformative potential is lacking. This is because research on urban food is often place-based and contextual. This limits the applicability of insights to large-scale sustainability transformations. This paper describes UFPs that aim to contribute to transformative change. We present signposts for potential change based on the types of intended transformative changes as described in the reviewed literature based on the processes and outcomes of the urban food policies and programmes. Secondly, we classify diverse UFPs to elevate them beyond their local, place-based contexts. We find that UFPs carry a lot of potential to facilitate sustainability transformations. Based on that analysis, we provide insights on how urban food research can further contribute to harnessing the transformative potential of UFPs for actionable purposes.

scholarly journals Exploring the transformative potential of urban food: a future research agenda

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniek Hebinck ◽  
Odirilwe Selomane ◽  
Esther Veen ◽  
Anke de Vrieze ◽  
Saher Hasnain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
Sustainable Food ◽  
Food Research ◽  
Future Research Agenda ◽  
Transformative Potential

Urban food systems are a key lever for transformative change towards sustainability, and research reporting on the role of urban food initiatives in supporting sustainability is increasing. However, an overview of such initiatives and their transformative potential is lacking, as contextual and disciplinary-fragmented research complicates what insights can be drawn to support larger-scale sustainability transformations. We provide such an overview by synthesizing multidisciplinary research on urban food initiatives and by exploring their transformative potential. We developed a typology for urban food initiatives and present a framework of processes and outcomes that are steppingstones to sustainable food system transformation. We show that different types of urban food initiatives perform distinct roles that support sustainability. Unpacking three areas of concern, we conclude with a future research agenda. This is a first step towards integration of urban food research and of providing urban food governance with the tools to shape more sustainable systems.

Balancing Act: Identity and Otherness among Latin American Immigrants and their Food Practices

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Paulette Kershenovich Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cultural Perceptions ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
Food Research ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Latin American Immigrants

This article deals with the identity construction of Latin American immigrants in Israel through their food practices. Food is a basic symbolic element connecting cultural perceptions and experiences. For immigrants, food is also an important element in the maintenance of personal ties with their home countries and a cohesive factor in the construction of a new identity in Israel, their adopted homeland. Food practices encode tacit information and non-verbal cues that are integral parts of an individual’s relationship with different social groups. In this case, I recruited participants from an online group formed within social media platforms of Latin American women living in Israel. The basic assumption of this study posits that certain communication systems are set in motion around food events in various social contexts pertaining to different national or local cuisines and culinary customs. Their meaning, significance and modifications and how they are framed. This article focuses on the adaptation and acculturation processes because it is at that point that immigrants are faced with an interesting duality of reconstructing their unique cultural perceptions to either fit the existing national collective ethos or create a new reality. In this study, the main objective is to compare two different immigrant groups: Jewish and non-Jewish women from Latin America who came to Israel during the last ten years. The comparative nature of the research revealed marked differences between ethnic, religious and cultural elements that reflect coping strategies manifested in the cultural production of food and its representation in two distinct domains: private and public. In the former, it is illustrated within the family and home and how they connect or clash with the latter in the form of consumption in public. Combining cultural studies and discourse analysis, this article offers fresh insight into new models of food practices and reproductions. The article’s contribution to new food research lies in its ability to shed light on how inter-generational and inter-religious discourses are melded while food practices and traditions are embedded in a new Israeli identity.

scholarly journals Farming with Alternative Pollinators benefits pollinators, natural enemies, and yields, and offers transformative change to agriculture

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Christmann ◽  
Youssef Bencharki ◽  
Soukaina Anougmar ◽  
Pierre Rasmont ◽  
Moulay Chrif Smaili ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Net Income ◽  
Land Sharing ◽  
Pollinator Decline ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Land Sparing ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Small Grant ◽  
Wildflower Strips

AbstractLow- and middle-income countries cannot afford reward-based land sparing for wildflower strips to combat pollinator decline. Two small-grant projects assessed, if an opportunity-cost saving land-sharing approach, Farming with Alternative Pollinators, can provide a method-inherent incentive to motivate farmers to protect pollinators without external rewards. The first large-scale Farming-with-Alternative-Pollinators project used seven main field crops in 233 farmer fields of four agro-ecosystems (adequate rainfall, semi-arid, mountainous and oasis) in Morocco. Here we show results: higher diversity and abundance of wild pollinators and lower pest abundance in enhanced fields than in monocultural control fields; the average net-income increase per surface is 121%. The higher income is a performance-related incentive to enhance habitats. The income increase for farmers is significant and the increase in food production is substantial. Higher productivity per surface can reduce pressure on (semi)-natural landscapes which are increasingly used for agriculture. Land-use change additionally endangers biodiversity and pollinators, whereas this new pollinator-protection approach has potential for transformative change in agriculture.

scholarly journals Food pedagogy for transformative social change

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chelsea Klinke ◽  
Gertrude Korkor Samar
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Studies ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Urban Farming ◽  
Transformative Engagement ◽  
Small Scale Farmers

The contemporary global agrarian regime has altered the patterns of food production, circulation, and consumption. Its efforts towards food security vis-á-vis capitalist modes of mechanized cultivation have produced large-scale climatic and socioeconomic ramifications, including the dispossession of small-scale farmers from their lands and positions in market value-chains. In an effort to improve the dynamics of contemporary agro-food systems, food practitioners and scholars are engaging in critical analyses of land-grabbing, the feminization of agriculture, extractive-led development, and more. However, we argue that there is a gap between Food Studies scholarship and community-based transformative engagement. To support social justice frameworks, our paper calls for an academic paradigm shift wherein learner-centered experiential classrooms bridge academic-public divides and enhance student learning. Through a case-study of urban farming in Calgary, we also explore topics in place-based learning and participatory approaches that acknowledge and integrate Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, being, and connecting. Our paper provides strategies for supporting local food systems through activist scholarship, capacity building of leadership and technical skills in advanced urban farming, and intercultural relationship building. We conclude by evaluating the success of our approach, presenting potential benefits and challenges, and providing recommendations for best practices in food scholarship to support transformative change.

scholarly journals Equality on His Terms: Doing and Undoing Gender through Men’s Discussion Groups

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 540-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael S. Pierotti ◽  
Milli Lake ◽  
Chloé Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Discussion Groups ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Division Of Household Labor ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Gender Hierarchy ◽  
Promote Gender Equality ◽  
Gender System

Efforts to promote gender equality often encourage changes to interpersonal interactions as a way of undermining gender hierarchy. Such programs are premised on the idea that the gender system can be “undone” when individuals behave in ways that challenge prevailing gender norms. However, scholars know little about whether and under what conditions real changes to the gender system can result from changed behaviors. We use the context of a gender sensitization program in the Democratic Republic of Congo to examine prospects for transformative change at the interactional level of the gender system. Over nine months, we observed significant changes in men’s quotidian practices. Further, we identified a new commitment among many men to a more equal division of household labor. However, participants consistently undermined the transformative potential of these behavioral changes through their dedication to maintaining control over the objective, process, and meaning of change, resisting conceptions of equality that challenged the gender system. Because quotidian changes left gender hierarchy intact, they appear unlikely to destabilize the logics that legitimate women’s subordination.

scholarly journals Transforming the relational dynamics of urban governance: How social innovation research can create a trajectory for learning and change

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (14) ◽  
pp. 2868-2884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Bartels
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Relational Theory ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Innovation Research ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Learning And Change

This article examines how social innovation (SI) research can co-produce transformative change in cities. A key challenge is to diffuse and sustain SIs in ways that transform the relational webs that constitute local spaces and their governance. The relational approach to SI is conceptually promising in this respect, but its foundations and practices need to be further developed. Therefore, I develop a relational ‘theory–methods package’ of practice theory and action research. By co-producing immediately usable insights, experiences and artefacts in the daily practice of SI, this approach enables researchers to gradually create conditions for a transformative trajectory of learning and change in urban governance. I critically appraise four research practices in the context of SI in Dutch urban governance and reflect on the transformative potential of this relational theory–methods package.

Can climate activism deliver transformative change? Extinction Rebellion, business and people power

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-31
Author(s):  
Neil Gunningham ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Change Agent ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Short Time

This article examines whether large-scale grassroots activism might be a necessary condition for achieving transformational climate change action, and examines whether Extinction Rebellion (XR), which has had a remarkable impact in a very short time, might – unlike its predecessors – be capable of precipitating such change. Reviewing the evidence, the article suggests that such activism, even if necessary, is unlikely to be sufficient to bring about rapid and radical climate action. It might, however, prove to be an important change agent, through its contribution to a broader coalition of business and civil society actors or through harnessing ‘webs of influence’. How such a coalition might evolve, or web influence play out, is also explored.

The Protestant ethic and the spirit of jihadism – transnational religious insurgencies and the transformation of international orders

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW PHILLIPS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Epochal Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jihadist Terrorism

AbstractIn the absence of comparisons with prior episodes of transformative change in the history of the state system, contemporary debates on the long-term significance of the 9/11 terror attacks and the ensuing war on terror are in danger of polarising around opposing caricatures of epochal change and obstinate durability. The tendency to organise transnationally, mobilise along religious lines, and employ terroristic violence for the purposes of achieving far-reaching religious and political transformation of target societies is not unique to Al-Qaeda, but can be seen also in the activities of the militant confessional networks that flourished in Reformation Europe. By comparing the global struggle against jihadist terrorism with early modern European rulers' struggles against transnational confessional militants, I demonstrate that existing accounts of jihadist terrorism's transformative potential have been seriously mis-specified and require substantial revision.

scholarly journals Canada’s feminist foreign policy and human security compared

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-382
Author(s):  
Heather Smith ◽  
Tari Ajadi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
International Assistance ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The World ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Policy Discourses

Canadian federal governments regularly try to craft a unique image of Canada in the world; however, the Trudeau government’s embrace of feminist foreign policy feels strikingly similar to the late 1990s when human security was embraced. There seems to be a “sameness” in the promotion of a progressive values-based discourse that has transformative potential for Canadian foreign policy. The question is, does this sense of sameness bear out when we dig into the comparison? Drawing on speeches given by government ministers; policy documents, such as the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP); media; and scholarship, we compare and contrast analyses of the sources of the human security and feminist foreign policy discourses and then identify common critiques. We also examine two significant differences. We find there is consistent Liberal articulation of values-based discourses and policies that have unmet transformative potential. In both cases, style and rhetoric are privileged over transformative change.

scholarly journals Emergence of a global science–business initiative for ocean stewardship

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (34) ◽  
pp. 9038-9043 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Österblom ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Jouffray ◽  
Carl Folke ◽  
Johan Rockström
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
World Population ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Knowledge To Action ◽  
Global Science ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Sustainability Challenges ◽  
Private Actors

The ocean represents a fundamental source of micronutrients and protein for a growing world population. Seafood is a highly traded and sought after commodity on international markets, and is critically dependent on healthy marine ecosystems. A global trend of wild stocks being overfished and in decline, as well as multiple sustainability challenges associated with a rapid growth of aquaculture, represent key concerns in relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Existing efforts aimed to improve the sustainability of seafood production have generated important progress, primarily at the local and national levels, but have yet to effectively address the global challenges associated with the ocean. This study highlights the importance of transnational corporations in enabling transformative change, and thereby contributes to advancing the limited understanding of large-scale private actors within the sustainability science literature. We describe how we engaged with large seafood producers to coproduce a global science–business initiative for ocean stewardship. We suggest that this initiative is improving the prospects for transformative change by providing novel links between science and business, between wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture, and across geographical space. We argue that scientists can play an important role in facilitating change by connecting knowledge to action among global actors, while recognizing risks associated with such engagement. The methods developed through this case study contribute to identifying key competences in sustainability science and hold promises for other sectors as well.

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