CFP, RGS – IBG London, 28-30 August 2019 *From disruptive to emancipatory politics: transforming food governance*

Call for papers, RGS – IBG annual conference, London, 28-30 August 2019

* From disruptive to emancipatory politics: transforming food governance*

Sponsored by: Food Geographies Working Group

Session convenors: Ana Moragues-Faus (MoraguesFausA1@cardiff.ac.uk) and Terry Marsden (MarsdenT@cf.ac.uk); Sustainable Places Institute, Cardiff University

Current political events – from raise of nationalistic and populist movements to the growth of support for post-colonial, feminist and anti-austerity perspectives - present a rupture with managerial and the so-called post-democratic politics (Davidson and Iveson, 2014; Swyngedouw, 2011, 2007) . The food system embodies this highly politicised arena which, to date, still results in increasing levels of food poverty and health inequality, environmental degradation and increasing concentration of power (FAO, 2002; Godfray et al., 2010; IPES-Food, 2017). For example in Europe, policy synergies between a private-interest governance regime and a corporatist EU state-based regulatory regime coexist with an ever-growing number of alternative food networks and food justice movements (Herman and Goodman, 2018; Marsden et al., 2018; Sage, 2013). These fragmented governance landscapes require deeper examination to understand how current disruptive events – in the form of multiple crisis, Brexit, social mobilisations or creative destruction events – can be harnessed into more emancipatory politics.

Despite recent works on key food and socio-ecological systems governance deficiencies (Cash et al., 2006; Folke et al., 2005; Moragues-Faus et al., 2017; Termeer et al., 2010), to date, in the food studies community, governance remains an ill-defined term and will benefit from further engagement with political geography debates. In this session we want to explore further what forms of governance can contribute to transform food and socio-ecological systems into more egalitarian and emancipatory foodscapes. For that purpose, we welcome contributions from critical geographies that critically analyse:

- The concepts, analytical tools and mechanisms that can harness more emancipatory politics. This might include mobilising bodies of work such as political ecology, the pluriverse, everyday politics, the post-political, assemblages or participative justice (Anderson and Kearnes, 2012; Beveridge and Koch, 2017; Escobar, 2018; Loo, 2014; Moragues-Faus and Marsden, 2017; Swyngedouw, 2010; Yates, 2015).

- New and old forms of governance such as networks, partnerships, alliances, policies or food policy councils.

- How different actors, sectors and scales interact in specific governance spaces, creating distinct degrees of connectivity and autonomy. This includes interrogating the rise of urban food politics or the rearrangement of urban-rural relationships.

- The transformative capacity of disruptive politics such as Brexit.

The session will consist first of short paper presentations (15min) with discussants (5min per paper) and a final overall discussion. Throughout the presentations we will collect key ideas from the audience to answer the key question: what forms of governance can contribute to transform food and socio-ecological systems into more egalitarian and emancipatory foodscapes? This will be the main focus of the overall discussion, which will aim to point ways forward in food governance research.

Abstracts of 250 words max should be sent to Ana Moragues-Faus (Moragues-FausA1@cardiff.ac.uk) by the end of the 12th of February.

References:

Anderson, B., Kearnes, M., 2012. On assemblages and geography. Dialogues Hum. Geogr. Hum. Geogr.

Beveridge, R., Koch, P., 2017. The post-political trap? Reflections on politics, agency and the city. Urban Stud. 54, 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098016671477

Cash, D., Adger, W., Berkes, F., 2006. Scale and cross-scale dynamics: governance and information in a multilevel world. Ecol. Soc. 11, 8.

Davidson, M., Iveson, K., 2014. Recovering the politics of the city: From the “post-political city” to a “method of equality” for critical urban geography. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 39, 543–559. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514535284

Escobar, A., 2018. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy and the making of worlds. Duke University Press, Duke.

FAO, 2002. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2001. Rome.

Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., Norberg, J., 2005. Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 30, 441–473.

Godfray, H.C.J., Beddington, J.R., Crute, I.R., Haddad, L., Lawrence, D., Muir, J.F., Pretty, J., Robinson, S., Thomas, S.M., Toulmin, C., 2010. Food security: the challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science (80-. ). 327, 812–818.

Herman, A., Goodman, M., 2018. New spaces of food justice. Local Environ. 23, 1041–1046. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2018.1527302

IPES-Food, 2017. Unravelling the Food–Health Nexus: Addressing practices, political economy, and power.

Loo, C., 2014. Towards a More Participative Definition of Food Justice. J. Agric. Environ. Ethics 27, 787–809.

Marsden, T., Hebinck, P., Mathijs, E., 2018. Re-building food systems: embedding assemblages, infrastructures and reflexive governance for food systems transformations in Europe. Food Secur. 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-018-0870-8

Moragues-Faus, A., Marsden, T., 2017. The political ecology of food: Carving ‘spaces of possibility’ in a new research agenda. J. Rural Stud. 55, 275–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.08.016

Moragues-Faus, A., Sonnino, R., Marsden, T., 2017. Exploring European food system vulnerabilities: Towards integrated food security governance. Environ. Sci. Policy 75, 184–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.05.015

Sage, C., 2013. The interconnected challenges for food security from a food regimes perspective: Energy, climate and malconsumption. J. Rural Stud. 29, 71–80. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2012.02.005

Swyngedouw, E., 2011. Interrogating post-democratization: reclaiming egalitarian political spaces. Polit. Geogr. 30, 370–380.

Swyngedouw, E., 2010. Impossible sustainability and the post-political condition. Mak. Strateg. Spat. Plan. 185–205.

Swyngedouw, E., 2007. Impossible sustainability and the post-political condition, in: Kreuger, R., Gibbs, D. (Eds.), The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe. The Guilford Press, New York, London, pp. 13–40.

Termeer, C., Dewulf, A., Lieshout, M. Van, 2010. Disentangling scale approaches in governance research: comparing monocentric, multilevel, and adaptive governance. Ecol. Soc. 15, 29.

Yates, L., 2015. Everyday politics, social practices and movement networks: daily life in Barcelona’s social centres. Br. J. Sociol. 66, 236–258. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12101