The 'knowledge-based bio-economy' (KBBE) constitutes a prominent research and innovation policy narrative underlining the centrality of knowledge and innovation as important products and resources ...driving contemporary economies and societies. However, a narrow understanding of the KBBE prevails, resulting in the exclusion of a wider diversity of stakeholders and knowledges that could lead to the production of more responsible research and innovation (RRI). This paper aims to contribute to configuring more responsible knowledge-based bio-economies, by exploring the potential of other economic developments, such as this of alternative agro-food networks (AAFNs) to constitute knowledge-based bio-economies. Drawing on research conducted in the Northwest England, this paper unpacks the diversity of knowledges and knowledge production processes within AAFNs, arguing for their potential to constitute an alternative, more responsible KBBE. In doing so, it encourages consideration of the centrality of knowledge inclusion and reflexivity in configuring more responsible research and innovation processes for agriculture and food.
In this article, we foreground how gender, class and feminism underpin the aims and modes of mobilization of the food politics of a British first wave suffragette organization, the East London ...Federation of Suffragettes. Our discussion shows how upper and middle‐class suffragettes excluded working‐class women and marginalized their political gendered classed interests, raising questions about feminist cross‐class solidarities today. We focus on three of East London Federation of the Suffragettes quite different modes of mobilization: embodied protests, radical welfare community organizing and food protest writing, all of which foreground class politics. In discussing three quite distinct modes of mobilization, we highlight the rich package of strategies they created and the different classed identities and struggles in these. We show the diversity of gendered and classed social roles around which the women politicked, as workers, mothers, housewives and consumers. The historical focus enables us to “see” the activities and identifications over time to understand and map their range and dynamics. Moreover, suffragette politics have a “longtail” and continue to influence feminist politics and thinking, but the working‐class mobilizing and food politics have been much less recognized and yet offer potential insights for feminist activism, including the cost‐of‐living crisis today.
Agrofood practices have been an obvious domain in which to implement sustainability. Yet, despite the fact that food carries a dense set of social meanings and functions, sustainability's social ...dimension has been relatively neglected in studies of sustainable food initiatives. In this article, we draw on research carried out for the European project "Facilitating Alternative Agro-food Networks" (FAAN), and describe various ways in which alternative agrofood networks in the city of Manchester manifest aspects of social sustainability and the "moral economy," including relations of solidarity and justice with proximate and distant others, concern for land and for the global environment, social inclusion of the disadvantaged, and the reskilling of everyday life. However, we also argue for a different way of conceiving social sustainability, which involves not simply adding another "pillar" to the dominating dyad of the economic and the environmental, but subjecting the whole notion of sustainability to a sociomaterial turn-one that questions the ontological separation of economy, environment, and society. We show how this approach involves conceiving the urban "ethical foodscape" as a "moral taskscape" in which people dwell and move, interacting with soil, food, and each other through situated practices involving skill and judgment.
This paper aims to situate power in 'niche innovations' through an investigation of cycling inequalities in the city of Birmingham. Much research has focused on the sustainability and innovation ...potential of cycling. However, debates usually revolve around the power relations between cycling and the dominant automobility regime, thus ignoring the possible inequalities embedded within niches. This paper aims to contribute to such analyses by unfolding the multiple inequalities and relations of exclusion that can be embedded in the practice of cycling. Drawing on Mobilities research for the EPSRC Liveable Cities programme, it focuses on the car-dependent city of Birmingham, in order to explore cycling as a practice with various socio-material, infrastructural, political and economic entanglements that can embed, reproduce or generate new socio-spatial inequalities, processes of gentrification and immobilities. Through such analysis, this paper aims to situate power in examining niche innovations (see also). However, it also aims to underline that understanding and addressing such inequalities are central for not only locating cycling in the centre of developing a more sustainable mobility future, but also enabling a more sustainable future for cycling itself.
Sustainable Consumption and Production Loconto, Allison M.; Psarikidou, Katerina; Dwiartama, Angga
International journal of sociology of agriculture and food,
2023, Volume:
29, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This editorial introduction discusses the science-policy interface at a global level focused on the linking of sustainable consumption and production. It examines how political spaces can offer ...opportunities for epistemic communities to enter into this space in order to advance the co-production of knowledge and politics on sustaianble consumption and production. The editorial also introduces the innovative approch to book reviews that the journal has adopted.
This editorial introduction discusses the science-policy interface at a global level focused on the linking of sustainable consumption and production. It examines how political spaces can offer ...opportunities for epistemic communities to enter into this space in order to advance the co-production of knowledge and politics on sustaianble consumption and production. The editorial also introduces the innovative approch to book reviews that the journal has adopted.
"The Sociology of Agriculture and Food" (SAF) is a polysemic phrase. It represents a sub-discipline within the field of sociology, an epistemic community and a network of colleagues. This, the first ...editorial introduction of the new IJSAF editorial team, initiates what will be a four-year journey on the path of renewing the sociology of agriculture and food. This short essay provides the backstory for the team's mandate, it introduces the research themes and enigmas that interest the editorial team and it positions the articles in this first issue as a first engagement with the renewed scientific program. It also introduces the new approach to better integrating the activities of the scholarly society (RC40) with the journal, in an attempt to increase the geographic and epistemic inclusivity of both.
In recent times of crisis, innovation has been recognised as a critical response to the multiple social and economic challenges contemporary societies have to face. Diverse organisations and actors ...have been constructing visions and imaginaries aiming at identifying various 'sustainable innovations' (Urry, 2011; 2013) that promise to provide their own remedies for such challenges. In many cases, however, such innovations appear to evolve into conservative, top-down projects of exclusion whose contribution is reduced to the production of constant economic growth and the participation of specific 'innovators', while overshadowing the role of other networks or actors involved in such processes (Felt et al., 2007; Suchman and Bishop, 2000). Among these organisations and actors, an increasing number of alternative economic organisations and initiatives have emerged that aim to develop their own pathways for transformation and change. Drawing on findings from the Liveable Cities and FAAN research projects, this paper is focused on a selection of alternative agro-food and mobility practices in the cities of Manchester and Birmingham, in order to explore their potential to constitute alternative innovation practices. More specifically, after an exploration of the different definitions, concepts and discourses variously used to describe, but also challenge, the concept of 'innovation' and its dominant understanding in policy and research (EC, 2013; Felt et al., 2007; Tyfield, 2013; Geels and Schot, 2007), this paper employs the political economic discourse of the 'moral economy' (Sayer, 2000; Booth, 1994; Thompson, 1971), as well as sociological and anthropological theories of value, money and commodities (Graeber, 2001; North, 2007; Zelizer, 1989; Appadurai, 1994). In doing so, it suggests an alternative perspective for approaching innovation through a moral economy lens. More specifically, by exploring the particular moral economic characteristics of alternative agro-food and mobility practices, it suggests going beyond a narrow understanding of innovation by situating it in the moral economy of such practices and the wider set of social values and symbolic meanings attributed to them.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a learning curve for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in devising and delivering teaching online. This transition has enabled HEIs to continue teaching students, ...especially international students, who were restricted to travel to their countries of study. In the UK, approximately 20% of the student cohort are international students. The pandemic resulted in a drop in international student recruitment, which generated concerns about a potentially alarming economic crisis in the UK HE sector. However, COVID-19 measures have also been portrayed as a significant contributor to reducing global CO2 emissions. Thus, the question arises: can online teaching reduce the carbon footprint of the internationalisation of education? This paper reviews online teaching as a potential solution to reduce carbon footprint and increase access to HE, whilst maintaining high student performance in HE within the remits of internationalisation.
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