Slow Food (SF) is a global, grassroots movement aimed at enhancing and sustaining local food cultures and traditions worldwide. Since its establishment in the 1980s, Slow Food groups have emerged across the world and embedded in a wide range of different contexts. In this article, we explain how the movement, as a diverse whole, is being shaped by complex dynamics existing between grassroots flexibilities and emerging drives for movement coherence and harmonization. Unlike conventional studies on social movements, our approach helps one to understand transnational social movements as being simultaneously coherent and diverse bodies of collective action. Drawing on work in the fields of relational geography, assemblage theory and webometric research, we develop an analytical strategy that navigates and maps the entire Slow Food movement by exploring its ‘double articulation’ between the material-connective and ideational-expressive. Focusing on representations of this connectivity and articulation on the internet, we combine methodologies of computation research (webometrics) with more qualitative forms of (web) discourse analysis to achieve this. Our results point to the significance of particular networks and nodal points that support such double movements, each presenting core logistical channels of the movement's operations as well as points of relay of new ideas and practices. A network-based analysis of ‘double articulation’ thus shows how the co-evolution of ideas and material practices cascades into major trends without having to rely on a ‘grand', singular explanation of a movement's development
In their exploration of an alternative approach to large historical databases, the authors aim to bridge the gap between the anticipations regarding Web-based collaborative work and the prevailing practices and academic culture in social and economic history. Until now, the collaboratory model has been derived from examples in the natural sciences. Moreover, publications on collaboratories in the social sciences and humanities revolved primarily around the potential of this model and were rarely based on actual research practices. In this article, the authors report on practices, risks, and opportunities of collaboratories in the field of social and economic history. The collaboratory model is a feasible alternative for the creation of large historical databases, but the practical chal lenges of such an enterprise are greater than generally assumed. In the concluding section, the authors formulate a number of guidelines for scholars interested in setting up collaboratories.
Over the last few decades cities are increasingly redefined as subjects of interurban competition. In this neoliberal perspective cities are seen as products that have to be 'sold' to possible investors, visitors and inhabitants. Yet, such products appear to have become too much detached from 'daily' social urban life, which has resulted in a call for a more inclusive reconceptualisation of urban identity. This chapter will respond to this call by employing Margaret Somers' (1994) notion of narrative identities. In Somers' view, narrative identities spring from the way people locate themselves and their environment within in a set of emplotted stories. Stories become emplotted through pointing out significant issues and clues bearing on compositions of people, phenomena and events. Struggles over identities manifest themselves as competition over narration. Different groups may tell different stories, and articulate different plots about what a city is and where it goes. As a consequence, cities host a repertoire of stories, with plots that will generally centre on key issues believed to affect the city. Citymarketing strategies draw on this repertoire, selecting and polishing those elements that serve the promotional aims pursued. It is in the selection of elements and their emplotment that a more inclusive strategy can be sought.
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