Constructing practice-oriented futures for sustainable urban food policy in Bangkok

Kanatamaturapoj, Kanang; McGreevy, Steven R.; Thongplew, Natapol; Akitsu, Motoki; Vervoort, Joost; Mangnus, Astrid; Ota, Kazuhiko; Rupprecht, Christoph; Tamura, Norie; Spiegelberg, Maximillian; Kobayashi, Michiharu; Pongkijvorasin, Sittidaj; Wibulpolprasert, Suwit

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2022.102949

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…By mixing visioning, immersive futures narratives, and backcasting processes, theories could be tested and receive feedback from participants residing in fictional futures in a reflexive process. This feedback builds futures literacy and was essential in, ultimately, choosing desirable pathways toward future food practices (Kantamaturapoj et al, 2022).…”

Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Expanding receptiveness to futures that lie outside the easily imagined can open doors to new potential solutions for problems seemingly wicked within the limits of what looks possible. A multi-phase process of interlinked workshops including visioning, scenario evaluation, and transition pathways brought together consumers, experts and policy makers to tackle sustainable futures of food purchasing, eating out and home cooking in Bangkok using a social practices perspective (Kantamaturapoj et al, 2022). Participants dared each other to leave common sense behind, experimenting with scenario narratives featuring a smart but sharp-tongued personal artificial intelligence shopping assistant steering the protagonist family toward sustainable and healthy food options, an open-air restaurant where dinner can only be paid for with agricultural products pooled and then prepared on-site, and a communal kitchen equipped with a M. O. M (My Optimal Menu) robot tracking and providing meals based on individual members' health needs.…”

Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This experimentation process enabled policy ideas to realize urban food sustainability in Bangkok to go beyond conventional approaches emphasizing individual behavioral change. Instead, ideas embraced multisectoral and systemic strategies that capture how food practices emerge as the result of social, cultural, economic, and technical contexts (Kantamaturapoj et al, 2022).…”

Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, how these methods make assumptions about the future tangible and explicit, enable the recognition and appreciation of diverse perspectives and worldviews, expand receptiveness to unimaginable futures, and develop futures literacy. What are the barriers or enablers to further binding transdisciplinary policy development processes with immersive soft scenario methods and do these experiences yield more robust policy ideas than typical policy development (Kantamaturapoj et al, 2022)? What seemed a particular hurdle in transforming food systems-their embodied and habitual nature-may, instead, pose an advantage.…”

Section: Building Receptivity For Critical Futures and Futures Litera...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning, playing, and experimenting with critical food futures

McGreevy¹,

Rupprecht²,

Tamura³

et al. 2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Imagining sustainable food futures is key to effectively transforming food systems. Yet even transdisciplinary approaches struggle to open up complex and highly segregated food policy governance for co-production and can fail to critically interrogate assumptions, worldviews, and values. In this Perspective we argue that transdisciplinary processes concerned with sustainable food system transformation need to meaningufully engage with critical food futures, and can do so through the use of soft scenario methods to learn about, play with, and experiment in futures. Specifically, soft scenarios contribute in four ways: 1) questioning widely held assumptions about the future; 2) being inclusive to multiple perspectives and worldviews; 3) fostering receptiveness to unimaginable futures; 4) developing futures literacy. Based on insights from a 5-year transdisciplinary action research project on sustainable food transformation across Asia, we demonstrate how these processes play out in narratives, serious games and interactive art featuring soft scenarios. We conclude by discussing the potential for collaboration between transdisciplinary and futures researchers, especially for transforming food systems.

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Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experimenting: Participatory Practice-oriented Food Policy P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Building Receptivity For Critical Futures and Futures Litera...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Learning, playing, and experimenting with critical food futures

McGreevy¹,

Rupprecht²,

Tamura³

et al. 2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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show abstract

“…Using participatory action research methods, the FEAST project aimed to explore the feasibility and potential of sustainable food and agricultural systems in transition bottom-up, focusing on Asia. It implemented various transdisciplinary approaches that contribute to the co-design of food policy (McGreevy, 2017;Oda et al, 2018;Rupprecht et al, 2020;Kantamaturapoj et al, 2022). It should be noted that FEAST is now operating as an NGO.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benefits of local food system survey experience for participants and stakeholders: A case study of Akita, Japan

Ota¹,

Taniguchi²,

McGreevy³

2022

Front. Sustain.

Self Cite

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Local food systems are complex, and there is no single direct way to address their sustainability transition successfully. Therefore, a system transformation approach called 'co-evolution' is needed. Co-evolution requires continuous cooperation and participation of people from different community sectors and spaces for recursive mutual learning. This paper focuses on the secondary effects of citizen surveys on food systems on the actors involved and how citizen surveys experience can cultivate the conditions for co-evolution. The authors supported a 6-month “transition seminar”, a series of learning programs for visioning, fieldwork, analysis of findings, and recommendations for sustainability transitions in local food systems, organized by high school students. This seminar was conducted in 2017 at a high school in Noshiro, Akita Prefecture, Japan, at the request of one of the students. The seminar was held for 8 sessions in total for about 30 high school students who requested it, with the theme of transforming the local food system in the Noshiro area. Participants developed a vision of a desirable local food system under the theme of “the community's ideal food system 30 years from now,” conducted fieldwork surveys, planned to realize the vision, and made policy proposals to the mayor of Noshiro. After the seminar, the result of the group interview shows that the fieldwork survey experience, in particular, had a long-term impact on participants' understanding of and ability to reflect on the food system and policies in the Noshiro area. In addition, interviews conducted in 2019 confirmed various secondary effects, including increased interest and networking among participating high school students, teachers, and stakeholders. This result suggests that citizen surveys for sustainable food systems have spillover various positive effects on stakeholders, including providers (researchers). Moreover, citizen surveys experience support collaboration and participation between different community sectors and space for recursive mutual learning and cultivate conditions for co-evolution.

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