The idea of food as commons or commodity in academia. A systematic review of English scholarly texts

Pol, José Luis Vivero

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.05.015

Cited by 51 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…After an exhaustive scrutiny (see Vivero-Pol for a systematic review of scholarly literature [136]), only a few authors that consider food as a commons have been found [137,138]. Citizens and consumers accept as "normal" the social construct privileged by the elites that justifies the commodification of food, and thus, the manufacturing of consent emerges from a bottom-up normalization [14,139].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition

Pol

2017

Sustainability

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Abstract:The food system, the most important driver of planetary transformation, is broken. Therefore, seeking a sustainable and socially-fair transition pathway out of this crisis becomes an issue of utmost priority. The consideration of food as a commodity, a social construct that played a central role in this crisis, remains the uncontested narrative to lead the different transition pathways, which seems rather contradictory. By exploring the normative values on food, this paper seeks to understand how relevant is the hegemonic narrative of food as commodity and its alternative of food as commons to determine transition trajectories and food policy beliefs. Applying the multi-level perspective framework and developing the ill-studied agency in transition, this research enquired food-related professionals that belong to an online community of practice (N = 95) to check whether the valuation of food is relevant to explain personal stances in transition. Results suggest that the view of food as commodity is positively correlated with a gradually-reforming attitude, whereas food as commons is positively correlated with the counter-hegemonic transformers, regardless of the self-defined position in the transition landscape (regime or niches). At a personal level, there are multiple loci of resistance with counter-hegemonic attitudes in varied institutions of the regime and the innovative niches, many of them holding this discourse of food as commons. Conversely, alter-hegemonic attitudes are not positively correlated with the alternative discourse, and they may inadvertently or purportedly reinforce the neoliberal narrative. Food as commons seems to be a relevant framework that could enrich the multiple transformative constituencies that challenge the industrial food system and therefore facilitate the convergence of movements that reject the commodification of food.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition

Pol

2017

Sustainability

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“…It is excludable because legal institutions backed by the threat of violence can prevent you from taking food that is my property. A systematic review of English-language academic texts since 1900 found nearly 50,000 references to food as a commodity or private good and just 179 to food as a commons or public good [62]. Authors overwhelmingly referred to "food as" a commodity, commons, or public good but wrote that "food is" a private good, suggesting that scholarly understandings of food have been dominated by neoclassical economic thinking.…”

Section: Food Markets Seem Inevitablementioning

confidence: 99%

The Case for Studying Non-Market Food Systems

Bliss

2019

Sustainability

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Markets dominate the world’s food systems. Today’s food systems fail to realize the normative foundations of ecological economics: justice, sustainability, efficiency, and value pluralism. Drawing on empirical and theoretical literature from diverse intellectual traditions, I argue that markets, as an institution for governing food systems, hinder the realization of these objectives. Markets allocate food toward money, not hunger. They encourage shifting costs on others, including nonhuman nature. They rarely signal unsustainability, and in many ways cause it. They do not resemble the efficient markets of economic theory. They organize food systems according to exchange value at the expense of all other social, cultural, spiritual, moral, and environmental values. I argue that food systems can approach the objectives of ecological economics roughly to the degree that they subordinate market mechanisms to social institutions that embody those values. But such “embedding” processes, whether through creating state policy or alternative markets, face steep barriers and can only partially remedy food markets’ inherent shortcomings. Thus, ecological economists should also study, promote, and theorize non-market food systems.

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“…Food as a type of commons, rather than commodity, remains a very marginal subject (Vivero-Pol 2017). This is despite the growing popularity of food commons outside of academia.…”

Section: The Commons and Alternative Food Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The transformative power of commoning and alternative food networks

Zhang

Barr

2018

Environmental Politics

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A commoning framework offers a critical lens to fully appreciate the scope and impact of alternative food networks (AFNs). Fieldwork from an AFN in southern China is drawn upon to show how commoning enacts changes in how members contextualise and anchor their social relations to one another with regards to sourcing food as a commons. A commoning framework gives a fuller picture of how the constitutive effects of AFNs reside not in their introduction of a new uniformity but in their navigation of the multiplicity of the social through its proposition and co-construction of a new 'cognitive praxis'.

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The idea of food as commons or commodity in academia. A systematic review of English scholarly texts

Cited by 51 publications

References 77 publications

Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition

Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the Links between Normative Valuations and Agency in Food Transition

The Case for Studying Non-Market Food Systems

The transformative power of commoning and alternative food networks

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