Varieties of food democracy: a systematic literature review

Behringer, Julia; Feindt, Peter H.

doi:10.1080/19460171.2023.2191859

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Our research provides elements for future studies through intersectional approaches to inequalities and injustices, which have received increasing attention these days, particularly with regards to the role of social movements [46]. The same applies for food democracy as a counter-pressure to corporate control [47]. Research based on integrated and multiscale analysis of food access and production will contribute to targeting inequalities and injustices, sustainability, social equity, human health, and climate change in food system transitions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Food Systems and Access to Healthy Food in an Amazonian Context

Maluf,

Burlandy,

Cintrão

et al. 2024

Sustainability

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The article aims to identify how systemic, multi-scale dynamics influence access to adequate and healthy food and eating and how food is produced and circulated in the Amazonian context of the Metropolitan Region of Santarém (PA). We conducted a literature review, qualitative interviews with key actors, discussion groups and visits to food retailers to address the following research questions: how do socio-economic and political dynamics, especially those related to the soy-meat agroindustrial complex, create or reproduce social inequalities, injustices and inequities, and how do they affect the access to adequate and healthy food? Our findings suggest that the expansion of large-scale soybean growing and livestock, forming the industrial soy-meat complex, contributes to the impoverishment of certain social segments of the local population, accompanied by the erosion of the base for food production. Smallholder farmers and Indigenous and traditional people are among the main affected groups, while violence in rural areas contributes to restricting access to adequate and healthy food. The novelties of our study lie in approaching food systems, taking access to food as the entry point and linking adverse effects of the soy-meat complex to inequalities in access to healthy food. The study also discusses value conflicts between “traditional” and “modern food” (e.g., ultra-processed food), reflecting intergenerational disputes between ways of life and culture, which are also nurtured by the expansion of the soy-meat complex. These multi-scale dynamics have significant repercussions on how food is produced and circulated and highlight the relations between local food politics and conflicts, as well as their connections with processes beyond the local scale. Finally, the article calls for advancing integrated and multi-scale analysis of food production and access to address challenges of social injustices in food system transitions, fostering sustainability, human health and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Food Systems and Access to Healthy Food in an Amazonian Context

Maluf,

Burlandy,

Cintrão

et al. 2024

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Food democracy (FD) has been mobilized, in theory, as a lens for analyzing contemporary food systems and, in practice, as an organizing principle for transforming the dominant industrial agrifood system (Bornemann and Weiland, 2019;Behringer and Feindt, 2023). A variety of practices have been framed within the FD discourse, ranging from individual actions (e.g., ethical consumption, domestic cooking, or kitchen gardens) to collective organizations, like food cooperatives or Food Policy Councils (FPCs) (Bornemann and Weiland, 2019;Leitheiser et al, 2022a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joining the ideational and the material: transforming food systems toward radical food democracy

Leitheiser,

Vezzoni

2024

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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This paper presents a conceptualization of radical food democracy (RFD) which links the diverse economies approach of Gibson-Graham with Tully’s notion of diverse citizenship. Despite its invaluable contribution to theorizing the role of alternative food networks (AFNs) in transforming unsustainable industrial food systems, the diverse economies scholarship has been criticized for essentializing the autonomy of alternative economic practices—hence risking to confound emancipatory social change with punctuated forms of “local,” “quality,” “organic certified” products, which nevertheless remain embedded in market-mediated capitalist relations, and displacement and/or deferral of negative impacts. This paper aims to address such critiques, contending that the realization of RFD requires both (1) the experimentation with new economic practices that carve out food economies alternative to the working logic of capital accumulation, and (2) the cultivation of new political subjects capable of universalizing these particular struggles. After situating various existing practices associated with food democracy in a framework of various modes of democratic citizenship, we underpin our understanding of RFD with a theory of change informed by Bob Jessop’s strategic-relational approach to social structures, agents’ reflexive actions, and their contingency. Following a critical scientific approach to the social role of academics, this theoretical framework is illustrated using a case study from Germany. The empirical work draws on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with leaders of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperatives and Food Policy Council (FPC) networks conducted in Cologne, Berlin, and Frankfurt in 2018–2020. To conclude, this paper argues that the emancipatory potential of food democracy should cultivate both lighthouse alternative economic practices that are connected with people’s everyday lives, and political imagination that dares to critically engage with existing institutions. Likewise, RFD praxis requires a constant back and forth between the ideational and the practical, the abstract and the concrete, the actionable and the analytical, to challenge both the symbolic-discursive and the material dimensions of capitalist agri-food systems.

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Cakewalk or catastrophe? Exploring the realities of climate diet

Thankappan

2024

Geography

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Varieties of food democracy: a systematic literature review

Cited by 3 publications

References 89 publications

Food Systems and Access to Healthy Food in an Amazonian Context

Food Systems and Access to Healthy Food in an Amazonian Context

Joining the ideational and the material: transforming food systems toward radical food democracy

Cakewalk or catastrophe? Exploring the realities of climate diet

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