19 Jul Understanding Sustainable Food System Transitions: Practice, Assessment and Governance

I am very pleased to share that a new special issue of Sociologia Ruralis edited by Damian Maye and me is now online: Understanding Sustainable Food System Transitions: Practice, Assessment and Governance.

The Special Issue provides theoretical insights and advancements into sustainability transitions through empirically grounded and informed investigations of food system practices. The papers confirm, following Hinrichs (2014, p. 143), that ‘numerous opportunities exist to forge more productive links between work on food systems change and the broad and growing sustainability transitions field’.

The Special Issue brings together 8 articles grouped together around two themes:

1.  Examining relations between AFN practices and transition;
2. Opening up measures and assessment practices for sustainability transitions.

Taken as a whole, the Special Issue advances discussions and thinking on alternative food practices and sustainability, opening up the debate not only on how to identify and analyse ‘alternative food practices’ in Europe, and beyond, but also on sustainability assessment metrics, governance processes and what counts as ‘sustainable’ in sustainability transitions.

Contents of the Special Issue

Understanding Sustainable Food System Transitions: Practice, Assessment and Governance Damian Maye and Jessica Duncan

Theme 1: Examining Relations Between AFN Practices and Transition

• Rendering the Actually Existing Sharing Economy Visible: Home-Grown Food and the Pleasure of Sharing Petr Jehlička and Petr Daněk
• Fair Trade Milk Initiative in Belgium: Bricolage as an Empowering Strategy for Change Marlène Feyereisen, Pierre M. Stassart and François Mélard
• Mapping the Organisational Forms of Networks of Alternative Food Networks: Implications for Transition Jessica Duncan and Stefano Pascucci
• Bricolage for Self-Sufficiency: An Analysis of Alternative Food Networks Mikelis Grivins, Daniel Keech, Ilona Kunda and Talis Tisenkopfs

Theme 2: Opening Up Measures and Assessment Practices for Sustainable Food Transitions

• Reflexive Governance, Incorporating Ethics and Changing Understandings of Food Chain Performance  James Kirwan, Damian Maye and Gianluca Brunori
• The Framing of Sustainability in Sustainability Assessment Frameworks for Agriculture Elin Slätmo, Klara Fischer and Elin Röös
• Short Food Supply Chains, Long Working Days: Active Work and the Construction of Professional Satisfaction in French Diversified Organic Market Gardening Lucie Dupré, Claire Lamine and Mireille Navarrete
• Reflexivity and Learning in System Innovation Processes Pieter J. Beers and Barbara van Mierlo