Slow Food Movements

We just learned that our abstract entitled, “Slow Food: the geographical becoming of a new social movement” has been accepted for the 4S/EASST conference. The  joint conference of The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) will take place October 17-20, 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference theme is Design and Displacement. ‘Design’ has become a key concept across a multitude of disciplinary domains and social spheres. In addition to its traditional ‘aesthetic’ associations, it is now a key term in multiple scientific domains and in diverse technological practices. One can even think of societies and social arrangements being ‘designed’. In science and technology, ‘design’ implies the re-arrangement of materials and ideas for innovative purposes. When newly designed scientific and technical objects enter the world, however, their initial purposes are often displaced.

Our contribution to the conference is articulated in our abstract as follows: “In order to understand the global circulation and diffusion of ideas and practices this paper proposes a theoretical and methodological framework which aims to move beyond the case study approach. In a study of a rapidly growing new social movement, Slow Food (SF) , the paper looks both at the global diffusion of SF ideas and practices as well as the local articulation and appropriation of these ideas and practices. Since its establishment in Italy in 1989, SF has evolved into a significant global social movement promoting sustainable, local and high quality food production and consumption. Drawing on Actor-Network and Assemblage Theory, this paper presents an approach to trace and explain the proliferation of SF, starting from its original ‘design’ (a local protest in Rome against the establishment of a McDonalds restaurant) to its current multiplicity of displacements. In this paper, we argue that the emergence of SF can be usefully understood as a threefold process of ‘geographical becoming’. First, SF expands and evolves through the continuing interaction and engagement with existing socio-technical arrangements in specific places and spaces. Second, it embeds itself in these places and shapes new local food agendas. Third, it constitutes a geography in itself, with concentration and dispersion, cores and peripheries, virtual highways and cul-de-sacs. We draw upon the strong internet exposure of SF and combine systemic (webometric and content analysis) with interpretative approaches (multi-sited ethnography and discourse analysis) to explore these particular geographies and understand the circulation and diffusion of SF ideas and practices.”

This is a video about our research project developed by the sustainability network of the Radboud University. More specifically, the video is part of the ‘Verborgen Waarden’ (Hidden Values) initiative. All over the university campus one can find QR-codes to watch various videos on sustainability, including this particular example. Parts of the video are shot at Piccolino Patathuisje and at La Padella.

For the KNAW conference (see previous post) we also produced a poster. We already put this poster on our blog before, but that blog post dissapeared mysteriously. In any case, here another attempt with the same poster. The difference with other posters is the attention for the first part of our fieldwork and a short discussion of our theoretical focus on geographical becoming.

Food for thought and thought for food: the local-global entanglement of the Slow Food movement from KNAW on Vimeo.

Arnoud presented our project at the “Understanding and managing complex systems” conference of the KNAW in Amsterdam: Since its establishment in Italy in 1989, the Slow Food movement (SF) has evolved into a significant global social movement promoting sustainable, local and high quality food production and consumption. This research project focuses on the development and diffusion of the Slow Food movement. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and Assemblage Theory, the project aims to trace and explain the proliferation of SF ideas and practices across different scales and places. We argue that the emergence of SF can be usefully understood as a threefold process of ‘geographical becoming’. First, SF expands and evolves through the continuing interaction and engagement with existing places and spaces. Second, it embeds itself in these places and shapes new local food agendas. Third, it constitutes a geography in itself, with concentration and dispersion, cores and peripheries, virtual highways and cul-de-sacs. The project draws upon the strong internet exposure of the Slow Food movement to collect and analyse data. In broad terms, the project’s methodology combines systemic (webometric and content analysis) with interpretative approaches (multi-sited ethnography and discourse analysis).

We are currently working on a paper (Tracing the Slow Food movement: local food scapes and global networks) for a session at the AAG, the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in New York. We are part of a series of sessions (five in total) on ‘Theorizing the Geographies of Food: New Directions and Interventions for Alternative Food Praxis’, organised by Jessica Hayes-Conroy, Allison N Hayes-Conroy, and Renata Blumberg. Our session is scheduled on Saturday, 2/25/2012, from 12:40 PM – 2:20 PM in Conference Room K, Lower Level, Sheraton Hotel.

So, if you happen to be around in New York at that time, we will be talking about the following: Over the last two decades alternative food practices have mushroomed across the globe. This proliferation has changed local food scapes, infusing localities with new ideas and ways of food production, circulation and consumption. It has also created global networks of innovation and institutionalization that shape the ways in which alternative food practices develop. A thorough understanding of the dynamics of these scapes and networks requires, in our view, a theoretical and methodological approach which acknowledges the local-global entanglement of alternative food practices. This paper looks into one established form of alternative food scapes and networks, the Slow Food movement (SF). Its focus is mainly conceptual. Drawing on Actor-Network and Assemblage Theory, it presents an approach to trace and explain the proliferation of SF, combining webometric Internet research and multi-sited ethnography. Although it is possible to observe global repetition as well as strategic adaptation (in space and time) in the alternative food practices of SF, we question the common assumption that social movements are organizationally structured and that structuration manifests itself through easily accessible organizational or institutional forms. Accordingly, we develop a new vocabulary and toolset that serves to understand the complex and dynamic local-global entanglement of SF, shedding light on the capacities the movement is (not) developing to strengthen and spread its ideas and practices across the world.