Alternative Food Futures: Connecting Research with Citizen Politics I

Research into new ways of doing food futures differently is not only academic; it is also a political project aimed at demonstrating new ways of sharing, thinking and doing that emerge from active engagement between and among diverse civic food experiments. Examples can be found across movements for food justice, food sovereignty, agroecology, the right to food and solidarity/care economy (etc), all of which occupy an important place at the intersection of sociologies of food and/or futures.

This session invites researchers to share insights that can help make connections between personal and collective visions for future societies, justice and food system reform. In particular, we are interested to hear from studies that give citizen food politics a central space in creating new stories about food, and so progress understandings of how alternative practices for sustainable and just food futures might better inform policy or activism. What new stories for food futures are emerging, and by whom, and how might these be mobilised to challenge existing food power relations? What methods (e.g. scenarios, citizen science) can praxis-oriented researchers use to progress work at this nexus?