Food Tourism and Contested Food Resources : Local Practices, Global Pressures, and Environmental and Cultural Norms

This joint session (RC40 Sociology of Agriculture and Food & RC24 Environment and Society) explores how food resources are shaped, valued, and contested within transforming agri-food systems under conditions of globalization.

Across diverse contexts, local food practices are increasingly influenced by external pressures, including global markets, tourism, regulatory frameworks, and environmental policies. While these processes may create new opportunities, they also generate challenges such as unequal access to resources, shifting cultural meanings, and transformations in production, distribution, and consumption.

Food resources—including agricultural products, marine resources, and wildlife—are not only material goods but are embedded in cultural identities, livelihoods, and social relations. As a result, they frequently become sites of contestation. Locally meaningful practices may come into tension with global norms related to sustainability, conservation, and ethical consumption. From an environmental justice perspective, traditional food cultures are also subject to critical scrutiny where they intersect with inequality, resource access, and ecological impacts. At the same time, tourism and mobility reshape how food is valued, represented, and consumed.

This session invites empirical and theoretical contributions examining how food resources are used, interpreted, and governed across contexts, with particular attention to transformation, inequality, and governance in agri-food systems.

We welcome contributions on topics including:

• food resources and changing meanings
• tourism and agri-food transformations
• local practices and global norms
• governance and inequalities in food systems
• environmental justice and food cultures