Forging Global Alliances: Food Security, Preparedness, and Agroecological Resilience In Turbulent Times

This session addresses the urgent imperative of regional and local food security amid national and global instability (Turbulent Times). In an era of deepening interconnectedness alongside resurgent nationalism, fragmentation, and conflict, the political imperative is no longer simply about supply, but about strategic preparedness. Contemporary geopolitical conflicts and the weaponization of supply chains—notably the fertilizer blockade in the Strait of Hormuz—have reanimated the post-WWII paradigm of food as a national security asset, a paradigm never fully abandoned in East Asia. Today's crisis is compounded by environmental collapse, demanding sociological analysis of how intersecting ecological, economic, and geopolitical crises reshape communities, governance, and inequalities. This session proposes a dual approach: revitalizing local agroecological systems to reduce import dependencies while forging new partnerships across scales—between municipalities, producers, civil society, digital intermediaries, and transnational research networks. We invite early-career researchers to examine questions at the intersection of food system governance and organizational sociology. How do governance frameworks enable or constrain cross-sectoral alliances? Which organizational forms bridge the logics of public administration, agriculture, private innovation, and civil society? How do theories of polycentric, network, and collaborative governance inform food system resilience? How do power asymmetries, path dependencies, and institutional inertia shape transformative change? Open exclusively to PhD candidates and recent PhDs (post-2025), this panel forms part of the RC40-RC17 PhD Summer School. Participants will join a 3–4 day intensive seminar before the ISA World Congress, workshopping papers with senior scholars toward a Special Issue. Partial funding is available for RC40 and RC17 members.