Explorative Workshop

convened by Sarah Ruth Sippel (University of Leipzig) and Cornelia Reiher (Freie Universität Berlin/GEAS)

Co-convenors: Nicolette Larder (University of New England) and Felipe Roa-Clavijo (University of Oxford)

While a vital part of our everyday lives, the future of food is insecure: agriculture and food are currently being shaped by the culmination of multiple crises related to new energy policies, financial turmoil, and climatic hazards. Prevailing food insecurity and the question how agriculture and food should be organised within society are at the very heart of food networks and movements, which have been emerging all over the world in recent years. While all aim at developing alternatives to the current food system, research on these networks and movements together with the existing interlinkages, particularly when it comes to North-South divides, rarely are brought together. This workshop aims at addressing these transregional interlinkages and emerging synergies between those actors and groups of people who are building alternative food relationships in different parts of the world.

  

   

– Preliminary programme –

Thursday, 1 December 2016 | Venue: tbc

5.00-7.30pm

Round table discussion
Challenges and opportunities of joint knowledge production: Connecting academics,
practitioners and activists
Moderator: Jan Urhahn Panellists: Andreas Grünewald, Benjamin Luig, Cornelia Reiher, (tbc)
In cooperation with INKOTA & Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

7.30pm

Reception
Food and drinks

 

     
Friday, 2 December 2016 | Venue: Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstraße 19, Berlin

9.00-9.30am

Welcome, introduction and conceptual framework
Sarah Ruth Sippel

9.30-10.30am

Towards resilient and sustainable food systems
Tjitske Anna Zwart: Assessing the capacity of Food Teams to contribute to a sustainable food
system in Flanders
Prajal Pradhan: Optimisation of urban food networks and its climate benefits

10.30-11.00am   Coffee break

11.00-12.00pm

Food sovereignty in the Global North
Claire C. VanStaveren: Opportunities for convergence: ‘Alternative food movements’, food
sovereignty organisations in the United Kingdom and the global food sovereignty movement
Carol Richards: Food Sovereignty in Australia? Pathways of a food movement in the
developed world context

12.00-1.00pm 

Open discussion

1.00-2.00pm   Lunch break

2.00-3.00pm

Transregional food policies
Paula Fernandez-Wulff: Legal and policy concerns in transregional agri-food movements:
Between convergence and contextualisation
Julia Dennis: Empowering civil society in Europe: The case of Germany’s global food and
development policy

3.00-3.15pm   Short break

3.15-4.15pm

Transregional citizen and consumer advocacy
Cornelia Reiher: Food and agriculture in the Anti-TPP campaign: Perspectives from Japan
Jane Dixon: The social change potential of transregional nutricentrism: The case of quinoa
and other ‘super- foods’
4.15-4.45pm   Coffee break
4.45-5.45pm

Frameworks for novel food futures
Markus Keck: Transregional food networks in the light of the multiple modernities theory
Michael K. Goodman: New matters of concern in food studies: A polemic
5.45-6.30pm

Open discussion

8.00pm    Dinner

Saturday, 3 December 2016 | Venue: Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstraße 19, Berlin
9.00-10.00am

Famers and the state: negotiating visions for agriculture
Katharina Schiller: The transition to agroecology in Nicaragua: Transformation or
reconfiguration of the agri-food system?
René Trappel: Sunsetting smallholder farming? Thoughts on the future of agriculture in China

10.00-10.30am   Coffee break

10.30-11.30am

(Non-)existing transregional connections
Emilio Travieso: Transformative social innovation through coffee networks: The case of
Yomol A’tel
Alexander F. Day: Re/structuring peasant politics in China: Agrarian structural difference
and impediments to transnational connections

11.30-12.30pm

Open discussion

12.30-1.30pm   Lunch break

1.30-2.30pm

Models for change: subverting or adapting the system?
Sophia Albov: Agroecological symbiosis: Pilot project for (re)localising food systems and
prompting sustainable countryside development
Nicolette Larder and Sarah Ruth Sippel: Food sovereignty as a traveling concept? Initiating
and practicing food sovereignty in Australia

2.30-2.45pm   Short break

2.45-3.45pm

Reclaiming control over food systems
Felipe Roa-Clavijo: Rural social movements in Latin America: Transnational links and the
food sovereignty movement
Sony Pellissery: How democratisation of genetic resources changes food systems:
The case of community seed banks

3.45-4.15pm   Coffee break

4.15-4.45pm

Résumé and concluding commentary
Aya Kimura

4.45-5.30pm

Final discussion and future plans

The workshop is part of the strategic cooperation between the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland. Additional funding is provided by the Collaborative Research
Centre ‘Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition’ (SFB 1199, Universität Leipzig) and the Graduate School of
East Asian Studies (Freie Universität Berlin).