Article scientifique

Articles

• De la hausse des prix au retour du « productionnisme » agricole : les enjeux du sommet sur la sécurité alimentaire de juin 2008 à Rome
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  En mai 2007, la rumeur de la création d’un nouveau gouvernement français sans ministère de l’Agriculture courait. Celui-ci serait éventuellement relégué au rang de secrétariat d’État. Le rapport annuel de la Banque mondiale sur le développement dans le monde sortait six mois plus tard, consacré à l’agriculture. Il dénonçait l’abandon dont ce secteur avait fait l’objet depuis plus de vingt ans. La part consacrée au secteur agricole dans l’aide publique au développement était ainsi passée de 11,5 à 3,9 milliards de dollars entre 1987 et 2005. En moins d’un an, les manifestations populaires et les émeutes que la flambée des prix a provoquées auront réussi à bouleverser l’agenda politique international et à replacer l’agriculture dans les débats internationaux. Revenir sur cet emballement médiatique et tenter de prendre du recul sur l’enchaînement des événements ne vise pas à dénoncer cette nouvelle priorité. Mais ce retour de balancier porte en lui de nouveaux risques qui pourraient bien conduire, si l’on n’y prend garde, à provoquer demain d’autres crises alimentaires.

• When collective action drives corporate social responsibility implementation in small and medium-sized enterprises : the case of a network of French winemaking cooperatives
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Increasing attention has been given to the engagement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in corporate social responsibility (CSR), yet little is known about collective SME actions to implement CSR. We conducted 29 semi-structured interviews to investigate a network of 18 French winemaking cooperatives. These SMEs are particularly interesting because they have traditionally operated on values similar to CSR principles. The case study explores how collective action was able to drive CSR implementation in the cooperatives over time. Our results highlight the mechanisms of collective action related to social capital and their impacts on cooperative relationships with key stakeholders. We also provide managerial recommendations for this type of CSR network.

• Small farm production and the standardization of tropical products
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This paper explores the historical relations between labour organization and product qualification in the production of tropical agricultural exports. In supplying international markets for tropical products, peasant farming emerged as the norm for labour organization after the First World War, competing with the large plantations and different systems of forced labour. During the same period, national standards became the dominant tool for product qualification of commodities traded on the global agricultural markets. These standards allow the creation of futures markets and the emergence of traders, instead of auction markets and commission merchants : two changes that were the basis of the subsequent international marketing of peasant-produced commodities. The last part of the paper considers the potential consequences of the current erosion of standards for the position of peasants in tropical export crop cultivation.

• Manger local. Leurres et promesses
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Investir l’espace géographique local serait une solution pour permettre une transition réelle vers des systèmes alimentaires plus écologiques et plus justes. Parce qu’il y a là une évidence partagée au-delà de clivages partisans, il convient d’y regarder de plus près afin de mieux voir les revers d’une telle focalisation sur cette échelle d’action. À cette condition seulement, il sera possible d’échapper à la réduction des problèmes écologiques et économiques aux seuls problèmes scalaires, et par là-même de ne pas faire du local une fin mais un moyen pour d’autres fins.

• Improving lifestyles sustainability through community gardening : results and lessons learnt from the JArDinS quasi-experimental study.
  10 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Despite an increasing number of studies highlighting the health benefits of community gardening, the literature is limited by cross-sectional designs. The “JArDinS” quasi-experimental study aimed to assess the impact of community garden participation on the adoption of more sustainable lifestyles among French adults.

• How the microbiome challenges our concept of self
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Today, the three classical biological explanations of the individual self––the immune system, the brain, the genome––are being challenged by the new field of microbiome research. Evidence shows that our resident microbes orchestrate the adaptive immune system, influence the brain, and contribute more gene functions than our own genome. The realization that humans are not individual, discrete entities but rather the outcome of ever-changing interactions with microorganisms has consequences beyond the biological disciplines. In particular, it calls into question the assumption that distinctive human traits set us apart from all other animals––and therefore also the traditional disciplinary divisions between the arts and the sciences.

• Charlas culinarias : Mexican women speak from their public kitchens
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  By exploring how working-class Mexican women transform their home cooking abilities into an economic resource to support themselves and their families, this paper looks at the philosophical approach women give to their entrepreneurial efforts.

• Realizing justice in local food systems
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  For alternative agrifood social movements, food-system localization is both an ideal and a pathway to resolve environmental, social and economic issues in the food system. This article addresses the potential for equity within food-system localization in practical and conceptual terms. Historical processes have shaped regions and social relations with vast differences in wealth, power and privilege and this has implications for thinking about and enacting equity through food-system localization. If food-system localization efforts are to work toward equity, they must consider inherited material and discursive asymmetries within frameworks of economy, demography, geography and democracy.

• Circuits courts alimentaires, dynamiques relationnelles et lutte contre l’exclusion en agriculture
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Les circuits courts alimentaires, sujet d’actualité, sont parfois idéalisés alors que leur capacité à réduire les inégalités reste à approfondir. À partir des apports de la sociologie économique, l’article cherche à montrer en quoi et comment ces circuits, en tant que marchés valorisant les liens sociaux, peuvent permettre d’intégrer des positions sociales marginalisées en agriculture, identifiées à partir d’un travail préalable de bibliographie et d’enquêtes. Basée sur une analyse longitudinale des relations sociales et des récits de vie, la recherche fait émerger trois types de dynamiques relationnelles facilitant l’intégration d’exclus. La contribution illustre les circuits courts considérés comme des outils au service d’un développement social durable.

• The place of food : mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  ‘Local food systems’ movements, practices, and writings pose increasingly visible structures of resistance and counter-pressure to conventional globalizing food systems. The place of food seems to be the quiet centre of the discourses emerging with these movements. The purpose of this paper is to identify issues of ‘place’, which are variously described as the ‘local’and ‘community’ in the local food systems literature, and to do so in conjunction with the geographic discussion focused on questions and meanings around these spatial concepts. I see raising the profile of questions, complexity and potential of these concepts as an important role and challenge for the scholar-advocate in the realm of local food systems, and for geographers sorting through them. Both literatures benefit from such a foray. The paper concludes, following a ‘cautiously normative’ tone, that there is strong argument for emplacing our food systems, while simultaneously calling for careful circumspection and greater clarity regarding how we delineate and understand the ‘local’. Being conscious of the constructed nature of the ‘local’, ‘community’ and ‘place’ means seeing the importance of local social, cultural and ecological particularity in our everyday worlds, while also recognizing that we are reflexively and dialectially tied to many and diverse locals around the world.