Article scientifique

Articles

• The rise of supermarkets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Supermarkets are traditionally viewed by development economists, policymakers, and practitioners as the rich world’s place to shop. The three regions discussed here have a great majority of the poor on the planet. But supermarkets are no longer just niche players for rich consumers in the capital cities of the countries in these regions. The rapid rise of supermarkets in these regions in the past five to ten years has transformed agrifood markets at different rates and depths across regions and countries. Many of those transformations present great challenges—even exclusion—for small farms, and small processing and distribution firms, but also potentially great opportunities. Development models, policies, and programs need to adapt to this radical change.

• 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.

• What’s on the menu ? A global assessment of MUFPP signatory cities’ food strategies. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Increased recognition of the persistent and interconnected nature of food system challenges resulted in the creation of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) in 2015. MUFPP signatory cities commit themselves to contribute to a better functioning food system by adopting integrated approaches. This study assesses the number of MUFPP cities that have developed food strategies and the choices local policymakers make in the design of these strategies. The results show surprising similarities between cities across regions in terms of goals and instruments. At the same time, local governments clearly put different emphases and seem to vary in policy styles.

• A conceptual model of the food and nutrition system
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  The integrated model developed here included three subsystems (producer, consumer, nutrition) and nine stages (production, processing, distribution, acquisition, preparation, consumption, digestion, transport, metabolism). The integrated model considers the processes and transformations that occur within the system and relationships between the system and other systems in the biophysical and social environments. The integrated conceptual model of the food and nutrition system presents food and nutrition activities as part of a larger context and identifies linkages among the many disciplines that deal with the food and nutrition system.

• Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes : a multi-level perspective and a case-study
  23 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  This paper addresses the question of how technological transitions (TT) come about ? Are there particular patterns and mechanisms in transition processes ? TT are defined as major, long-term technological changes in the way societal functions are fulfilled. TT do not only involve changes in technology, but also changes in user practices, regulation, industrial networks, infrastructure, and symbolic meaning or culture. This paper practices ‘appreciative theory’ [R.R. Nelson, S.G. Winter, An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Bellknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982] and brings together insights from evolutionary economics and technology studies. This results in a multi-level perspective on TT where two views of the evolution are combined : (i) evolution as a process of variation, selection and retention, (ii) evolution as a process of unfolding and reconfiguration. The perspective is empirically illustrated with a qualitative longitudinal case-study, the transition from sailing ships to steamships, 1780–1900. Three particular mechanisms in TT are described : niche-cumulation, technological add-on and hybridisation, riding along with market growth.

• Corporate concentration and technological change in the global seed industry
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and to investigate the potential impact on the agri-food chain of the trend toward increased corporate concentration. The first part of this paper presents the main characteristics of the global seed sector, its stakeholders, and its size in the agri-food chain. Next, the corporate consolidation trends of the seed industry over the past two years are examined. The technological evolution of the seed sector is also briefly presented. In the last part of this paper, the fallout of recent mergers and acquisitions in the seed industry are analyzed. Opposing views are expressed on the impact of these mergers and acquisitions in the agri-food chain : while certain stakeholders worry about the risk of food power by the biggest companies, some others expect useful innovations.

• Le métissage, dynamique des gastronomies
  26 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  La gastronomie est une notion ambivalente, tantôt confisquée par un discours élitiste de l’« art de la bonne chère », tantôt assimilée par une culture du boire et du manger construite autour de ces pratiques. En 1826, Brillat-Savarin l’explicitait en « art de régler l’estomac ». Mêlant considérations médicales et recettes de cuisine, il transforme la gastronomie en Physiologie du goût ou Méditations de gastronomie transcendante. Dès lors perçue comme le fait de « gastronomes », elle est « la connaissance raisonnée de tout ce qui se rapporte à l’homme en tant qu’il se nourrit ». Cette conception creuse le fossé qui sépare des cuisines dites populaires de celles dites gastronomiques, que l’on retrouve à la table des grands. La gastronomie, dans cette prétention des plus élitistes, est dénoncée par Jean-Louis Flandrin comme une « pseudo-science du bien-manger » issue d’une rationalisation des pratiques et des consommations alimentaires, et remet en cause les principes d’une diététique née des Lumières. Aussi, elle ne peut être comprise sans être rattachée à la construction des identités nationales tout comme elle présente des caractéristiques qui n’ont cessé d’être interrogées et mises en cause par les historiens.

• « Food activism » en Europe : changer de pratiques, changer de paradigmes
  27 octobre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  Qu’elles soient locales, nationales ou internationales, les mobilisations et les contestations liées à l’alimentation regroupent un large éventail de pratiques allant des actions collectives de producteurs ou de consommateurs aux mouvements sociaux et politiques structurés. À partir d’une définition large et inclusive de la notion de, ce texte explore diverses formes, conceptions et pratiques du food activism observables en Europe. Comment pouvons-nous analyser le food activism et quelles sont ses limites ? Quels types d’économie imaginent ou pratiquent les food activists ? Quels types de positions défendent-ils et quelles stratégies mettent-ils à l’œuvre en Europe ? À partir de deux cas d’étude – le mouvement international Slow Food et les systèmes de paniers de légumes de type AMAP –, il s’agira d’avancer quelques hypothèses concernant les paradigmes et les pratiques de ces activismes. Interroger le food activism nous permet de comprendre non seulement les changements qui affectent dans le temps ces formes de mobilisation et leurs objectifs, mais aussi les liens et connexions entre différents types d’activismes liés à la sphère de l’alimentation. Cela nous conduit parallèlement à interroger nos propres paradigmes et nos propres pratiques de recherche.

• 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.

• Should we go “home” to eat ? : toward a reflexive politics of localism
  3 novembre 2021, par Mathilde COUDRAY

  “Coming home to eat” [Nabhan, 2002. Coming Home to Eat : The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Norton, New York] has become a clarion call among alternative food movement activists. Most food activist discourse makes a strong connection between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. Much of the US academic literature on food systems echoes food activist rhetoric about alternative food systems as built on alternative social norms. New ways of thinking, the ethic of care, desire, realization, and vision become the explanatory factors in the creation of alternative food systems. In these norm-based explanations, the “Local” becomes the context in which this type of action works. In the European food system literature about local “value chains” and alternative food networks, localism becomes a way to maintain rural livelihoods. In both the US and European literatures on localism, the global becomes the universal logic of capitalism and the local the point of resistance to this global logic, a place where “embeddedness” can and does happen. Nevertheless, as other literatures outside of food studies show, the local is often a site of inequality and hegemonic domination. However, rather than declaim the “radical particularism” of localism, it is more productive to question an “unreflexive localism” and to forge localist alliances that pay attention to equality and social justice. The paper explores what that kind of localist politics might look like.