About this Research Topic

Background

Scholarship and high-level diplomatic reports alike, including that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021, have highlighted the negative material and bodily inequities of our globalized industrial food system, one that is fuelled by a hegemonic politics of food access and availability. The effects of industrialized food systems on public health, human rights, food sovereignty, ecological sustainability for land and water, as well as for climate change are increasingly obvious. These ongoing challenges, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, have exacerbated existing social, economic, and political inequalities and vulnerabilities and placed them in the spotlight. The crisis in the Ukraine has also underscored how connected global industrialized food systems are to nation state geopolitical interests, international alliances, trade relations, and conflicts. The current industrialized resource-intensive food system has persisted because of a complex set of power relations, despite its continuing and deepening social, ecological, and cultural costs.

Many scholars have argued that these food system challenges require a fundamental shift in how populations and producers conceive their worlds; that is, they demand a different kind of social imagination—one not rooted in prevailing neoliberal and technical-rational perspectives. In this view, the scale, complexity and pervasive ill effects of the current system necessitate new forms of scholarly praxis that encourage consideration of a new social imaginary or way of knowing that reflects an intersectional approach to food security, health equity, ecological justice, land sovereignty, and human rights. This argument suggests that the food system cannot be isolated from current claims of power, privilege, and extractivism. Scholars and practitioners, inspired by agroecology, regenerative agriculture, de/colonial struggles and strategies, as well as quantum and complexity theories, have been exploring the systems relationships that together comprise a generative social imaginary that could resist and provide a foundational rationale and animating set of values for dismantling the individualistic ontological assumptions of classical science that have shaped the dominant neoliberal narrative; one which intersects with settler colonialism, white supremacy, ableism, patriarchy and the hetero-gender-normativity of current food system learning and action.

The Editors welcome submissions that engage with the onto-epistemic framing of critical praxis for sustainable food systems change and the prevailing food system social imaginary, with an eye to developing an alternative predicated instead on equity and sustainability. We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions, frameworks, and methodological articles that engage with the following topics:

Critically engaged praxis aimed at disrupting dominant narratives within the food system and positing fresh possibilities for knowledge production and social action;

Non-classical frameworks that consider onto-epistemological critiques and the influences of power and privilege for studying and addressing the complex interconnections of food systems with global inequality, food sovereignty, and climate change;

Policy-related studies seeking to address these concerns through civil society networks and collaborations.

Keywords: Food system praxis, Onto-epistemological frames, Social imaginary, Food Justice, Agroecology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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