The question of ‘alternatives’ within food and drink markets and marketing: introduction to the special issue

The question of 'alternatives' within food and drink markets and marketing: introduction to the special issu

Growing Environmental Activists: Developing Environmental Agency and Engagement Through Children’s Fiction.

We explore how story has the potential to encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency provided that critical discussion takes place. We illuminate this with reference to the philosophies of John Macmurray on personal agency and social relations; of John Dewey on the primacy of experience for philosophy; and of Paul Ricoeur on hermeneutics, dialogue, dialectics and narrative. We view the use of fiction for environmental understanding as hermeneutic, a form of conceptualising place which interprets experience and perception. The four writers for young people discussed are Ernest Thompson Seton, Kenneth Grahame, Michelle Paver and Philip Pullman. We develop the concept of critical dialogue, and link this to Crick's demand for active democratic citizenship. We illustrate the educational potential for environmental discussions based on literature leading to deeper understanding of place and environment, encouraging the belief in young people that they can be and become agents for change. We develop from Zimbardo the key concept of heroic resister to encourage young people to overcome peer pressure. We conclude with a call to develop a greater awareness of the potential of fiction for learning, and for writers to produce more focused stories engaging with environmental responsibility and activism

How organic farmers view their own practice: results from the Czech Republic

This paper addresses the development of organic agriculture in the Czech Republic, which is seen as a success story among post-communist countries. The relatively short history of organic farming and specific contextual factors raises questions about the nature and meaning of Czech organic farming. The goal of this study was to find out how farmers view their own practice, interpret its symbolic value, and construct its content. This empirical study uses Q methodology aimed at the identification of the collectively-shared perspectives belonging engaged actors. Data were gathered through semi-standardized interviews with Czech farmers registered in official organic scheme. The analysis emphasized three components, which are considered as three distinct perspectives possessed by organic farmers; that is, (1) organic farming as a way of life, (2) as an occupation, and (3) as a production of food of an alternative quality compared to conventional food. Each viewpoint entails a different understanding of what organic farming means; each then—when considered together—comprises the meaning of organic agriculture in the Czech Republic. The presented classification of the farmers holding the viewpoints contributes to the ongoing theoretical discussion regarding the nature of the current organic sector, its development and potential conventionalization

Re-thinking the transformation of organics: the role of the UK Government in shaping British organic food and farming

The focus of international scholarship on the contemporary transformation of organic food and farming has been a rather narrow preoccupation with the ‘conventionalisation thesis’ that describes a process whereby the structure and ideology of the expanding organic sector is seen increasingly to resemble that of the conventional food and farming sector that it has traditionally opposed. This study seeks to contribute to this literature by examining the role of the UK government in shaping the British organic sector since 1980, when it first began to engage seriously with organic farming. It draws on the analysis of a wide range of government and organic movement publications for the period 1980–2006, as well as a programme of semi-structured interviews with key organic policy actors during this time frame. By analysing the way in which the UK government has discursively constructed three separate story-lines about organics, this study argues that the effects of government action on British organic food and farming are best described as a process of containment. Further, it posits the need to move on from the rather reductionist focus offered by the conventionalisation thesis to more nuanced approaches to the transformation of contemporary food and farming that account for different geographical contexts, and the particular roles of different actors actively constructing what ‘organics’ is