Engaging People, Engaging in Service: A Case Study of a Community Garden

community garden, Slow Food, local food, agricultural literacy, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Spring 2009, IA Alumna discovers fascinating world of food culture and production through Italian graduate program

Jacqueline Lewin graduated from UNH in 2005 with a dual major in international affairs and French. Her interest in the Slow Food movement has led her to a masters program at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Colorno, Italy

Hail the Snail: Hegemonic Struggles in the Slow Food Movement

This paper explores how new institutional fields are established and extended. We argue that they are created by social movements engaging in hegemonic struggles and which develop social movement strategies, articulate discourses and construct nodal points. We examine how this process played out during the creation and development of the Slow Food movement. We argue that the positioning of Slow Food as a new field was based particularly on using multiple strategies, increasing the stock of floating signifiers, and abstracting the nodal points used. This mobilized new actors and enabled a more extensive collective identity which allowed the movement to progress, extend, and elevate the field of Slow Food. The field of Slow Food was transformed from appealing only to gastronomes to becoming a broader field that encompassed social justice activists and environmentalists. This study contributes to the existing literature on field formation, the role of social movements in this process, and political dynamics within social movements. We focus on the importance of hegemony in the institutional processes around field formation by drawing out how Slow Food created a field through the forging of hegemonic links among a range of disparate actors

Slow Food Movement: Case Study Report

Theme [ssh.2013.3.2-1] [Social Innovation- Empowering People, changing societies] Project Full Title: “Transformative Social Innovation Theory project”[Abstract] This report presents the results of a case study developed on the Slow Food movement within the EU-FP7 funded TRANSIT Proyect. Slow Food is a International association founded to counter the rise of fast food and fast life. Slow Food demands a shift of paradigm towards a new food system, based on the defense of biodiversity, respect for local cultures and community empowerment. Slow Food envisions a world in which all people can access and enjoy quality food produced in a sustainable and fair way.This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 61316

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, Discussing Online: The Slow Food Movement Quickens with New Media

Even with its opposition to “fast” and “globalization,” the Slow Food movement has embraced new media and speed to disseminate information to a worldwide audience. The organization’s use of new and social media is the focus of this ethnographic study to examine the online discourse of the movement through the theoretical lens of international political economy of media and globalization theory. Online interviews via social media and supplemental textual analysis of Slow Food-related online discourse reveals themes concerning time, education and community and shows that participation in the dialogic discussion surrounding Slow Food online varies widely across groups and new media platforms