[News] CfP Special Issue: Challenges and Potentialities of the Urban Food Commons

[Verwey, Anna (anna.verwey@uni-graz.at)]

Liebe Alle,
Wir freuen uns über Beiträge zu folgendem CfP zu Urban Food Commons.
Liebe Grüße
Rivka und Anna



Call for Papers: Challenges and Potentialities of the Urban Food Commons

To be submitted to the journal Urban Studies

Guest Editors: Sergio Ruiz Cayuela (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Owain Hanmer (University of the West of England), Anna Verwey (University of Graz), Rivka Saltiel (University of Graz), Nevra Akdemir (University of Osnabrück)


The resurgence of the commons as both a theoretical concept and practical tool for social transformation has become increasingly articulated in relation to urban environments, where the frictions, contradictions, and tensions of capitalism are extremely apparent (Huron 2015). Starting from the premise that the commons are central elements of our collective subsistence (Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999), food(s) becomes an obvious point of attention. Whereas food is a key dimension of the urban metabolic rift that crystallises in socio-environmental injustices in cities and beyond (Brenner and Katsikis 2021), a vast and diverse set of practices of food commoning has also emerged (e.g. self-organised food production and redistribution, collective eating and cooking, urban gardening). As such, food has become a crucial vehicle for experimental and alternative value practices in cities which reflects the emergence of an urban food commons. These urban food initiatives rely on collective resources, community-based responsibility and solidarity, and can challenge/resist the politics of individualisation and marketisation of the neoliberal era (De Angelis 2017). Importantly, food brings to attention the importance and centrality of care and social reproduction for expanding the emancipatory possibilities of commoning (Sanchez 2023).

Following a session on this topic at the 'Social Solidarity Economy & the Commons Conference 2023' in Lisbon, we aim to extend these incipient conversations into a coherent body of research. In this Special Issue, we want to explore the challenges and opportunities for food commoning in relation to neoliberal urbanisation processes, and understand how these initiatives negotiate access, use, needs, responsibility, care, benefits, as well as risks and limitations of urban food growing, provisioning and redistribution. We hope that a collection of (various) works and perspectives can help us identify leverage points that contribute to building bridges and strengthen urban food commoning as an everyday practice of resistance and as a movement.

While we do not want to be too prescriptive at this stage, we welcome contributions that could:

  *   Provide in-depth analyses of particular cases of urban food commons, including their impacts, internal governance and/or how they interact with wider processes of urbanisation.
  *   Reflect on the potential of urban food commoning as an emancipatory practice, either on its own or as part of wider post-capitalist alternatives and transformational possibilities
  *   Look at the particular challenges faced by urban food commons within and beyond the neoliberal city and/or discuss strategies of overcoming those barriers.
  *   Consider the development of the reproductive urban commons in relation to food.


Instructions for Authors: Please send an abstract (max. 250 words) by the 30th of June 2024 to Sergio (sergio.ruiz.cayuela at uab.cat<mailto:sergio.ruiz.cayuela at uab.cat>) and Owain (Owain.Hanmer at uwe.ac.uk)


References

Brenner, N. & Katsikis, N. (2020). Operational landscapes: Hinterlands of the Capitalocene. Architectural design, 90(1), 22-31.

De Angelis, M. (2017). Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism. London: Zed Books.

Huron, A. (2015). Working with strangers in saturated space: Reclaiming and maintaining the urban commons. Antipode, 47(4), 963-979.

Mies, M. & Bennholdt-Thomsen, V. (1999). The subsistence perspective. Beyond the Globalised Economy. London: ZED Books.

Sanchez, I.G. (2023). Care commons: Infrastructural (re)compositions for life sustenance through yet against regimes of chronic crisis. Urban Studies 60(12), pp. 2456-2473.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Verwey  (she/her)
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin | Doctoral Researcher

urban HEAP - research group on human geography
Department of Geography and Regional Science
University of Graz
Heinrichstraße 18 / Postal Address: Heinrichstraße 36
8010 Graz / Austria

Tel: +43 (0)316 380-5136
anna.verwey at uni-graz.at<mailto:anna.verwey at uni-graz.at>

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