What if the Trucks Stop Coming? – PhD thesis by Cheron Constance

On Wednesday 21 June 2017 at 13.30 hrs Cheron Constance will defend her PhD thesis entitled ‘What if the trucks stop coming? Exploring the framing of local food by cooperative food retailers in New Mexico’ in the Auditorium of Wageningen University. The ceremony will be live streamed by WURTV but can be viewed later as well.

The full thesis will be available online after the defence ceremony.

 

Summary of the thesis

Proponents of local food cite a variety of economic and environmental advantages of short food supply chains. Consumer interest in local food has also offered a point of differentiation for many players in the food industry, including restaurants and grocery stores. Engaging with local food has significant challenges, however, and many production and distribution systems engender and support more diffuse food provisioning, not less. Though food can travel thousands of miles from its point of origin to consumption, many cooperative (co-op) grocery stores have long sold locally-produced food and have deep ties to their supplier communities. This thesis offers case studies of two co-ops in the natural and organic food sector and examines how they think about and work with local food. The theories of embeddedness (after Polanyi) and diverse economies (from Gibson-Graham) undergird the analyses of these co-ops’ involvement with local food and how the cooperative business model relates to it.

New course: Food Sociology

IMG_3023In May we start with a new course – Food Sociology: Emerging theories & themes.
This course addresses the dynamics of food provisioning – i.e. the range of activities from the production, acquisition and preparation to the consumption and disposal of food – from a sociological perspective. These activities are examined in their socio-cultural, political and physical context by specifying and clarifying which activities are carried out, how, why and by whom. Specifically this course focuses on newly emerging food provisioning practices and the networks and institutions shaping these practices as well as on the social theories to reflect on these dynamics, networks and institutions. The specific contents of the course will differ from year to year as it based upon current international scientific collaborative research programmes and PhD projects. The students will enjoy an interesting variety of learning activities. Continue reading