Beyond coping strategy: Central European informal food economies as future-oriented and transformation-enabling practices
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Household food self-provisioning and sharing in Central and Eastern Europe has long been considered as either remnant of socialist past or a survival strategy of the poor. In either case it was deemed to be an expression of passive resilience on the margins, to be incorporated into or replaced by the capitalist market production. We present an alternative interpretation of informal, non-market, household food self-provisioning (FSP), reading it as a set of practices unconsciously undermining the assumptions and questioning the values of neoliberal capitalism, and, at the same time, offering significant contribution to overcoming major economic, social and environmental problems of market food production. Drawing on a large-scale survey (2058 households), four focus groups and interviews with active gardeners conducted in the Czech Republic, in this paper we address FSP from three perspectives. First, from the economic perspective, FSP is presented as a widespread social practice (38 per cent of Czech households are engaged directly as producers of food, and further 33 per cent of households indirectly as recipients of food grown in gardens of others) which account for two fifths of fruits and vegetables consumption in households practising FSP. Second, from the social perspective, we highlight knowledge and skills related to FSP, its inclusive nature (households from different social classes participating equally) and its contribution to establishing and strengthening social relations within the networks based on sharing home-grown food. Third, from the environmental perspective, we interpret FSP as quiet sustainability, where households, following their individual and collective objectives of growing fresh, healthy food and sharing it with friends and relatives, contribute - mostly unreflectively, but significantly - to environmental sustainability by enhancing biodiversity, avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticides and by relocalisation. The research shows that FSP is sustained by largely positive motivations and can be viewed as a form of resilience which is proactive, preventative, future-oriented and transformation-enabling. |
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