Food and Drink Markets:
The Production and Consumption of Alternative Market Practices and Narratives
Conference stream of the 9th International Conference in Critical Management Studies “Is there an alternative? Management after critique”
University of Leicester: 8-10 July, 2015.
Abstract deadline: 31 January, 2015.
Food and drink markets are situated at the intersection of the global and local, the economic and cultural, the political and passionate.
Amidst growing concerns about food-related security, safety, environmental degradation and social injustice, we are witness to a proliferation of alternatives. These are rediscovering, inventing, adapting and developing different approaches to the production, distribution and procurement of food and drink. The socio-cultural significance of food for individuals and groups means that the viability of alternative food and drink markets is intertwined with consumers? desires for goods, services and market relations that offer a sense of authenticity and identity in a global marketplace otherwise crowded with homogeneous, standardized offerings and instrumental modes of exchange. Examples such as Slow Food, CSA schemes, foraging, food swaps, and biodynamic production underline two concurrent dynamics. First, the crises facing the hegemonic global food system are inseparable from the systemic and perpetual crises of capitalism.
And second, the possibility for alternatives is being practiced in the here and now.
What can we learn from the specific practices and narratives of alternative food and drink market actors, and the forms of organizing and identity that make the production and consumption of such markets possible? Relevant contributions include but are not limited to such topics as:
-alternative market narratives: How is “doing things differently”
made intelligible and credible to others?
-alternative market devices and approaches: How are alternative markets practiced?
-alternative market identities: How do producers?, consumers? and intermediaries? identities enable alternative modes of operating?
-alternative futures: How scalable are alternative approaches, and to what extent do they disrupt and/or reproduce existing market relations, inequalities and values?
-mainstreaming alternatives: How credible are alternatives when their wares start to occupy supermarket shelves?
-alternative points of view: Case studies from the perspective of practitioners are welcome.
Abstract Submission:
-Deadline for submission of abstracts: 31 January, 2015.
-Abstracts should be 500 words maximum, saved as a word document (no pdfs please) and include affiliation and contact details for author(s).
-Abstracts should be emailed to Jennifer Smith Maguire (jbs7@le.ac.uk).
-Authors will be notified of the outcome of their submission by 20 March 2015 at the latest.
Please direct questions to any of the stream conveners: Jennifer Smith Maguire (jbs7@le.ac.uk); John Lang (lang@oxy.edu); David Watson (djwats@essex.ac.uk).
Further conference information can be found here:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/
