Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors’ experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social science expertise and (...) incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset, and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of geopolitics, including armed conflict, in family farming. Drawing on critical approaches to geopolitics in geography and anthropology, we situate the dynamics of family farming in the context of multiscalar struggles over territory and political sovereignty. Our historically and geographically situated approach shows how geopolitical positionality engenders vulnerabilities as well as political potential for alternative development by shaping labor and gender dynamics in farming households. Empirically, our research provides an illustrative example of the Baltic states, (...) especially Latvia and Lithuania, which have been situated within geopolitical fault lines for centuries. Focusing on four different historical periods, we demonstrate how the dynamics of family farming in the Baltic states—characterized by the persistence of smallholder family farms and specific land ownership patterns with women owning almost half of farms—are partly a result of the multiscalar geopolitics manifesting itself in violent colonial histories. Our analysis also reveals how various geopolitical power interplays in borderlands can lead to devastating consequences, while simultaneously creating pathways for alternatives to the capital-intensive, environmentally destructive, and socially exploitative corporate food regime. Overall, our research underscores the complex ways in which geopolitical (in)security undergirds labor and gender in farming households. (shrink)

Šiame straipsnyje yra nagrinėjami etiniai atliekų tvarkymo aspektai žiedinės ekonomikos kontekste. Straipsnio autorės siekia papildyti technologinį ir ekonominį atliekų tvarkymo diskursą, kuris vyrauja žiedinėje ekonomikoje, ontologine ir etine santykio su atliekomis analize. Pasitelkiant rūpesčio etiką, straipsnyje akcentuojamas reliacinis santykio su atliekomis aspektas, pagal kurį pirmenybė teikiama dėmesingumui, atsakomybei, kompetencijai, atsakui ir dalyvavimui sprendžiant atliekų problemą. Nagrinėjant penkias rūpesčio pakopas, kurias išskyrė Joan Tronto, straipsnyje analizuojama, kaip etiniai sumetimai gali turėti įtakos individualiems ir kolektyviniams veiksmams žiedinės ekonomikos paradigmoje. Straipsnyje į atliekas (...) žvelgiama kaip į neatskiriamą mūsų moralinio ir etinio kraštovaizdžio dalį ir laikomasi nuostatos, kad tvarios atliekų tvarkymo praktikos siejasi su atsakomybe, kurią turėtų prisiimti tiek atskiri žmonės, tiek verslai, tiek politinės institucijos. (shrink)

Scholarly debates on sustainable consumption have generally overlooked alternative agro-food networks in the economies outside of Western Europe and North America. Building on practice-based theories, this article focuses on informal raw milk markets in post-socialist Lithuania to examine how such alternative systems emerge and operate in the changing political, social, and economic contexts. It makes two contributions to the scholarship on sustainable consumption. In considering semi-subsistence practices and poverty-driven consumption, this article argues for a richer, more critical, and inclusive theory (...) of sustainability that takes into consideration vernacular forms of exchange and approaches poor consumers as subjects of global history. Second, it revisits practice theories and infrastructures of consumption approaches to consider ruptures, discontinuities, and historical change in infrastructures as a way to account for inequalities and experiences of marginalization. (shrink)