5THNRFC6

3231

19 novembre 2020 12:02

12 avril 2021 16:12

This study explores the everyday work, ideals and values of the Latvian organic food movement known as tiešā pirkšana (TP, meaning ‘direct purchasing’), an initiative which aims to shorten the physical and symbolic distance between producers and consumers; producers, market and regulating policies; and consumers and food. Drawing on the empirical material obtained through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical discussions in social and food research, the concept of ‘reconnection’ was chosen to analyse the process of shortening the distance between the different actors involved in one small-scale food provisioning system. By focusing on the notion that there is a link between the reconnection process and the ethics and practice of care, the thesis analyses different forms of care in the various stages of food provisioning in the TP movement. The notion of ‘patchworked spatiotemporalities’ is introduced in order to depict how care in the TP movement facilitates connections, reconnections and disconnections that involve caring actors and care acts, and the environments and materialities they are embedded in or affected by. Generational and gendered relationships, the relationality between human and non-human actors, and relations between producers, policies and markets are constantly negotiated, reconfigured and maintained in such spatiotemporalities. By analysing movement’s three main values – friendship, volunteerism and organicity – this study shows that the ethics and practice of care in the TP movement are closely entwined and must be viewed as a whole. Simultaneously, however, the perceptions and experiences of values, ideals and motivations differ among the various movement participants. Nevertheless, for the movement to be able to continue its work, the balance between various registers of ethics and practice of care must be constantly revisited and negotiated. Special attention in the dissertation is paid to care acts that are performed to keep the TP movement running on different levels. By suggesting that care acts in food provisioning, such as dishwashing and cooking, are ‘care not-work’, the study engages with the discussion about the relationship between recognition, acknowledgement and care acts, critically contributing to the wider debate about invisible, routine care work. Furthermore, it is proposed that care acts in the course of farm production that depend on the management of time through tempos and rhythms involve a tinkering between creativity, embodied skills and routinised repetition. The care acts on farms, households and onsite in TP’s branches are performed by and exchanged between care actors that are not just producers and consumers, but also non-human actors as well as the materialities and environments that are involved in performing the care acts. Such an approach permits access to the ethics and practice of care on farms, enabling their interpretation as a dense, wholesome process in which economical and affective care overlap indistinguishably. The focus on care acts as relational – in the weekly shifts and the kinship reproduction of producer and consumer households – depicts the extension of self-care to that for significant others, bigger social groups and surrounding environments within the spatiotemporalities of maintaining the TP. The study is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in 2015 and 2016 during which the different stages of organic food provisioning in Latvia were examined. The longer (up to one month) stays on two farms and with one consumer family provided thick ethnographic material on the role of care in the production and reproduction of food. Ethnographic primary data also includes substantial contextual material obtained at the meetings of the TP movement and the seminars organised within the educational and marketing campaign, BioLoģiski (2014- 2016) – financed by the EU and the Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Latvia, and implemented by the Latvian Organic Farming Association. The movement’s online presence in negotiations over changes in TP’s organization and politics was observed by following common e-mail lists and social networks groups. The thesis augments existing contributions in social and food research that explore small-scale alternative food provisioning practices against a backdrop of local and global changes. Research from the Global North provides well-explored claims that reconnection through care in alternative food provisioning implies a combination of nostalgia and constant adaptation to the present and future. This thesis builds on and revisits these implications by particularising the reconnection through care within the contextual specifics of Latvia as a country with a rather patchworked historical provenance.

None

• AB - Spécifique
• FREDO aspect technico-économique
• FREDO durabilité
• FREDO production et filière
• GEO Finlande
• GEO Lettonie
• consommateur
• local
• réseau
• sociologie

2020

1 janvier 2020