Publication

Food Citizenship? Collective Food Procurement in European Cities in "Food, food systems, and agriculture"

Grasseni's contribution to this special feature on food cultures, food systems, and agriculture in Europe builds upon her ongoing project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale.

Author

Cristina Grasseni

Date

01 September 2018

Links

Food, food systems, and agriculture

Looking at current literature on food and citizenship, with this project she has highlighted some of the contradictions and problematic aspects of notions of (active) citizenship, civic duty and social solidarity, as they increasingly become associated with alternative food networks in institutionally-sponsored discourse. She begins by introducing a definition of “collective food procurement,” which might help reframing the issue of European food systems not only from an agricultural and logistic point of view, but also from a social point of view that goes beyond individual preferences and tastes. This understanding of food provisioning adds a “meso” level to macro (logistics and trends) and micro (individual preferences and tastes) analyses of food systems. In sum, food procurement in all its facets highlights how food is a mediator of relations within social networks, not only a commodity or nutrient.