ESRS Summerschool 2014 : Theoretical Approaches to the Ecologisation of Agrifood Systems and Rural Landscapes

Summary

Transitions towards more sustainable agrifood systems and rural landscapes are at the core of societal demands, technological but also social innovations and renewed public policies at various scales. In rural sociology they are addressed through different theoretical frameworks and the main objective of the ESRS PhD Summer School this year, is to discuss these competing and sometimes articulated frameworks and thereby to help the PhD students to clarify their own theoretical choices and to position them in relation to other theoretical frameworks that are used in rural sociology.
For students who are rather at the beginning of their PhD, the aim will be to help them organize their state of the art and clarify their problematisation, while for students who are more advanced, it would rather be a discussion of their results in the light of existing literature and/or possibly the preparation of a future article. All the participants should have an interest in the theoretical frameworks that will be structuring the discussion, i.e. mainly Socio-Ecological Systems/Resilience theories, Food Regime Theory, Transition Theories, Actor Network Theory, and Social Studies of Science and Knowledge.
Besides plenary lectures on these different theories, other lectures will also address transversal themes such as the role of civil society in these transitions and the production and circulation of knowledge. The emergence of new forms of social innovation and civic food networks in the agrifood sector also raises new research questions. Does the increasing involvement of civil society in agricultural and food issues allow framing differently the issue of ecologisation? Does it allow reconnecting agriculture and food which have historically been addressed separately by public policies?
In terms of production and circulation of knowledge, the ecologisation of agricultural practices and agrifood systems implies many different kinds of knowledge, which raises the transversal issue of the production and the circulation of these different kinds of knowledge (scientific, lay, empirical, etc.) between and among the social actors involved in the situations analyzed by the PhD students. In a period characterized by a certain criticism and skepticism against science and scientists, what role does play scientific knowledge (agronomical, zootechnical, ecological, biological, sociological, etc.) in the ecologisation of the agrifood systems? What kind of circulation and exchanges of knowledge between the different kinds of collective and individual actors can be observed within these processes of ecologisation?