Engendering European alternative food networks through countertopographies
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Recent interventions in scholarly literature have revealed how alternative methods of food production and provision are empowering for women farmers. This literature has been largely based on the historical trajectory of agriculture in the US and Western Europe, where women have been marginalized and excluded as farmers. In contrast, in post-Soviet space in Eastern Europe, women have not encountered the same forms of exclusion, but they face different challenges maintaining agricultural livelihoods. Drawing upon research with women farmers engaged in sustainable forms of agriculture and alternative food networks in Latvia, I demonstrate that although women are not marginalized in agricultural spaces, farm and marketing work remains gendered. Using the concept of countertopographies, I draw connections between the evidence from scholarly literature and my case study sites in order to identify how similar processes have shaped gender relations and produced diverging outcomes, but also to provide a framework for organizing and bridging differences across space.
Source: Anthropology of food
DOI: 10.4000/aof.12865
Author: Renata Blumberg
Language: English
Topic: Organic Food and Agriculture
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4286522223