Presentation short abstract

This contribution explores how analysing the sensations of participants in food systems transformation experiments in France reveals the existence of multiple, often unrecognised sensitive ecologies, as well as tensions between justice and ecology in transition narratives.

Presentation long abstract

Agricultural and food initiatives that promote transformative narratives articulating both ecological and social objectives have rarely been studied in terms of people's perceptions, even though farming and eating practices involve many different sensations. Our contribution highlights and discusses the value of research methods inspired by sensory anthropology in exploring the links between food systems’ ecological transformation and the integration of justice issues for humans and more-than-humans.

We conducted qualitative research on 12 Social Security for Food Initiatives (SSFI) in France, which are food democracy experiments designed to achieve more ecological food systems. Based on an analytical framework combining environmental justice, food justice and multispecies justice, our analysis reveals multiple sensitive ecologies experienced by often largely invisible participants in food systems, such as vulnerable rural dwellers and smallholder farmers.

Analysing ways in which taste, touch and smell experiences are or are not encountered and valued allows us to identify how ecologisation and justice meet or compete in food systems transitions: despite a contribution to distributive food justice for people suffering from food insecurity, SSFI might exclude specific food knowledges, preferences and participation, thereby exacerbating the marginalisation of smallholder farmers.

Analysing sensations reveals the complexity and contradictions of socio-ecological transition narratives, even ones claiming to be transformative. As political ecologists, exploring the intimate and sensory experiences of marginalised groups provides a better understanding of underrepresented ecological narratives based on specific relationships between humans and non-humans, thus countering reductionist, normative and standardised approaches to food system ecologisation.