Suchergebnisse

Environmental sociology remains on the periphery of the discipline because its traditional moment focuses on the material rather than social world and its synthetic moment looks as much like geography, anthropology, science studies, and cultural studies as it does sociology. This article will review contemporary visions of the history of nature and the environmental movement and their consequences of environmental sociological pedagogy. In doing so, it will suggest using O'Connor's political ecological theory of environmental problems to teach the range of problems and approaches associated with the subdiscipline. Two strategies are stressed. The first combines social and environmental history in coursework, nonclass exercises, and writing. The second pursues undergraduate research into the social and ecological history of "natural" places, such as woods and parks, and "social" places, such as blocks of student rentals and campus buildings.

The industrial agrifood system is in crisis regarding its negative ecological, economic, and social externalities: it is unsustainable on all dimensions. This book documents and engages competing visions and contested discourses of agrifood sustainability. Using an incremental/reformist to transformation/radical continuum framework for alternative agrifood movements, this book identifies tensions between competing discourses that stress food sovereignty, social justice, and fair trade and those that emphasize food security, efficiency and free trade. In particular, it highlights the role that governance processes play in sustainability transitions and the ways that power and politics affect sustainability visions and discourses. The book includes chapters that review sustainability discourses at the macro and meso levels, as well as case studies from Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, South America and the USA.

Contested sustainability discourses in the agrifood system : an overview / Douglas H. Constance -- Sustainable intensification: agroecological appropriation or contestation? / Les Levidow -- Sustainable intensification as a sociotechnical imaginary / Paul B. Thompson -- Agrifood discourses and feeding the world : unpacking sustainable intensification / Douglas H. Constance and Athena Moseley -- Sustainability as the civil commons : laying the groundwork for sustainable agriculture / Jennifer Sumner -- Zero hunger discourse : neoliberal, progressive, reformist or radical? / Kiah Smith -- Greenwashing the animal-industrial complex : sustainable intensification and the livestock revolution / Livia Boscardin -- Are food quality schemes an alternative to the conventional food system? : reflections on the EU metaphors on agrifood quality regulation / Josep Espluga-Trenc, Marina Di Masso, and Marta G. Rivera-Ferre and Arantxa Capdevila -- Discourses on sustainability in the French farming sector : the redefinition of a consensual and knowledge-intensive "agroecology" / Jessica Thomas -- Dueling discourses of sustainability : neo-conventional and organic farming on the Canadian prairies / Michael Gertler, JoAnn Jaffe, and Mary Beckie -- Contested sustainability discourses as lived experience : conflicted feelings towards meat in consumers' narratives and life stories / Robert M. Chiles -- Shifting visions of sustainability in the United States agriculture : a case study of the role of multi-stakeholder governance / Jason Konefal and Maki Hatanaka -- Understanding the challenge of problem fefinition in multistakeholder initiatives : lessons from sustainability policy frames in Canadian non-state food strategies / Margaret Bancerz -- Standardizing "unsused" land : the politics of indicators in land classification / Daniel Bornstein -- Justifying the standardization of sustainability impact / Allison Marie Loconto -- Fault lines in sustainability : contestation, cooptation, reform, and transformation / Jason Konefal and Maki Hatanaka

AbstractIn recent years, performance metrics and digital technologies have gained substantial support to advance on‐farm sustainability. The combined use of metrics and digital technologies represents a potentially important shift in agricultural sustainability governance, which has largely been dominated by the use of standards and certification. Focusing on the U.S. context, this paper examines the operationalization of the emerging metrics and data (M&D) approach to sustainability governance in food and agriculture. Specifically, we analyze the factors undergirding the growing usage of an M&D approach to sustainability, the structure, and practices of such an approach as well as the roles and implications for key actors in agrifood systems. Our analysis indicates that although an M&D approach to an agricultural sustainability transition potentially addresses some of the critiques and limitations associated with the use of standards and certification and has the growing support of a range of stakeholders, it also faces numerous challenges. These include a lack of incentives and insufficient value for growers, concerns over data ownership and access, and barriers to the translation of data into changes in grower management and practices.