GEOGRAPHY OF ALTERNATIVE FOOD NETWORKS AND SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
Principal investigator: dr. J. Spilková
Czech Science Foundation (GACR) – 2012-2015
The presented research project accentuates the need for a close dialog between geography and research on alternative food networks as well as studies of alternative economic spaces within the sociogeographic context of the post-communist economic and societal transformation. It investigates the new consumer (and also producer) culture created through the merge of food consumption, sustainability, ethics, social differentiation, gentrification etc. as a result of complicated relations within the current transformation society. The project aims to study the three main aspects of alternative food networks: the environmental, the social, and the moral (ethical) while focusing especially on farmers´markets as the first real example of alternative food networks emerging in Czechia. Three stages of the research involve the analysis of i) the origins of local food – thus where the food comes from, ii) the biographies of food – how the food moves through the commodity system and alternative network and iii) the settings of food – how the food is being used by the consumers.