Alternative food networks in Japan: a rural-urban dialectic

• Grant number: 19/16808-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 01, 2020
• End date: June 27, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Maria Encarnação Beltrão Sposito
• Grantee: César Andrés Alzate Hoyos
• Supervisor: Motoki Akitsu
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Presidente Prudente. Presidente Prudente , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Kyoto University, Japan
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/04041-4 - Alternative food networks and consumption in the production of urban space: comparative case study Brazil-Colombia, BP.DR

Abstract

This proposal for a Research Internship Abroad (BEPE), scheduled to be held during a six-month period at Kyoto University, outlines plans to study the practices of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) in Japan. It focuses on experiences that gave rise to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), such as the Teikei initiatives, born in the late1960s, and the Choku-bai-jo (CBJ), which is a type of Japanese Farmers Market. Given the importance of Japan in the emergence of such initiatives, and in a context of high permeability with global market policies, it seeks to deepen reflections on the specific features of some AFNs through the rural-urban dialectic and its determinations. This will allow for the identification of transformations in food production and in the production of urban space as two correlative and coexistent movements, making it possible to reconceive the role of consumption and of active territorialities. Taking into account the technical, symbolic and organizational dimensions of these relationships will allow for the development of new analytical approaches to the study of food, citizenship and the transformation of urban space. (AU)