Academic Knowledge Production: Framework of Practical Activity in the Context of Transformative Food Studies

Galina Kallio,Eeva Houtbeckers

doi:10.3389/fsufs.2020.577351

Galina Kallio, Eeva Houtbeckers

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.577351

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Abstract

We have seen an emergence of transformative food studies as part of sustainability transitions. While some scholars have successfully opened up their experiences of pursuing transformation through scholar-activism, assumptions underlying researchers' choices and how scholars orient to and go about their work often remain implicit. In this article, we bring forth a practice theoretical understanding of knowledge production and advocate that researchers turn to examining their own research practice. We ask how to make our own academic knowledge production/research practice more explicit, and why it is important to do so in the context of transformative food studies. To help scholars to reflect on their own research practice, we mobilize the framework of practical activity (FPA). We draw on our own experiences in academia and use our ethnographic studies on self-reliant food production and procurement to illustrate academic knowledge production. Thus, this article provides conceptual and methodological tools for reflection on academic research practice and knowledge production. We argue that it is important for researchers to turn to and improve their own academic practice because it advances academic knowledge production in the domain of transformative food studies and beyond. While we position ourselves within the qualitative research tradition, we believe that the insights of this article can be applied more broadly in different research fields and across various methodological approaches.

Highlights

Increased concerns over the adaptability of food systems to ongoing changes in local climates, and awareness of the possibility to mitigate ecosystem collapses, have raised the need for academic knowledge to contribute to building resilient, ecologically stable, and socially and economically just food systems (Allen, 2010; Foley et al, 2011; OECD, 2020)
We set out to ask: how do we make our own academic knowledge production/research practice more explicit and why is it important to do this in the context of transformative food studies? we are driven by the need to reflect on the academic practice of knowledge production by drawing on the context of transformative food studies, this article stems from our own experiences of participating in academic practices in the global North that may not be relevant to all transformative food scholars
We suggest that the concept of practice and the framework of practical activity are helpful in conceptualizing academic knowledge production in transformative food studies

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Increased concerns over the adaptability of food systems to ongoing changes in local climates, and awareness of the possibility to mitigate ecosystem collapses, have raised the need for academic knowledge to contribute to building resilient, ecologically stable, and socially and economically just food systems (Allen, 2010; Foley et al, 2011; OECD, 2020). The vignettes reveal how we have struggled between the requirements pushing us toward “playing the game” (see Houtbeckers, 2019; Kallio, 2019), and how we have consciously chosen to do otherwise by committing to the kind of academic practice that tries to reflect on the underlying politics of knowledge production This is manifested in, for instance, how we have sought to understand the phenomena under study from the perspectives of the people studied and by taking the practitioners’ experiences seriously (see Houtbeckers and Kallio, 2019) rather than from (only or primarily) pursuing academic interests. When scholarly activism in the context of transformative food studies seems to include digging the soil and getting one’s hands dirty, what other opportunities are there to be a researching subject and contribute to transformative food studies?

CONCLUSIONS

ETHICS STATEMENT