Abstract
This paper investigates how non-industrial agrarian traditions and practices are reworked and recontextualized in a contemporary context. Explorative in its nature, the paper uses in depth interviews with practitioners in eastern Sweden, several of whom are engaged in work to keep practices of the past alive, to discuss how the concept of revitalization can bear on sustainability. Traditional practices are revived as an alternative to industrialized agriculture, and as having a bearing on resilient cultivation systems as well as social relations. They are seen as means of increasing food security and reversing the negative biodiversity development caused by increased monoculture. We understand tradition as a process of negotiation and adaptation to the present, where revivals to some extent necessarily change the traditions that they attempt to revive. Tradition is thus a dynamic concept, always made in the present, never fixed but constantly evolving. In the challenges created by climate change and environmental degradation, it is increasingly voiced that true sustainability requires a transformation of the cultural system. In many cases, people are turning to tradition for sustainable alternatives to industrialized ways of life and to protect a diversity threatened by a dominant and unsustainable lifestyle.
Highlights
At a small, enclosed courtyard at our university campus, some members of the biology department have created a meadow
The study used the conceptual framework as its point of departure, and it was designed as a mapping or survey of practices which may fit the bill as revitalization, broadly conceived, in a contemporary agrarian context
In our discussion of how the concept of revitalization can have a bearing on sustainability and traditional agrarian practices, we will start by going back to Wallace’s 1956 definition we referred to earlier, where he saw revitalization as a “deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture” ([5], p. 256)
Summary
This paper investigates interest in and attempts to revive and revitalize traditional agricultural practices in Sweden It is explorative in its nature, and empirically based on in-depth interviews with practitioners in south-eastern Sweden, several of whom are engaged in work to maintain practices of the past, such as seed saving, beekeeping, or scything. Revitalization can be seen as a reaction to industrial modernity and the homogenizing forces of majority cultures, the reactions operate at different levels and with different goals: revitalization can operate locally and aims to preserve and protect specific customs and resources, but it operates at a structural level, aiming to promote systemic change As this text will show, those two levels are related
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