What enables just sustainability transitions in agrifood systems? An exploration of conceptual approaches using international comparative case studies

Abstract

The paper introduces a special issue on the timely question of ‘What enables just sustainability transitions in agrifood systems?’ which emerged from an explicitly international comparative and collective writing project. The special issue gives central attention to addressing and interlinking the key issues of power relations, food justice, change mechanisms at meso-level, and the diversity of sustainability visions, by exploring a range of revisited and new conceptual approaches which are blended with rich empirical cases. Especially as the second decade of the 21st century closes, we argue that we need to open up this conceptual vector and invite scholars to engage, debate, and combine new and well-established approaches. This will allow to analyse and progress with the urgently needed transition processes in agrifood systems. Six cross-national contributions are introduced which provide starting points for this endeavour.