Having written absolutely nothing of use to my DPhil, I have decided that before I completely lose the ability to type coherently about my research subject (some would argue that I never actually had this ability in the first place) I am going to pull together all the mental struggles that I am currently going through into my blog with the hope that a- I will no longer be relying on scrappy pieces of paper to plot out my thoughts b- I may get some useful feedback from the awesome friends that continue to read my blog despite the average 4 month breaks between posts and c- I may even reach an epiphany with regards to what I am actually trying to do. It will also, more importantly, drag me away from BBC iPlayer, which is the DPhil productivity devil.
So here goes, part 1: socio-ecological system complexity and the global food system: globalising trends in the agri-business sector
The global food system is a complex beast, not least because it is an amalgamated entity that incorporates the world trade and finance systems on one hand and environmental systems and the natural resource base on which agriculture is dependent on the other. This doesn't even consider the socio-political and legal aspects of food itself as essential for human life and its concomitant understanding as a human right. The multiple bodies constructed around food; its production, transformation, distribution, consumption and regulation, further emphasises that we are not dealing with a simple linear relationship as is conceptualised in the conventional value chain understanding of the food system as one of production through to consumption, but rather with a network, consisting of feedbacks and nonlinear relationships defined by concentrations of power and resources across different scales. This evolution of the food system from simple, traditional practices to a globalised super-system complicates its governance, which has been developed and implemented for the earlier version of a linear, less complicated system. On top of this existential complexity, further challenges are presented by the global environmental change that is currently being expressed in the Earth's system: from climate change through to natural resource depletion and pollution, these changes require action or their mismanagement could spell planetary doom in the long-term.
As researchers, we are increasingly becoming aware of the problems that we face in trying to conceptualise this complexity in a manageable, yet still relevant manner. Breaking out of paradigms is not easy: the food security discourse is a prime example of how embedded ontologies and practices inform question formulation and thus how research is conducted without regard for alternatives that may be more relevant for the issue at stake. Deep-rooted disciplinary approaches can also be problematic as they very often to not encapsulate the whole picture, especially when the whole picture is itself distorted by complexity and even those who realise this are often not equipped with the necessary skills for dealing in-depth with these sorts of conundrums. Climate change modellers, economists, soil scientists and development specialists all have relevant contributions to make to food system studies, but often find it difficult to bring their expertise together in a meaningful way. Usually left completely out of this conversation are those that are shaping the system as we speak- the individual smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs, large agri-business multinationals, retailers, commercial farmers and wholesalers, and all of the other private sector actors that actually form part of this complex beast. Although research involving these actors is undertaken by the business and finance guys, their is very little inter-disciplinary networking and, what's more, the private sector very often does not turn to academia to solve its problems, but rather to the famed management consultants of this world who are then supposed to act as the problem solvers in this complicated equation to which nobody really has the 'right' answer: correctness being relative as always.
It is from this basis that my DPhil dilemma is developing. As I have kind of gone on a bit of a random rant rather than actually saying anything of substantive interest in this, I promise a future post with more specifics and maybe even some interesting concrete examples as I have always begged from my debaters when adjudicating.
Until then,
watch this space
(or not- your call :-)
L
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