Autonomy as a multi-scalar solidarity network: Alternative food networks in Turkey

Keywords: autonomy, feminist geography, food networks, solidarity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

This paper examines how alternative food networks (AFNs) in Turkey pursue autonomy by connecting various stakeholders, including small-scale producers, cooperatives, and consumers across the country, in a solidarity-based organization. AFNs emerged in Turkey during the 2000s to resist neoliberal market relations and monopolies through an unconventional production, distribution, and consumption network. AFNs consist of various local and small-scale producers, consumers, cooperatives, and other stakeholders. These groups share and promote the values of ecological agriculture, seed conservation, women producers’ empowerment, and fair production-distribution relations for the common interest. Conceptualizing AFNs’ commitment to collaboration and socially and ecologically responsible production as attempts at autonomy, this study revisits the political geographies of autonomy through an everyday and embodied approach. Recent work in feminist geopolitics proposes alternative considerations of autonomy, drawing attention to the materialities of everyday life and demonstrating how autonomous spaces are made through everyday embodiments, labor, and solidarities. Engaging the concept of autonomy as a network of relations across multiple scales, this study brings feminist geopolitics into conversation with feminist political ecology and critical agrarian studies. Drawing on the fieldwork conducted in Turkey in 2021, based primarily on in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper analyzes how these solidarity initiatives generate networks across multiple scales and alter mainstream production, distribution, and consumption structures.