Résultat de la recherche
Towards reconfiguration in European agriculture: Analysing dynamics of change through the lens of the Donau Soja organization
Recent explorations of agri-environmental governance which draw on the assemblage perspective highlight the relational aspects, the process dimension and the generative elements of certain sustainability endeavours. This article argues that the implications of this approach are little discussed especially what concerns the transformation potential of agri-environmental programmes. We focus on the notion of reconfiguration as a significant facet of transformation. We align with recent research in transition studies to claim the need for conceptualizing reconfiguration. We draw on empirical research pursued with the Donau Soja organization to refer to a number of unfolding reconfigurations, in respect to the spatial, the technological and the political dimensions. We focus on the political reconfiguration and discuss some of the spillover effects of scientific research projects and proposals, programmatic papers, policy positioning and lobby work which accompany the everyday work and governance of the Donau Soja organization. We argue that greater attention to the unmeasured and unmeasurable effects of the DS assemblage also implies giving greater attention to the long-term effects of such programmes. Moreover, the numerous changes unleashed by the organization demand research to re-evaluate what counts as failure and success in agri-environmental governance.
Beyond soyisation: Donau Soja as assemblage
Soybeans embody the contradictions of progress in the Western imagination. They proliferated as a utopian promise (cheap vegetal protein for all) only to develop over a short two decades into a symbol of failure (GMOs). Most recently, as a response to the multiple crises of boundless capitalist accumulation and environmental degradation, concerted efforts were variously mobilized in Europe to re-think and re-make the ways in which soy is used along the food value chain. The Donau Soja project emerged as a hybrid, multi-level, transnational programme to assist and intervene in the transformation towards green and just soy supplies in Europe. This chapter gives an overview over this young project and takes the challenge of rendering the complexity of tasks it is confronted with, given the multiple contestations around global soy. It particularly emphasizes the processes involved in reassembling the materialities of soy as these emerge from dynamics of de- and reterritorialization that work both for the re-localization of this agricultural crop as much as they do for decentring its significance in the global value chain.