Action research in international critical urban agrifood systems geographies

International audienceCritical agrifood geographies increasingly use action-oriented research approaches in the study of food systems in order to at once understand, and affect social, political, and environmental dynamics identified as unsustainable or unjust. Researchers, including geographers, in regions throughout the world have long employed, and reflected on diverse action-oriented research approaches and their potential to instigate substantive change, yet the theoretical frameworks used in—both research practice and scholarly/written analysis – do not always translate from one place to another. In a European context, for example, Pain (2003, 2004), distinguishes three main approaches of action-oriented research in social geography.Writing from a US context, but with reference to forebearers in the Global South, Torre et al. (2011) describe a lineage of critical participatory action research (cPAR) that has used social scientific research to support liberation of socially and politically marginalized groups. Pulido (2008) reflects on the extent to which power structures and political climates mediate academic geographers’ flexibilities to engage in explicitly change-oriented research. Critical urban food geographers focused on food justice and agroecology can lend important perspective to, and learn from such approaches, particularly as they engage with space and scale. While findings from such research permeate regional, international, and to some extent linguistic boundaries, there has been less cross-regional exchange about the theoretical approaches (whether academic theory or theories of change). This session brings together critical urban food geographers, scholars, and activists working in different places throughout the world to discuss theories, working models, and different ways of evaluating success in such projects. This, in the interest of strengthening an international, action-oriented praxis toward more socially just urban agrifood systems