Contested Urban Food Landscapes

You are kindly invited to the upcoming (hybrid) research seminar to present early findings on our work bringing together academic debates on food and urban justice (see below more details on the topic). This work is a collaboration between the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani (IIGG) at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Leeds under the International Strategic Research Partnership Funding funded by the Leeds Social Sciences Institute (LSSI).

Speakers:

Chair: Sara Gonzalez, School of Geography, University of Leeds

Agustina Frish, University of Buenos Aires

Sebastian Grenoville, University of Buenos Aires and

Jose Manuel Vega, School of Earth and Environment University of Leeds

Contested Urban Food Landscapes

Food is increasingly contested as a social and urban issue, as part of polarising processes in cities. Food businesses have become a core element in urban regeneration, but gentrification can have socially unjust outcomes if lower income groups cannot access affordable food.  In central cities, we are seeing increasing numbers of gentrified food outlets, such as cafes, food halls and organic grocers, which become sites for “social distinction” for tourists and middle upper classes, while at the same time food insecurity is rising.

As a result, we can see food deserts next to gentrifying foodie districts; evidencing the unjust overlapping of food and urban capitalist systems. These injustices ripple out into land conflicts, farmer and social movement roles to provide access to healthy food.  We are working on a literature review on these topics bringing together our interdisciplinary expertise as well as expertise from the UK and Argentina reflecting on how processes and academic concepts can be applied in a variegated way across Global North and Global South.  Beyond the seminar speakers and chair other colleagues in UBA and UoL are also participating in the project: Effie Paragyropoulou and Kate Pangbourne in Leeds and Beatriz Nussbaumer and Mercedes di Virgilio in Buenos Aires.

Zoom link: https://universityofleeds.zoom.us/j/87217151563?pwd=YWFtZzlXQkcvNjZxaURyNGRac3VjZz09

Meeting ID: 872 1715 1563      Passcode: 1y2x*T

Related item: https://lssi.leeds.ac.uk/news/pump-prime-funding-awarded/