Announcing upcoming publication ‘Connective Consumptions: Mapping Melbourne’s Food Sharing Ecosystems’!

Published by Ferne Edwards on the 18th May 2018.

I’m pleased to announce with Anna R. Davies an upcoming publication on Melbourne’s food sharing practices for the Special Issue on Disruptive Urbanism by Urban Policy and Research. Melbourne is home to more than a hundred diverse, ICT-mediated food sharing initiatives. While the SHARECITY 100 database provides a rich picture of these individual initiatives, it provides little insight into how such initiatives are located or connected within the wider urban system. This paper applies concepts from assemblage theory to map and unravel the complexity of four food sharing initiatives and their connections within and beyond Melbourne, Australia. The case studies include 3000 Acres, Open Table, the Aslyum Seeker Resource Centre’s Food Justice Truck and RipeNear.Me. We argue that such initiatives intersect with other sharing, food and social movements to form food sharing ecosystems. Implications for urban planning and policy include the need to promote cohesion between state and local policies, to shift from traditional to emerging practices, and to recognise agriculture within urban land planning processes.

Other papers in progress from research in Melbourne and Barcelona include topics of food politics in Barcelona, a theoretical paper that develops the ecosystem concept through an urban political ecology frame; and a paper soon to be presented on overcoming stigma through sharing from research conducted with Open Table at the ‘Cities of Care’ Urban Theory Symposium in Melbourne. I will also be co-convening a panel on ‘Food, the Senses and the City’ at the 15th EASA Biennial Conference in Sweden later this year.

I would like to thank all food sharing participants and the support of my Catalonian intern, Manuel Ignacio Sanchez Valdivia, for their support, insights and experiences. With my postdoctoral research position now complete at SHARECITY, I have an ongoing position as Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University. I can be contacted at ferne.edwards@rmit.edu.au.