The paper will be based on Petr Jehlicka, Petr Danka and Jan Vavra’s operationalisation of the concept of resilience. It assumes that this concept, originating from systems studies, can have both a conservative and a proactive nature. In the first instance, we are dealing with a condition of preserving the resources of a given community against the stress of modernity. Resilience interpreted in this way is related to the notion of defensive localism, an attempt to defend the existing order of things. In the second approach, resilience can be defined as an active pursuit for features and practices that can develop the community. The proposed paper will focus on the second approach and the non-obvious risks associated with it. The author will analyse related to alternative food practices: actions, imaginaries, spaces, and their materiality. Focus of the talk will be on the resilience of Polish rurality, the quiet sustainability and the constructive dimension of food practices. One of the highly visible tools used for rural development today is food. Successive initiatives such as local brands, green markets, direct sales systems or community supported agriculture are identified by researchers and practitioners as an important tool that can shape rurality. Little attention is paid to embedded initiatives such as allotments, home gardening or food self-provisioning. Our study ilustrate the critical exclusive potential of iterative practices and the still undiscovered inclusive capacity of everyday practices. The paper will focus on the accelerations and decelerations associated with different food practices and their relation to the resilience of Polish rural communities. The paper will be based on the results of a comparative research project compiling six Polish alternative food networks and a cross-sectional quantitative study of food consumers. Theoretical basis will be set up on resilience theory, more than representational rurality and studies of food practices in Eastern Europe.
Sources:
Sources: Jehlička, P., T. Kostelecký, and J. Smith. 2013. “Food Self-Provisioning in Czechia: Beyond Coping Strategy of the Poor: A Response to Alber and Kohler’s “Informal Food Production in the Enlarged European Union” (2008).” Social Indicators Research 111 (1): 219–234. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0001-4
Jehlička, P., and P. Daněk. 2017. “Rendering the Actually Existing Sharing Economy Visible: Home-Grown Food and the Pleasure of Sharing.” Sociologia Ruralis 57 (3): 274–296. doi: 10.1111/soru.12160