We are requesting expressions of interest to join a paper session at the RGS-IBG sponsored by the Food Geographies Research Group.

How do we make reparative horizons visible for communities and households in food crises?

The current contexts within which people eat, survive and support each other are structured to reproduce the inequalities that produce vulnerability to food insecurity. While we cannot undo the past, we must learn to identify these structuring features and envision reparative horizons characterised by imagination, aspiration and social justice.  To move between the present and the horizon requires an active mapping of the spaces in-between–or transitional spaces– that allow people to navigate toward those horizons.

To ensure that these futures are socially just, those vulnerable to food insecurity need to be included in the visioning and production of these horizons. Yet placing additional demands on those who encounter issues with food security and its associated isolations introduces further burdens in an already over-burdened and under-resourced life experience. As a result, the immediate occupies the mental and physical spaces of survival. As such, these individuals and their communities often struggle to envision their participation in a good food future. This affects both those living with and those supporting issues surrounding food security. In this session, we ask how we can envision, reveal and create those paths and maps that allow socially just visions of sustainable and food-secure futures to take shape and take place.

We invite empirical, theoretical, and conceptual papers around the following questions, although other ways of approaching the subject are also welcome.

• What is the role of imagination and creativity in producing these horizons and the landscapes that lead to them? 
• What role do intermediate spaces play in creating transitions toward socially just food futures?
• What is holding people and places back from envisioning these reparative horizons and producing the interstitial spaces between the present and these futures? 
• How can isolation be a barrier to envisioning food-secure futures, and how might the community be mobilised to materialise reparative horizons and the spaces between the here and now and the there and then? 
• How might we rethink our approach to researching in and with communities to understand and co-create these interstitial and horizon spaces and the maps that help us navigate between them?

We are hoping for 15-minute, in-person presentations with plenty of time for discussion. Please send a title, 250-word abstract and your full contact details to Megan Blake m.blake@Sheffield.ac.uk and Ollie Chesworth ochesworth1@Sheffield.ac.uk by 16 February. Please include “RGS reparative food horizons” in the subject. We will aim to inform those accepted for the session by 23rd February and will send you the link you need to submit your abstract.

AC2024 will take place in London at the Society and Imperial College London and from Tuesday, 27 to Friday, 30 August 2024. 

Please note the RGS participant regulations:
“Delegates will be limited to ONE paper presentation and ONE panel/workshop contribution, OR, TWO panel/workshop contributions. The role of discussant is included as a panel/workshop contribution”  https://www.rgs.org/research/annual-international-conference/call-for-sessions-papers-and-posters/guidance-for-presenters