Call for Papers Special Issue on Food Organizing Matters: Paradoxes, Problems and Potentialities

ORGANIZATION STUDIES Deadline for Submissions: October 31st 2017 Guest Editors Grégoire Croidieu (GEM, France) Frank den Hond (Hanken, Finland & VU, Netherlands) Christine Moser (VU, Netherlands) Juliane Reinecke (WBS, UK) Silviya Svejenova (CBS, Denmark & BI, Norway) Introduction While food is one of the oldest and most critical human endeavours, the many paradoxes, problems and potentialities associated with the organizing of food deserve much greater scholarly attention. On the one hand, food security and safety are among the 'grand challenges' that face humanity, alongside issues of environmental sustainability, poverty, health, and exploitation of labour. The expansion of agribusiness has fed the staggering rise in world population over the 20th century. It has allowed an accumulation of wealth unprecedented in the history of humankind. Despite this progress, some 800 million people still suffer from malnutrition or lack daily access to food (https://www.wfp.org/content/hunger-map-2014). Simultaneously, a high percentage of food goes to waste and the number of obese people worldwide has now surpassed those underweight (Lancet, 387(10026): 1377-1396). In other words, the potentialities unlocked by the industrialized production of food have also created significant challenges yet to overcome. One may hope that more just, inclusive and sustainable forms of food organizing will help to address them. On the other hand, food organizing is also a ‘grand passion’ full of potentialities. The variety of food cultures, culinary movements, and food-related innovations testify of the level of passion and entrepreneurial spirit that inspires food organizing. Food can be an unparalleled source of inspiration and motivation for organizing; it sparks off diversity, excellence, and creativity in material, cultural, political, metaphorical, and other senses. It is the basis of communality and sociality, but also of identity politics and exclusions. Either way, food provides opportunities for the collective renewal of traditions, the celebration of human relationships and the valorisation of local savoir-faire. Such paradoxes, problems and potentialities remind us that food organizing may remain partial or even accidental, despite the tremendous resources, calculations, energy, creativity and goodwill that are involved in the various processes related to food. Conversely, they also suggest that food raises issues that organizational studies have not yet fully attended to and that beg to be unravelled and explored. With this special issue, we want to draw attention to food as an important setting for organizing, as well as to the roles, conditions and consequences of food organizing in diverse societies. Zooming in on food and its particularities is a way to access, reveal, and enhance the understanding of issues that usually remain 'hidden' for students of organizations from various intellectual backgrounds. This condition invites a cross-disciplinary conversation to build bridges between students of organizational studies and other disciplines, thus reflecting pleas for deeper engagement across disciplines and perspectives (Organization Studies 34(11): 1587-1600). In addition to using food as a context for research, we seek to conceptualize food organizing and organizations as a fruitful object of inquiry in and out of itself, one that has the potential to yield important and relevant insights for both scholarship and societies. In sum, it is time to take seriously the paradoxes, problems and potentialities of food organizing in ways that speak to contemporary contexts. We invite contributions that delve into organizational aspects relating to food. This introduction points some themes and topics as ‘entrees’ to a ‘menu’ that is yet to be created and compiled. The special issue is open to a range of topics and themes, including, but not restricted to, the following: • Food production: How is the production of food organized and what changes do we see in the way it is organized? How do organized relationships in the land, factories, laboratories or kitchens shape and are shaped by us and the food we eat? • Food governance & regulation: How are food supply and demand governed? How do standards, certifications, classifications and category systems have an imprint on the organization of food production and consumption? • Food sustainability: What challenges do current ways of food organizing produce? What opportunities do they open? How can we organize and sustain more inclusive, sustainable and biodiverse food systems? What changes are necessary in the organization of food, such that we can distribute food more equitably and reduce food waste? • Food innovation: How do organizations, collectives and communities innovate in and around the provision, creation, preparation and consumption of food? How can food organizing bridge sensory and aesthetic tastes? What are possible futures of food? Submissions Please submit your manuscript through the journal’s online submission system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies). You will need to create a user account if you do not already have one, and you must select the appropriate Special Issue at the “Manuscript Type” option. The Guest Editors handle all manuscripts in accordance with the journal’s policies and procedures; they expect authors to follow the journal’s submission guidelines (http://journals.sagepub.com/home/oss). You can submit your manuscript for this Special Issue between 15 and 31 October 2017. For administrative support and general queries, you may contact Sophia Tzagaraki, Managing Editor of Organization Studies, at osofficer@gmail.com.