| 1. |
- Almén Linn, Jenny, 1971, et al.
(författare)
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Food tourism as a way of integration into the Swedish labor market?
- 2018
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Ingår i: Tomorrow’s Food Travel (TFT) conference, Centre for Tourism – University of Gothenburg, 8–10 October 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The tourism industry is a sector with a large income and is expected to continue its expansion both in Sweden as well as internationally. The last couple of years have seen the total consumption within the tourism industry amount to 270 billion SEK. Due to Sweden’s rich natural and cultural values, attractive and clean nature and well-functioning cities, growth is expected. However, not all parts of the country partake in the expansion at the same rate. In Gothenburg, its north-eastern districts receive almost every second newly-immigrated resident, while the pressing housing shortage locks in a familiar pattern of poor living conditions, ill health and dire future outlooks. Gothenburg continues to be a socio-economically segregated city, while its northern districts are in strong need of enhanced development to increase their level of self-sufficiency and of breaking negative patterns. At the same time, there are great assets vested in the area in the form of agricultural landscapes, attractive natural settings and a strong cultural life with influences from all over the world. To this background, this presentation looks into whether socio-economic problems inherent of a segregated city can be partly solved by engaging in the growing tourism sector and by focusing on food production, sustainable tourism, and the natural and cultural advantages of the area. This is done by investigating an ongoing municipal sustainability project in the north-eastern areas of Gothenburg. It is an interdisciplinary endeavor involving several different municipal authorities, research institutions and non-governmental organizations, with the intent to increase the areas sense of involvement and to strengthen sustainable business development within: food production, tourism, green business and climate-smart logistics platforms and networks for cooperation. The aim of this presentation is to explore how social inclusion and labor market integration can be facilitated through tourism and food.
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| 2. |
- Almered Olsson, Gunilla, 1951, et al.
(författare)
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City–Region Food Systems: Scenarios to re-establish urban-rural links through sustainable food provisioning
- 2018
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Ingår i: Tomorrow’s Food Travel (TFT) conference, Centre for Tourism – University of Gothenburg, 8–10 October 2018, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- City–Region Food Systems (CRFS) is a cutting-edge concept and an emerging field of research. As a new analytical lens, it offers an integrated and multi-dimensional perspective on food’s origins, how it is grown and the path it follows to our plates and beyond. Building on this concept, this presentation reflects a prospective research project which seeks to explore opportunities for innovative and sustainable food systems in the Gothenburg region of Sweden by focusing on how rural and urban regions, food production and market can be integrated to promote regional food security. The project intends to: 1) develop scenarios with stakeholders for local food production in the region; 2) analyze the consequences of the scenarios on landscape change and biodiversity; 3) explore socio-economic consequences for producers and local communities; and 4) evaluate the sustainability and feasibility of scenarios with stakeholders. Five municipalities in Western Sweden (Gothenburg, Kungälv, Lerum, Alingsås and Essunga) will serve as study areas for the project, selected to reflect different kinds of potential for local food production in terms of dissimilar environmental conditions, prerequisites for farming and economic histories. The project responds to expressed interests and knowledge needs in the region and will be developed and implemented in direct cooperation with local and regional actors such as Västarvet, the Västra Götaland Region, the municipalities and various producer organizations. In sum, there are premises suggesting that recent urban food strategies and plans with sustainability ambitions are embracing several Sustainable Development Goals in the environmental, social, economic, and equity dimensions. This, in turn, is a characteristic of the Transition Movements pathway, in which the utility of food strategies in the work with sustainability transitions seems inevitable. The results are therefore likely to be transferable to other regions.
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| 3. |
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Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories
- 2020
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (refereegranskat)abstract
- What does a sustainability project look like in the 21st century? Not the glossy version, but the naked truth? Tired of manicured, over-theorised accounts of the ‘musts’ and ‘shoulds’ of sustainability transitions, we got to the bottom of things; actually, to the very bottom of the project hierarchy: the individual. Our point of departure is that projects are nothing but temporarily interconnected people. This means that if we don’t know what people do and what they think about their work, we will never be able to create a deeper understanding of the project, its rationale and future impact. Making use of the autoethnographic method, this book provides critical insights into what it’s like being part of a 21st-century project. Building on unfiltered first-hand contributions from 73 authors representing the five organs of a project’s anatomy – the brain (theoreticians), the skeleton (leaders), the limbs (strategists), the heart (local stakeholders) and the lungs (researchers) – the book covers all the important aspects of contemporary project-making: (1) projectification as a societal phenomenon; (2) sustainability as the main project buzzword; (3) transdisciplinarity as a hot working method; (4) economy as the invisible project propeller; (5) space as the contextual project qualifier; (6) gender and integration as the obstinate orphans of project-making; (7) trends as the villains of thoughtless project mimicry; (8) politics as the “necessary evil” of projects; and (9) knowledge production as the cornerstone of all project work. The book ends with an extensive critical analysis of what makes a project tick and how to avoid project failure. We infer that talking about project outcomes and impacts is just that… talking. What makes a difference is what can be done to the project in itself. Three important virtues – the ABC of project-making – emanate from this book’s 40 chapters: building good relationships (Affinity), having the guts to make a change (Bravery), and showing willingness to learn (Curiosity). These are the basis for the successful execution of future sustainability projects, where complexity, unpredictability and desperation will become a staple force to recon with. The original contribution of this book is to shed light on the silent triumphs and hidden pathologies of everyday project-making in an effort to elevate individual knowledge to a level of authority for solving the wicked – yet project-infused – problems of our time.
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| 4. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Anatomy of a 21st-century project: A critical analysis
- 2019
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Ingår i: Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories. Dymitrow, M. and Ingelhag, K. (eds.). - Gothenburg : Mistra Urban Futures / Chalmers University of Technology. - 9789198416633
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this analytical chapter we focus on human factors to shed light on what a 21st-century project might look like from within. Adopting a non-essentialist perspective to project-making, we at the same time acknowledge that the notion of human nature is blurred, dynamic, changeable, heterogeneous, and internally riven. The human condition, hence, always dictates what ontological position a project adopts regarding its subject matter, execution and end results. In this respect, with this book we commit to an open-ended normativity: normative by reluctantly accepting the bias of the project formulas as we have defined their ability to shape the contemporary world, but open-ended with regard to a constant awareness that all knowledge is constructed, fluid and flawed, and that the insights here presented are only some of many possible interpretations. That said, we do not believe that plurality of opinion is intrinsically useful for creating ‘good projects’ – we believe it is an overused statement (cf. de Botton 2019) – but plurality of opinion is possibly the only way to unravel how a project operates and what keeps it afloat, including its silent triumphs and hidden pathologies. Since values and value systems can differ even within very small entities, to truly understand the inner workings of a project requires covering all its nooks and crannies. This methodological approach – autoethnography – is represented in the vast empirical section of this book – top to bottom and side to side, the results of which are discussed in the ensuing nine subsections. When things are whipped up into a sustainability frenzy with a flurry of divergent messages, it is easy to lose track of goal and purpose. For change to happen, we must dare to open a can of worms and find each other in the disenchantment of our broken world. The battle against unsustainability is a war of attrition: words against deeds – and both are enclosed in projects.
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| 5. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Anatomy of a 21st-century project: A quick autopsy
- 2019
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Ingår i: Dymitrow, M. and Ingelhag, K. (eds.), Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories. - Gothenburg : Mistra Urban Futures / Chalmers University of Technology. - 9789198416633
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We all are accustomed to projects. Projects are everywhere, and everything is basically a project. We have learnt how to deal with projects, for better or worse. Some of us love them, some of us are fed up with them. But projects are here to stay. Projects are far from a new invention, what has changed is the fine-tuning. It has changed to the point that projects of today are virtually unrecognisable from those from days of yore. All projects of today ‘must’ be green. They must have social relevance. They must be innovative, and must leave footprints (not ecological, hopefully). Projects of today are ideally transdisciplinary; wearing blinkers is a thing of the past. Inclusive projects, bottom-up projects, future-minded projects… who would even challenge that? Projects are no longer targeted, planned, structured endeavours; that description no longer suffices. To be able to do projects today, we are trained in project management, project leadership, spreadsheets, GANT charts, swimlanes, Kanban, Scrum, Waterfall, sprints, deliverables, bandwidths, roadblocks, backlogs, agile methodologies and the like. Have you noticed a pattern yet? On the other hand, projects of today are full of pitfalls. Lack of resources, scope creep, poor project handling, unrealistic deadlines, lack of interest from stakeholders or simply not paying attention to warning signs are just some of the most oft-cited reasons why projects fail. With this book, we want to halt this chthonic gallop, and just pause for a while. We want to open the lid to the black box of project-making and let it stay aslant for the time it takes to read this book, so we can peek into what goes on – on the inside.
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| 6. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Integration and green business development in a trust-building context
- 2018
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Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference “Comparative Co-Production”, SunSquare Conference Centre, 5–7 November 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The success of social science research and collaboration projects which seek to gain involvement from a particular group of participants are highly reliant upon the quality of social relationships between all stakeholders and actors involved. This means that the quality of these relationships is reliant upon trust and obligations that are inherent within. Trust is a multifaceted process of sensemaking which is developed over time and is created and reproduced though social interactions at both an interpersonal and institutional level. It is argued that the most significant relationship within a project that seeks the engagement of immigrant communities is that between the project team and the gatekeeper. However, empirical examples show that projects focusing on specific kinds of development (like green development) may overshadow the project’s social context in terms of who it is really for. Moreover, such projects may also inadvertently cater to actors already established on the local market (rather than focusing on the neediest) or even breed stereotypes about immigrants (such as that “all” immigrants are farmers, and hence green development is suitable for them). Unsurprisingly, unreflective approaches to themed integration projects are likely to raise suspicion and, probably undeservingly, spawn negative media attention. This presentation focuses on the backside of implementing a themed integration process in a setting marred by low levels of trust in municipal authorities, past difficulties of implementation and general reluctance of key actors. By making use of reflexive autoethnographic methodology, this presentation opens up to both the possibilities and challenges of an integration project aiming to create new jobs within green development. It also includes a number of recommendations for successful implementation.
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| 7. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Local projects replicated: Insights from Urban Rural Gothenburg
- 2019
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Social and life sciences are currently (2019) facing a replication crisis, with scholars having found that the results of many scientific studies are difficult or outright impossible to replicate or reproduce on subsequent investigation. This brings to mind the following question: If science, supposedly the most robust platform for knowledge-making and knowledge transfer available, cannot handle replicability effectively, what guarantees do we have that societal “comparative projects” are truly comparable? In comparative sociology, comparison of social processes between nation states or across different types of society looks for similarities across different countries and cultures to uncover the general processes that underlie apparently different social orderings. This, in turn, forms the basis for the replicability of societal development projects. In this interim progress report, we look at one such project, ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’. We firstly evaluate what results have been delivered in view of its initial assumptions, and what can be considered a failure. Secondly, we critically reflect upon what criteria might have been present for either the success or failure of some of its subprojects, respectively. This, we argue, is key for understanding what might work in the context of cross-cultural replication, and what might be considered inappropriate for such task.
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| 8. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Making two worlds meet
- 2019
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Ingår i: Dymitrow, M. and Ingelhag, K. (eds.), Anatomy of a 21st-century sustainability project: The untold stories. - Gothenburg : Mistra Urban Futures / Chalmers University of Technology. - 9789198416633
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter focuses on the personal experiences of collaborations based on academic–practitioner interactions, which are not always as straightforward as presented in commonplace transdisciplinary theory. By using autoethnographic methodology, this chapter provides some of the most important insights from past and ongoing work from a major sustainability project that uses the ‘Research Forum’ (RF) as a new a means of co-production of transdisciplinary knowledge. The reflections center on the most common modes of interaction observed between academics to practitioners, but also on the pros and cons of everyday work in a overtly transdisciplinary context. The findings reveal that transdisciplinarity is neither a business deal nor a display of unconditional democracy. It is a tricky form of collaboration that takes time, energy and trust to understand, and this level of maturity may be difficult to obtain using the commonplace project format.
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| 9. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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The ‘Research Forum’ as a methodological tool for transdisciplinary co-production
- 2019
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Ingår i: International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019: “Joining Forces for Change”, TD-Net – Network for Transdisciplinary Research / Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, 10–13 September 2019, Gothenburg, Sweden.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Transdisciplinarity connotes a strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. Due to this insistence, it has gained widespread popularity in recent years. However, in transdisciplinary collaborations based on academic–practitioner interactions, this is not always as straightforward. In this text, we share some insights from our past and ongoing work with the project ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’, within which we have launched the Research Forum (RF) model as a means of co-producing new transdisciplinary knowledge. RF ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’ constitutes Mistra Urban Futures' contribution to the project ‘Urban Rural Gothenburg’, a three-year (2017–19) EU-sponsored project for sustainable development with the overarching aim to create improved conditions for green innovation and green business development between the city and the countryside. The RF constitute the project’s academic component within a transdisciplinary (penta-helix) model. The RF is meant to serve as an incubator and accelerator of various initiatives concerned with understanding, testing and implementing ecologically oriented solutions that may arise through academic–practitioner interactions. The RF is thus not a ‘place’ (in the concrete sense) but a collaborative effort of two coordinators – one practitioner and one academic, aided by an assistant, who actively pursue and facilitate new ways of extracting knowledge within a large and heterogenous project structure. Identifying and successfully matching different perspectives, points of view and pools of knowledge is a difficult challenge. This is mainly because interactions are seldom based on the same principles; different people have different foci, incentives, and agendas, while understanding how they work out in practice is key to successful implementation of the RF model. In this presentation, we focus on the description, analysis and evaluation of the RF as a methodological endeavor. The findings center on four of the most common modes of interaction encountered during our work with the RF: academics to practitioners (A > P); practitioners to academics (A < P); academics with practitioners (A >< P); and academics without practitioners (A | P). We conclude that if we truly want to embrace co-production as way to obtain new knowledge we inherently must concede part of our individuality towards a homogenous goal. At the same time, the specificity of different forms of knowledge cannot be melted into an amorphous mass, elsewise co-production is likely to become a tokenistic effort of little applicatory utility. Put simply, we must constantly remain open to change but also stay protective of knowledge that works without reinvigoration.
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| 10. |
- Fermskog, Kristina, 1977, et al.
(författare)
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From skipped free school lunches to poverty-induced food deserts: Some thoughts on Gothenburg’s local food strategy – and how to make it happen
- 2018
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Ingår i: Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference “Comparative Co-Production”, SunSquare Conference Centre, 5–7 November 2018, Cape Town, South Africa.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The city of Gothenburg is devoted to establishing a local food strategy (GAFS) able to transform the local food system into one of healthy and sustainable food supply to all Gothenburgers, while at the same time decreasing the environmental impact globally. Departing from the Gothenburg municipality’s environmental and climate programs, the GAFS also relates back to the Swedish environmental goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As such, GAFS is a municipal mission with global ambitions, but it is also an active testbed within the project Urban Rural Gothenburg with the goal to lay bare GAFS’s preconditions to obtain the desired effect. While the idea is an attractive one and in line with current calls for food sustainability, the practical work process has been marred by loose and indirect interaction between the actors as well as insufficient knowledge of the stakeholders’ preconditions and priorities to secure stronger impact. An important factor in this dimension has been the overwhelming scope of what the food strategy must cover in order to be successful. This presentation focuses on two of them: skipped free school lunches and poverty-induced food deserts. On the one hand, the city of Gothenburg offers free school lunches to all its school children, which nonetheless are surreptitiously skipped due to children’s poor understanding of the nutritious, ecological and just value of such lunches. On the other hand, certain areas of Gothenburg, like Hammarkullen with 8,000 inhabitants, have not had a supermarket since the 1990s due to major food chains’ disinterest in establishing themselves in poor immigrant neighborhoods (due to demand for very cheap foods or certain types of foods, e.g. halal or kosher). Instead the citizens are forced to travel up to 1 hour to procure affordable food (car ownership is extremely low) or to buy small portions of grossly overpriced products from local street vendors. These two examples show how both the use and underuse of political power is problematic in different circumstances, with similarly adverse effects for a sustainable local food strategy. In this presentation, we focus on this worrying divergence by discussing the hidden traps within, but also by bringing forth known success stories as possible ways forward.
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