Rendering the Actually Existing Sharing Economy Visible: Home‐Grown Food and the Pleasure of Sharing

Abstract

Despite the unprecedented attention paid to the sharing economy and despite the growing interest in household food production, the non-market and non-monetised sharing of home-grown food -a social practice at the intersection of these two concerns -has so far largely escaped scholars' attention. The goal of the article is twofold. First, drawing on a large-scale survey (2058 respondents) and four focus groups conducted in the Czech Republic in 2015, the article shows that in the Global North the sharing of homegrown food is a surprisingly widespread and economically and environmentally significant practice. Second, the article to some extent aims to break with the research tradition that deems studies conducted in the periphery of the Global North lacking in potential to produce more generally valid insights. It therefore seeks to counter the scripting of Eastern Europe on the margins of the geographies of knowledge production. The article contests the causal link between economic hardship and informal food practices, views these practices as sustainability by outcome rather than intention, and suggests they are compatible with the tenets of alternative food networks. While not perceived as sites of outright resistance to capitalism, these spaces are viewed by practitioners as constituting valuable domains of socially and culturally motivated human interactions, driven by the desire for fresh and healthy food, fulfilling personal hobbies, and the development of enjoyable social ties.Introduction: the lack of research on the informal sharing economy in the Global North T here is a curious blind spot at the intersection of two currently growing bodies of literature -the frenzy over the 'sharing' alternatives to the mainstream economic model on the one hand and the growing attention given to informal food V

Patriotism and Food Sovereignty: Changes in the Social Imaginary of Small‐Scale Farming in Post‐Euromaidan Ukraine

“…However, as the primary data shows, these practices are quite sustainable, and develop in parallel to the formal market‐based agro‐food system. This finding is in line with the recent shift in understanding post‐socialist informal food practices – from viewing them as need‐driven and poverty‐related strategies to viewing them as alternative food networks free from state interference (Jehlička and Daněk ).…”

“…While previous studies have assumed a causal link between economic hardship and food self‐provisioning, recent research in the region has demonstrated that these practices play an important role in strengthening social cohesion, environmental sustainability and food re‐localisation. Therefore, they are broadly compatible with – but also transcend – the tenets of alternative food networks (Smith and Jehlička ; Jehlička and Daněk ).…”

What is the contribution of food self-provisioning towards environmental sustainability? A case study of active gardeners

“…We focused only on the food produced and consumed in a household but an additional proportion of food is obtained as a gift or exchanged by all Czech households regardless of whether they produce food by themselves or not. The share of given or exchanged food is 5% of vegetables, 7% of fruits and 6% of potatoes (see Jehlička and Daněk 2017). This food is also home grown and has positive environmental consequences.…”

Neither Poor nor Cool: Practising Food Self-Provisioning in Allotment Gardens in the Netherlands and Czechia

“…As comparative research [32] has shown, food self-provisioning as well as other informal food economies (e.g., foraging [33]) are much more common in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) than in Western Europe. Given the recent interest in these topics, CEE's long tradition of informal food economies could provide rich learning opportunities for food system scholars [34]. These opportunities to learn, however, have not yet been seized: although there is a considerable body of literature on food self-provisioning in CEE [32,[35][36][37], these writings are rarely related to the current debates on multifunctional urban agriculture, spaces of resistance or environmentally sustainable food systems.…”