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Dear All, apologies for cross-posting. IV EUGEO Congress, Rome, 5-7 September 2013 (http://www.eugeo2013.com/) Abstract submissions expected by 31st of March. Alternative food networks: the biopolitics of quality and embeddedness Session organizers: Paolo Giaccaria, Egidio Dansero (University of Turin), Annalisa Colombino (University of Graz) Over the last twenty years, alternative food networks (AFNs) have firmly stood at the forefront of the debate in the geographies of rural spaces and of food. AFNs have been perceived as alternative to the modes of production, distribution and consumption of the conventional, capitalistic, globalized food networks. The academic literature on AFNs is now a wide, complex set of theoretical, methodological and empirical analyses within human geography. Yet, we believe that some core assumptions are common to most of the studies in the new geographies of food. The main common assumption concerns the close relationship between embeddedness and quality: being embedded in local (horizontal and vertical) relationships produces quality, and quality, vice versa, strengthens the local embeddedness of AFNs. Simultaneously, this association appears to be largely taken for granted and almost tautological. Moreover, the emphasis on quality-and-embeddedness is also problematic as it entails a clear biopolitical dimension. Despite being connoted as ‘alternative’ to dominant practices in food production and supply, AFNs often involve an apparatus of biopolitical dispositives: concepts like breed registry, DNA, genetics, race, and certification are commonly used in defining the quality of food in AFNs, both in animal and vegetable production. The social, economic, cultural, and scientific construction of quality and embeddedness is often turned into a narrative of ‘blood and soil’ that is eminently biopolitical. For this panel, we invite contributions on the following (but not limited to) issues: · · the construction of quality in AFNs; · · variety of embeddedness in AFNs; · · science, technique and AFNs; · · regressive AFNs: the biopolitics of breed and purity; · · AFNs and animal ethics Please send an abstract (no longer than 200 words) to [log in to unmask] AND to the organizers Paolo Giaccaria ( [log in to unmask] ) Egidio Dansero ([log in to unmask] ), Annalisa Colombino ( [log in to unmask] )