Counter mapping food practices

Description

In fields where white colonial men have been producing the “real knowledge” of what reality is, counter-mapping practices “are theorized as a re-appropriation of one means of power to allow alternative representations to emerge” (Germes Klaus 2021).

From radical geography to feminist studies, counter-mapping methodologies have been employed to establish new relationships between researchers and participants, questioning positionalities and power relationships.

As a research practice, counter-mapping has the potential to not only represent and design new maps of marginalised and other realities but also serve as a channel for tracing the processes within a community or neighbourhood. Hence, the resulting representation of a reality can be the basis for further social action on a problem.

During fieldwork within the Reworlding project countermapping was put into practice. Croatia’s food prices have been skyrocketing for three years: basic products increased by around 50% to 60%, and on average, there has been an increase of 30%. This situation led to a national boycott against big supermarket and retail chains. Boycott days were organised over several weeks and days, indicating which supermarkets were banned to buy in.

The action grew stronger each day and more people were joining. Yet, there was no alternative offered. If on Tuesdays people joining the boycott were not allowed to shop in Spar, they would go to Lidl. And on Lidl boycott day, they would go to Spar.

Countermapping enabled to think how people find alternatives to these chains, specifically in organic food. I thought of counter-mapping as a methodology to solve this question, bringing consumers’ food values into the discussion and understanding how these values align with food practices, specifically in food acquisition and food accessibility, when alternatives are not made available.

Engagement with more-than-human entities

Counter-mapping’s methodology has been used in mapping more-than-human worlds in urban spaces. The several works presented in “Urban Natures” (2023), edited by Ferne Edwards, Lucia Alexandra Popartan and Ida Nilstad Petterse, engage in more-than-human mapping to explore diverse, innovative and experimental methods to highlight the presence of more than humans in urban context, reclaim their space and offer new possibilities of connection and reconnection within humans and more-than-humans.

This book, apart from showcasing several practices and their tools, is an example of the multiple possibilities of counter-mapping for a more critical and reflective engagement, and research with several entities.

Interpretation as “retracing”

While counter-mapping might be focused on the re-imagination of spaces by uncovering realities in urban and rural spaces, its methodologies integrate a re-tracing aspect to achieve this point. In the last example, the aim in itself was not to explore the final result but to uncover the values and practices concerning organic food by participants in a participatory, interactive, and ethical manner.

References

Harris, L. M., & Hazen, H. D. (2015). Power of maps: (counter) mapping for conservation. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 4(1), 99–130. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v4i1.730

Germes, M., & Klaus, L. (2021). When marginalized subjects map their city: Counter-mapping planning experiments with drug users in some German and French neighborhoods. Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique / Bulletin of Sociological Methodology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/07591063211040234