Morrow Oona, Davies Anna
Rural Sociology Group Wageningen University and Research Wageningen The Netherlands.
Department of Geography School of Natural Sciences Trinity College Dublin The University of Dublin Dublin Ireland.
Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2022 Jun;47(2):529-546. doi: 10.1111/tran.12523. Epub 2021 Dec 21.
While matters of food waste and soil have become vital research arenas, compost remains the Cinderella of human geographical enquiry. In response, this paper brings compost to the centre of debates at the intersection of diverse economies and circular economy. In particular, the concept of community composting and the care involved in such practices is used to offset and problematise the technoscientific bias in circular economy discourses. Extending feminist perspectives on care in soil studies, this paper focuses on the careful circularities that are realised through community composting in New York City. This case study provides not only a material space for examining community composting but also a unique opportunity to consider the colliding worlds of worth that operate in and around urban sustainability transitions to zero waste. Drawing empirical insights from interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, this paper argues for a sensitisation of circular economy policy and research to matters of care and diverse economies as a means to better understand motivations, justifications, and outcomes of efforts to reorient food systems onto more sustainable pathways. We argue that privileging care in this way helps to shift focus away from dominant narratives of "scaling-up" towards sustainability to a more relational perspective that sees transformation in connecting, deepening, and even scaling-down. This means attending to the micro as well as macro transformations needed to enact the required sustainability transitions.
虽然食物浪费和土壤问题已成为重要的研究领域，但堆肥在人文地理学研究中仍处于被忽视的地位。作为回应，本文将堆肥置于多元经济与循环经济交叉领域的辩论核心。具体而言，社区堆肥的概念以及此类实践中所涉及的关怀，被用于抵消循环经济话语中的技术科学偏见并对其提出质疑。本文拓展了土壤研究中关于关怀的女性主义视角，聚焦于纽约市通过社区堆肥实现的细致循环。该案例研究不仅为审视社区堆肥提供了一个物质空间，还提供了一个独特的契机，来思考在向零浪费的城市可持续性转型过程中及周边所运作的价值碰撞世界。本文通过访谈、参与观察和文献分析得出实证见解，主张循环经济政策与研究应关注关怀问题和多元经济，以此作为更好地理解将食物系统重新导向更可持续路径的努力的动机、理由和结果的一种方式。我们认为，以这种方式重视关怀有助于将关注点从“扩大规模”以实现可持续性的主导叙事，转向一种更具关联性的视角，即从连接、深化甚至缩小规模中看到转型。这意味着要关注实现所需的可持续性转型所需的微观和宏观转变。
