PLACE AND FOOD PRACTICE - a road trip Henrik Halkier Laura James 1.The road to practice: starting from economic geography 2.Test drive: An example from current work on food tourism synergies 3.Traffic jams, road blocks and diversions: Questions and challenges

Economic geography & theories of practice Starting point: how to conceptualise learning and innovation across different kinds of boundaries Firms, geographical, sectoral Developing links between food & drink and tourism sectors Communities of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) Mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repertoire (Wenger 1998) Knowledge is ‘leaky’ where practice is shared, ‘sticky’ when it is not (Brown & Duguid, 2001) People are members of multiple communities Innovation in geographically dispersed communities

Practice in economic geography: some issues… Emphasis on different kinds of ‘community’ developing though social interaction (Vallance, 2011) Professional/Epistemic/CoP; Craft-based, Professional, Expert/Creative, Virtual (Amin & Roberts, 2008) Underplay situated context of ‘knowing in practice’: similarity = learning Retention of cognitivist conception of knowledge and learning (stocks, flows, circulation) Learning within or between established communities/networks? (Nooteboom, 2008)

Moving forward (1) Knowing-in-practice rather than circulation/absorption of knowledge Learning to practice but also learning as changing old practices & creating new ones Creative and constructive practices: ‘the kind of practice that obtains when we confront non-routine problems’ (Knorr Cetina, 2001:175) Different perspectives on boundary crossing syntactic, semantic, pragmatic boundaries (Carlile, 2004) transfer, translation, transformation

Reckwitz (2002: 249): Practice as '...a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge'. Nicolini’s (2012) sensitizing questions/dimensions of practice Key and marginal actors, sayings and doings, practical concerns, temporal organization A more fine-grained, process-oriented approach Firms, institutions, networks, policies: NOT starting points Moving forward (2)

Food tourism platforms Why food and tourism? Branding, boost local food production, extend tourist season From feeding tourists (industrialised, national distribution, pre fab, limited seasonality) To ‘Local’, artisan, traditional, quality, experiences… Key practices Producing food, retailing, catering and hospitality, developing tourist products/experiences, promoting tourism Adaptation, transformation, creation, new connections between practices

Laura James – Henrik Halkier– Why?  Branding, boost local food production, extend tourist season Taking a practice perspective  Key and marginal actors  Sayings and doings  Practical concerns  Temporal organization Interviews  food producers, retailers, policymakers Food tourism in North Jutland

Jammerbugt Signature dish adapting existing practices fixed items on menus story telling linking in new ways use of local suppliers? new practice make recipe public joint branding DMO developing networks

Hals local food market adapting existing practice adding food to existing summer Saturday markets producers travelling further to participate linking in new ways local business development and tourism promotion connected through development of summer food market new practice DMO developing local product by initiating event

Key findings Support for marginalised ‘quality’ food production practices, but small scale Focus on adapting visible practices (menus, markets) & new temporality (outside main season) rather than localising food chain Some practices ‘too difficult’ to change/link together: buying practices of supermarkets and restaurants Differences and dependencies between practices What is at stake when practices must be changed or new ones adopted? Brokers and boundary objects

Traffic jams, road blocks, diversions Defining and delimiting practices Zooming in and out? Unit of analysis/starting point community; profession; project; organisation? Research methods participant observation, following boundary objects/spanners; analysing boundary discourses…?