Just-in-case transitions and the pursuit of resilient food systems: enumerative politics and what it means to make care count

Michael Carolan ()
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Michael Carolan: Colorado State University

Agriculture and Human Values, 2023, vol. 40, issue 3, No 19, 1055-1066

Abstract: Abstract This paper represents one of the first critical social science interrogations of an agrifood just-in-case transition. The just-in-case transition speaks to a philosophy that values building buffers and flexibility into longer value chains to make them more resilient to shocks, which stands in contrast to the just-in-time philosophy with its emphasis on long, specialized, and often inflexible networks. Influenced by COVID-related disruptions and climate change induced uncertainties, the just-in-case transition examined here centers on the heightened interest in vertical farm-anchored supply chains. Interviewing actors responsible for promoting vertical farm-anchored local supply chains in the US and Canada, I attempt to sketch out how these spaces, infrastructures, and practices care. Put differently, as understood through a feminist ethics of care, whom and what are cared for and how is care practiced in these just-in-case transitions and why? Enumerative politics was observed in the data—the idea that we can make care count. Practices and discourses linked to infrastructural/supply chain transitions are highlighted that result in care being narrowly conceived as a technical or transactional matter. The paper concludes reflecting on what it means to afford just-in-case agrifood transitions animated by matters of care that hold greater emancipatory potentials.

Keywords: Just in case; Just in time; Just transitions; Justice; Vertical farming; Vertical agriculture; Resiliency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-022-10401-7

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