Tracing politicisation in community agriculture: a semiotic analysis of participatory mind maps
Aguiari I.
Agriculture and Human Values
Urban Farm DB summary
Debates on food and agriculture have long noted the depoliticising pull of neoliberal governance, technocratic regulation and consumer-oriented solutions. Collective action in grassroots agrifood initiatives is well studied, but how politicisation actually emerges is not. Treating the political as an ever-present dimension of social relations, the author uses political semiotics to trace how politicisation and depoliticisation unfold in everyday communication, drawing on participatory mind-mapping workshops co-created with three community agriculture initiatives in Italy. Politicisation is encouraged where relational interaction, contextual interpretation, symbolic expression and an orientation toward collective action reinforce one another.