Menus, landscapes and politics in the semi-arid region of Bahia - Food provisioning from the perspective of interactions between food systems and access to food with differentiated quality.
food provisioning; food systems; food and nutrition sovereignty and security; access to differentiated quality food; food politics
The thesis analyzes the way in which access to food with differentiated quality occurs in the locality of Juazeiro, as a social construction in which the relation between (i) the characteristics of the space (natural, cultural, socioeconomic and political), (ii) food choices (preferences, lifestyles, structural conditions), (iii) the intersection of dynamics with different natures and scales that make up the local food supply, and (iv) the very conceptions of access and quality. The scenario of food provisioning is treated as a complex system composed of interactions between coexisting food systems based on three guiding topics: landscapes, menus and politics. The dissertation seeks to identify, in the dynamics of local actors, the interactions between coexisting food systems: tensions, hybrid forms, complementarities, synergies and possibilities for cooperation. Finally, it is presented some arguments on access to food with differentiated quality, and on the construction of food politics at the local level, based on the logics of justice and food sovereignty. The main thesis is that social participation in political spaces, the valorization of local culture and the formation of networks between organizations are resources used by the actors in the locality of Juazeiro to promote access to food with differentiated quality. In this sense, the valorization of the cultural dimension, together with the environmental and health ones, expresses the fundamental aspects for a social change that increases access to food with differentiated quality, through its association with: a) a sense of belonging to a certain territory or territoriality; b) identification with familiar and historically performed practices; c) a sensitivity through music, traditional recipes, art, poetry, among other artistic-cultural manifestations. These elements, combined with the political engagement of the actors have a leading role in the availability of food with differentiated quality and in elucidating its value in a contextualized way, interconnecting aspects of history, culture and the environment.