A Front Porch for Critical Agrifood Studies: Engagement Across “Food Systems”

In this editorial, the outgoing Executive Committee of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Agriculture and Food of the International Sociological Association (RC40) reflects on a high-level, unifying characteristic that animates the intellectual puzzles and socio-ecological challenges that constitute critical agrifood scholarship. The reflection is introduced as a means to characterise the field, almost 40 years after its first plantlings began to sprout in the fields of agricultural economics, rural sociology, human geography and environmental studies. At the same time, this editorial is a means to (re)introduce RC40 to readers. RC40 is a dynamic, international, welcoming network of agrifood scholars. The heart of RC40’s dynamism is found in its journal: the International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture and food (IJSAF). These platforms offer the type of inclusive spaces needed to drive intellectual exchange, while expanding critically oriented communities of practice in the pursuit of equitable, sustainable, transformative change within parts of and across different sites in the food system.