A Middle Way? Probing Sufficiency through Meat and Milk in China (MidWay)
The primary objective of the MidWay-project is to probe the concept of sufficiency as a useful organising principle to achieve reduced consumption based on the empirical inputs from meat and milk practices in China.
About
The fundamental challenge addressed in MidWay is to probe a position wherein consumption is decreased, but overall welfare is ensured.
In order to get at this challenge, the project sets out to better understand the ways in which supply and demand of both meat and cow’s milk have become co-constituted with and embedded in Chinese food practices.
Research questions
RQ1
How have meat and milk become constructed as essential foods in China?
RQ2
What places do meat and milk have in contemporary urban food-practices? How and why has this changed along with changes in materials, meanings and competences?
RQ3
To what extent and how have changes in systems of provision affected the consumption of meat and milk?
RQ4
What are viable avenues to promote sufficiency in current Chinese food practices, as seen through the examples of meat and milk? How can sufficiency be conceptualised, more generally?
Blog
- Sated Cities – a workshop on the urban and sufficiency in Shanghai
By Tarjei Brekke, PhD student – MidWay On the 25th of October 2024, 09:00-17:00 Beijing time, the MidWay project hosted a full-day workshop at the Nordic Centre at Fudan University in Shanghai. The workshop, titled “Sated Cities? Probing sufficiency in digitalization, land-use and consumption in China’s urban centres” had a total of 12 participants, of… Read more » - The baseless fear of wicked problems: The story of the man from Qi
By Tarjei Brekke, PhD student ERC-MidWay Exploring the concept of sufficiency in China forces one’s feet to balance atop a crooked, rickety fence. On the one side, asking the everyperson on the street and in the teahouses about sustainability incites hour-long, sometimes heated, discussions about how the West and in particular the US only just… Read more »
Team
Scientific Advisory Board
ZHAO Yandong
Department of Sociology
Renmin University of China
Elizabeth Shove
Department of Sociology
Lancaster University
HONG Wei
Center of Science
Technology and Society
Tsinghua University
Mindi Schneider
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
Brown University
LIU Chen
School of Geography and Planning
Sun Yat-sen University
Thomas David DuBois
Beijing Normal University
Adrian Ely
SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex
Arve Hansen
Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo
Contact
Funded by the European Union (ERC, MidWay, project 101041995). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
