GVC-transitions Rollen til globale verdikjeder i omstilling til bærekraft

• Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2023). Transforming Burundian “taste of place”: From shunned in commercial blends to specialty coffee. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift. ISSN 0029-1951. 77(4), s. 255–267. doi: 10.1080/00291951.2023.2248997. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Human geography has a history of engaging with place-based-quality products through a variety of concepts such as terroir, geographical indicators (GIs), and fictive places. While the efforts necessary to construct a “taste of place” have been explored, it remains unclear how a “taste of place” is established, and by whom. The article explores how relations between quality, products, and places are produced on the ground. More specifically, it addresses the question of what it takes to reconfigure a “taste of place.” Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in 2017 concerning a coffee producer in Burundi, the article shows how Burundian coffee was reconfigured from an inferior commodity coffee to a sought-after specialty coffee. The findings show that reconfiguring “a taste of place” requires both material and symbolic quality attributes. By underlining the importance of material quality attributes that are place-dependent, it provides a different angle to the discursive approach to “taste of place” in human geography. The author concludes that creating a “taste of place” requires taming space into a consumable representation of place through discursive and material practices.

• O'Brien, Karen (2021). Reflecting on the Anthropocene: The Call for Deeper Transformations. Ambio. ISSN 0044-7447. 50(10), s. 1793–1797. doi: 10.1007/s13280-020-01468-9. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract Research on global environmental change has transformed the way that we think about human-environment relationships and Earth system processes. The four Ambio articles highlighted in this 50th Anniversary Issue have influenced the cultural narrative on environmental change, highlighting concepts such as “resilience,” “coupled human and natural systems”, and the “Anthropocene.” In this peer response, I argue that global change research is still paying insufficient attention to how to deliberately transform systems and cultures to avoid the risks that science itself has warned us about. In particular, global change research has failed to adequately integrate the subjective realm of meaning making into both understanding and action. Although this has been an implicit subtext in global change research, it is time to fully integrate research from the social sciences and environmental humanities.

• Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2021). What matters? The role of values in transformations toward sustainability: a case study of coffee production in Burundi. Sustainability Science. ISSN 1862-4065. doi: 10.1007/s11625-021-00974-3. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract This paper examines the role of values in transformations toward sustainability. Values, generally defined as what people deem to matter, are increasingly gaining interest in and outside of academia. For example, sustainability aligns with specific values such as dignity, equality, safety, and harmony for people and nature. However, current approaches to values are mind-matter dualistic, and therefore failing to honor the inherently dynamic relations of socio-ecological systems. Drawing on new materialism, I explore values as part of the relations that make this world and propose to consider values as material-discursive practices. Ethnographic fieldwork was done in 2017 with coffee producers in Burundi who aimed to transform production by caring for the coffee and people that grow it. Based on interviews and participatory observation, I present how values were integral to transforming the relational aspects of coffee production. In this study, values of togetherness, care, dignity, and faith were dominant and were found to reconfigure the socio-ecological system of coffee production. I argue that values are inseparable from, and hence co-productive of, the material world that we experience and play a vital role in sustainability transformations.

• Shrivastava, Paul; Smith, Mark Stafford; O'Brien, Karen & Szolnai, Laszlo (2020). Transforming Sustainability Science to Generate Positive Social and Environmental Change Globally. One Earth. ISSN 2590-3330. 2(4), s. 329–340. doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.04.010. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Despite the decades-long efforts of sustainability science and related policy and action programs, humanity has not gotten closer to global sustainability. With its focus on the natural sciences, sustainability science is not able to contribute sufficiently to the global transition to sustainability. This Perspective argues for transforming sustainability science into a transdisciplinary enterprise that can generate positive social and environmental change globally. In such transformation, the social sciences, humanities, and the arts can play an important role to address the complex problems of culture, institutions, and human behavior. To realize a truly integrated sustainability science, we need renewed research and public policies that reshape the research ecosystem of universities, funding agencies, science communications, policymaking, and decision making. Sustainability science must also engage with society and creatively employ all available sources of knowledge in favor of creating a sustainable Earth.

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• Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2022). Burundi. Standart. ISSN 1602-2246. 26, s. 12–19. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  There is so much potential in Burundi, a small country in the heart of Africa whose green slopes are speckled with 12 million people. Economically, Burundi is almost entirely dependent on coffee, and the land offers the perfect conditions for specialty arabica. The variety in flavours occurs as a result of the cold mist from nearby rainforests that can roll over one hill, but not the one next to it. To Q-instructor and World Barista Championship judge Ben Bicknell, Burundian coffee is ‘a delicious combo of reduced stone fruit flavours paired with some great tart red currant. Naturals tend to be sticky fruit compote, and washed tends towards elegant blackcurrant and red grape.’ What’s not to like? Well, for a start, almost all Burundian coffee is legally obliged to be sold as low-grade commodity. And that really is just the start of the uphill struggle facing coffee farmers in Burundi. All farmers are required by law to send their cherries to washing stations (most of which are government-owned) that decide how the coffee is to be processed and sold.

• Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2022). Frokostmøte: klimakaffe. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• O'Brien, Karen (2021). Looking into the Crystal Ball: What Does the Future Hold for the Cultural Environments. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2021). Den skjøre freden i Burundi – naturkatastrofar og uro trugar eit av verdas fattigaste land. [Journal]. framtida.no. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Boye, Ebba & Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø (2020). Myten om det naturlige markedet. I Hverven, Sigurd; Innset, Ola; Kristjánsson, Mímir & Dybedahl, Oscar (Red.), Markedsmennesker: Kritikk av tidsånden. Dreyer Forlag A/S. ISSN 9788282655576. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• O'Brien, Karen (2020). Transformative Change at a Global Scale: From Understanding to Action. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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