Presentation of research at Spain Gastronomy Conference
On March 27-29, Spain Gastronomy Conference 2025 brought together researchers and professionals from around the world in Madrid for discussions on the role of gastronomy in society. During the conference, Beate Stålsett presented the results of an analysis of policy stories made within the project.
The conference focused on the question of reframing gastronomy, moving from seeing it as a purely recreational activity to include other dimensions of the value chain through a multidisciplinary and international approach. The organizers called for new social, economic, psychological, medical and cultural perspectives of this reframed interpretation of gastronomy, and sustainability was an overarching theme throughout the conference.
Beate Stålsett from Mid Sweden University presented findings from an analysis of policy narratives done as part of the project Enhancing Entrepreneurship in Rural Areas through Local Food Systems. Since entrepreneurship and sustainability have been invoked as policy imperatives the study argues that it is important to explore further what kind of entrepreneurship is advocated in policies in specific business sectors and how it is seen as contributing to sustainability. This study analyzed how entrepreneurship is presented on different governance levels in a Swedish and European context and discussed how these presentations create narratives that both align with and depart from ideas of a post-growth economy. The paper concluded that there are opportunities for researchers and policymakers to re-imagine entrepreneurship in a post-growth economy by lifting morals, heroes, plots and settings that are currently on the policy side-lines as part of the dominant narrative.