Abstracts

The authors are involved in a Danish research- and innovation project, ProvenanceDK, which is funded by the Danish Innovation Foundation.  The objective of the project is to map the potential for developing Danish provenance foods. An important part of the work is to map both biophysical as well as cultural resources which might be utilized in product development. In terms of research, the project is organized as a multidisciplinary inquiry. The project is a partnership between three Danish municipalities, Aarhus University, and private enterprises from retail, food service and other sectors with a business interest in the field of specialty foods, including provenance foods. For the municipalities food plays an important role with regards to regional development policies across different sectors. Preliminary experiences from the project indicate that the project face considerable challenges, both with regards synthesizing research inquiries, both also concerning the transdisciplinary effort of integrating scientific knowledge into specific development processes. More specifically, the challenge concerns coupling between different timescapes and different forms of knowledge. The paper is an inquiry into the methodological aspects of the project, arguing that an integrated approach to developing Danish provenance food  involves combing insights from scientific perspectivism, systems theory and synthetic geography.