Abstracts

This research takes departure in a current Danish research- and innovation project (ProvenanceDK), which aims at mapping the potential of developing provenance foods. Drawing on an ’epistemology of the margins’, it addresses this ’potential’ of provenance foods by shedding light on non-dominant forms of place-based agricultural practices which can be interpreted as culturally and ecologically embedded within time and space. Methodologically the research traces sheep and practices surrounding the sheep through the Danish agricultural landscape as an example of a marginalized non-human object. In this presentation, a case study of sheep practices in Western Jutland is presented to explore embodied forms of meaning related to shepherding and the enactment of sheep-related practices. The case reveals a richness of different possibilities for exploring different conceptual meanings of temporality, spatiality, freedom, community, care, ’the good life’ and empowerment as expressions of meaningfulness to the humans involved. In the light of provenance foods, the case is meant to open up discussions addressing our ways of thinking about ’potential’ both in its material and non-material forms.