New Actors in Food Governance. The Potential role of Museums and Ecomuseums

The main aim of this paper is to explore urban food co-governance, or hybrid governance processes (Manganelli, 2022), by examining the contribution of some actors in making them more inclusive, sustainable, and able to stimulate learning and capacity building processes. Andrée (2019) underscores a crucial aspect in the discourse on urban food governance: the imperative for enhanced integration within the various facets of food-related responsibilities in central governments. This entails fostering a discussions regarding the contributions and the roles of diverse food system actors, from businesses to civil society organizations. Our research hypothesis is that museums and ecomuseums can be an entity that, while not directly involved in food policies, can contribute to food co-governance practices to the extent that they employ learning and capacity building tools that engage the local community or national and international visitors. The role of museums today is changing. From dusty repositories of ancient artefacts deemed important by a handful of scholars, museums have become 'social agents', capable not only of assuming social responsibility but also of catalysing change through capacity building. This idea is an evolution and active expression of the school of thought known as 'New Museology', which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. New Museology focused on how museums could support disadvantaged communities and stimulate processes of social, cultural, and environmental change. As is well known, according to the latest ICOM definition of 2022, a museum is “a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection, and knowledge sharing” (ICOM, 2022). Ecomuseums are a type of museum that extends ‘beyond the walls’ of a traditional museum, to encompass the ecosystem of the surrounding territory, including its tangible and intangible cultural and natural assets, and the local population. Conceived as an on-going process of becoming, it has been defined by Peter Davis as: “a community-based museum or heritage project that supports sustainable development (Davis 2007: 116). To achieve the objective and discuss the hypothesis outlined above, the paper is structured as follows: the first paragraph defines the theoretical framework. The second paragraph describes more in details what museums and ecomuseums are. The third section presents some case of special interests from various countries. The final section returns to the hypothesis proposed at the beginning and draws final conclusions.