Research project The Global Bread
The Global Bread is a multidisciplinary project combining ethnology, cultural history and facts about consumption and sustainable living, understanding of everyday behavioural patterns and pedagogy.
The Global Bread
The purpose of The Global Bread project is to increase the connections within and between different educational activities and authorities. The purpose corresponds with the need for increased consumption knowledge in everyday life: in a healthy, economic and environmental lifestyle. The second purpose of the project is to increase international cooperation on various aspects of the ethical culture of consumption.
Project description
The Global Bread-project discusses, structures and combines ethnological and cultural-historical understanding with proven knowledge and facts about consumption patterns. The project is both based on studies of the framework factors in home economic teachers work, equivalent teaching, and meet the growing problems caused by the lack of knowledge of sustainable consumption and personal economics amongst the younger generation. Already ten years ago, the Nordic Council of Ministers, together with all the Nordic countries, developed a strategy for teaching about consumer competence, and the goals for this work have been discussed earlier in the years 1995 and 2000. In 2009, the OECD issued a recommendation on consumer education and also UNESCO's program Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) 2005-2014 summarizes the expectations for national and local initiatives in consumer education. Concrete measures are still lacking, there is a need for cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary collaboration and teaching materials that summarize the national guidelines from the state authorities, such as the National Agency for Education (Skolverket), the National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket) and the Swedish Consumer Agency (Kosumentverket).
Global bread and the Ethos of consumption
Consumption patterns and habits are based on socio-economic starting points and different types of material cultural structures. At the same time, the ethos of consumption is also linked to the principles of ethical behaviour. The culture of ethical consumption is based on awareness of consumption as both a process and a phenomenon, and its impact on human health, the economy and, more comprehensively, the entire living environment.
Culture consists, among other things, of habits and patterns of behaviour that are considered to be socially and temporally continuous and frequent. The ethos of a phenomenon can be classified as a sub-culture, or a characteristic of some culture. Changing and ethically improving everyday consultation practices begins with increasing knowledge, skills, and opportunities for choice. One of the aims of the project is to highlight the ethos of sustainable consumption as a part of the concept of healthy, economic and environmental lifestyle. The pedagogical perspective focuses on increasing knowledge and awareness. The ethnological and cultural-historical perspectives discuss individual choices based on the home's private sphere, the concrete everyday habits, the lifestyle, which affect society and which are influenced by society. The perspectives are thus not taken directly to increase consumers' choices in practice, but to make young consumers more aware and thus more demanding about the choices in society and towards companies.
The project has a concrete pedagogical starting point. Studies show that individuals' practical skills increase social equality and promote sustainable development. Knowledge and practical skills also benefit the individual's mental and physical well-being. The aim of the project is to address some concrete learning areas within sustainable consumption, which increase the everyday knowledge and skills of young adults and their families. In order to influence the consumption ethos, a discussion is needed on how an increased awareness can lead to or correlate with positive changes in the level of society. Thus, the elements of change are different for the individual and the family compared to societal changes. The long-term goal of raising awareness and knowledge in ethical consumption and sustainable living is to create conscious consumers: individuals who can demand more sustainable societal, practical changes and choices, while society and the commercial sector must offer new consumption alternatives.
Project members
Project managers
Elina Katariina Larsson
Gästforskare
