SustainERA Research Talk: Subsistence and Food Self-Provisioning – Invisible, Inferior yet Indispensable?
Tallinn University’s ERA Chair project SustainERA is pleased to invite you to the next session in the SustainERA Public Research Talk series.
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iCal calendarThe upcoming talk will take place on Tuesday, 21 October 2025, at 13:00–14:00 EEST via Zoom and features Dr Lilian Pungas, an activist scholar in political ecology and degrowth, and board member/coordinator of the German Wachstumswende platform.
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Her presentation, titled “Subsistence and Food Self-Provisioning – Invisible, Inferior yet Indispensable?”, explores how food self-provisioning and subsistence practices—especially in the Global East—offer sustainable and community-centered alternatives to globalized food systems.
The meeting link will be sent to registered participants before the talk.
The Summary
„Subsistence and Food Self-Provisioning - Invisible, Inferior yet Indispensable?“
Food Self-Provisioning (FSP) and Subsistence in the Global East (but also in the South) has for long been (and often still is being) framed as a ‘survival/coping strategy of the poor’. Despite contesting and revaluing interpretations of this common practice that emphasize its ecologically, socially and individually beneficial aspects (incl. ‘Quiet sustainability’ by Smith and Jehlička, 2013) and demonstrate its subversive potential (‘Quiet food sovereignty by Visser et al, 2015; Quiet forms of everyday resistance by Pungas 2019), subsistence has remained a somewhat controversial concept.
In the talk Lilian will shed light on a specific form of subsistence in the Global East at the so-called Russian dachas through two different feminist Iceberg concepts by Mies (1986) as well as Gibson-Graham (1996): on one hand she will show with the Bielefeld subsistence scholars how the predominant power relations result in the devaluation and appropriation of the dacha subsistence in Estonia, on the other hand with the Diverse Economies approach she will elucidate the rich variety of self-reliant, dignified and vivid economic practices on the ground that provide inspiration and hope for alternative future agri-food systems.
About the Speaker
Lilian Pungas (PhD) is an activist scholar in the broad field of political ecology / degrowth and the board/coordinator of the German Wachstumswende plattform. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical agrarian/food studies, ecofemism/care and decolonial postsocialist studies. Originally from Estonia, based in Berlin and working as a Postdoc at the Central European University in Vienna she is also part of the Polička collective (https://policka-collective.org/), ‘Eastern Blues’ collective and ‘Unleashing Fantasy for Transformation’ collective for utopianizing degrowth and creating transformative spaces. Within all these constellations she brings together her transdisciplinary focus and engaged research around the topics of food, social-ecological provisioning from/in the East as well as her passion for a simple sufficiency-oriented (dacha) life – the ‘Eastern’ buen vivir. The latter (Dachas for Future. Examples from the East for living and surviving well, 2024) was also her dissertation project which she is continuing working with.
About SustainERA
Running from 2025–2029, the ERA Chair in Sustainable Futures project (SustainERA) at Tallinn University combines high-level research with innovative solutions to promote sustainable mindsets and practices. The project is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe ERA Chair initiative.