From position- to issue-driven collaborations between the humanities and business: The case of ‘Eat it, and save it’

As a contribution to the field of business anthropology, this chapter lays out what is termed an issue-driven approach to collaborations between the humanities and business. This issue-driven approach focuses on how the humanities and business might come to handle issues of public concern together, and it is developed as a response to the prevailing position-driven approach, which neglects that the humanities and business are always already deeply entangled. The issue-driven approach is sketched out and its workings illustrated through a consultancy project, concerning the formulating of recommendation for scaling how a new and diversity in crops and livestock enhancing food concept. This chapter suggests understanding the food items in a new food concept as potential enablers of material participation in sustainable living and eating, and it suggests that humanities–business collaborations might be especially well suited for exploring the “good” and “bad” of this particular form of participation. In closing, four practical tips are given to the humanities scholar eager to experiment with and (hopefully) develop further the issue-driven approach in and through collaborations between the humanities and business.