Local Food as an Agent of Regional Rural Development Three Examples from the Małopolska Region in Poland

Abstract

The article presents current issues and research problems concerning the problems of food in the area of sociology and other social, humanistic, and political sciences. Since the lack of analytical approaches other than the traditional division between scientific disciplines, the authors suggest a new approach based on the reviewed literature, namely: the so called intra-human and extra-human approaches. In this paper the authors use the extra-human approach combined with the neo-endogenous perspective to analyze three empirical cases of the following regional products, namely: oscypek cheese, zatorski karp (local pound fish), and lisiecka kiełbasa (regional sausage). Key words: food studies, rural development, neo-endogenous development, regional food, food chains