Abstract
Economic development approaches are increasingly entailing local geographic scales and encouraging the mobilization and organization of territorial actors given local conditions and resources. Lebanon is a country facing frequent uncertainty with recent economic and social difficulties. Its popular cuisine may play a key role in its development and that of its rural space. In fact, that cuisine incorporates a traditional cultural practice called “Mūne” which consists of the preservation pantry foods, historically used to ensure household nutrition. Today, rural food cooperatives are engaging in that practice using agricultural produce from local farmers and are employing women. Despite strong internal and external challenges, they remain attractive actors as their principles of collective benefit, participation and democracy form a strong link with sustainable development goals. This study analyzes the status of food cooperatives in a major agricultural region in Lebanon, the Beqā’ valley, that produce mūne foods. Findings first position mūne as more than a simple activity of food preservation but which transcends to larger dynamics that make into a unique tool that could form the basis for socio-economic cycles inside and outside the territory. The findings also categorize these cooperatives in four classes with varying characteristics in the structure, spatiality, extent of received external support, and conformity. They show that with mūne as a culinary heritageresource, cooperatives exhibit strong rural-urban linkages with spatial dependencies on local farmers versus urban markets for trade. The forces at play are seen to include different forms of (inter-territorial) geographic and (extra-territorial) organized proximity which originate from sources exterior to the territory and which stimulate the mobilization of these cooperatives. These two forms of proximity in addition to temporary joint venues explain the logic of interaction and in turn result in the embeddedness of the cooperatives as an output. Food cooperatives can thus be considered as embedded both in their territory (natural) and in their relations (socially inter-territorial and extra-territorial) with the driving force being the cultural significance of traditional preserved mūne foods. Hence, we can assume a protection of culinary heritage is needed with scalable contribution to food security and needed local development given major recent setbacks in Lebanon.