the theory
Outlined below is a brief summary of some of the theoretical influences present in this research project. These start with academic work examining alternative food networks, and then also detail some of the wider theoretical debates in geographical literature which are related to this theorizations of alternative food networks.
Alternative Food Networks
Much academic literature theorizing alternative food networks (AFNs) is produced in, and focuses on, either North America or Europe. By examining how various AFNs attempt to link food production/consumption with particular places, two clear themes have emerged.
- In Europe, many AFNs have focused on linking products with place - producing food products with added economic value due to their embeddedness in a specific place. This has been closely linked to stimulating rural development in the context of declining agricultural subsidies.
- In North America, many AFNs have emphasized the link between process and place - embedding the processes of food production and consumption with specific places. This trend has contributed to the rise of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture.
Although this is clearly a simplification and both elements are present in AFNs on both sides of the Atlantic, it illustrates how important ideas about place are in theorizing contemporary AFNs. These ideas have been expressed recently in collections of academic writing about ‘alternative food geographies’, like the 2007 book edited by Damien Maye, Lewis Holloway and Moya Kneafsey.
Throughout contemporary AFN discourse, localization is presented as central to enacting an alternative to conventional agri-industrial food systems. Thus, the opposition between alternative and conventional food systems comes to reflect the opposition between the local and the global, a binary which is examined in detail by geographers.
The Politics of Scale
The idea that scale, as a concept, is socially constructed is now axiomatic for many human geographers. This suggests that scalar labels or categories such as the local or the global can carry different meanings and are constructed conceptually in different ways according to differing social contexts. As such, the mobilization of scalar terminology, such as localization in AFNs, is inevitably political. The scalar terminology of AFN localism is socially constructed in a way which carries with it specific political characteristics - primarily the creation of an oppositional system to conventional food systems. Some commentators have questioned with the politics of AFN localism is equitable and empowering, or whether AFN localism is in fact unreflexive, defensive or parochial.
Relational Thought
Relational understandings are central to contemporary human geography, and lead to conceptualizations of place, identity and power as defined by their relationships and entanglements with other beings and things. By presenting a world whose elements are only definable in relation to each other, the stability of categories like ‘the local’ is questioned. From a relational perspective, places are constituted by the relationships which are formed in and through them, between the various human and non-human actors in that place and in other places.
These relational understandings also extend to the way we think about power. A relational viewpoint challenges the idea that power is quantifiable and can be ‘held’ by someone, or exercised over someone else. Instead, power is conceptualized as a shared capacity, and a feature of the relationships which a formed and re-formed between different actors. This understanding of power destabilizes the idea that global actors exercise power over local actors, and that local social movements can empower in opposition to the global agri-businesses. Instead, the power has all along been constituted in the myriad relationships between individuals and businesses which are both local and global.
