Alternative food networks as “market agencements”: Exploring their multiple hybridities

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show Actor-Network Theory's (ANT) potential for accounting for the alternative-conventional hybridity of alternative food networks. A review of the literature shows that this has not yet been done. Consequently, this article proposes to fill this gap with findings from ANT research regarding such notions as “market devices,” “market mediation,” and “market agencements.” The theory is backed up by an analysis of a local food system involving five small fishermen and the delivery of fish to 1500 households in the area around Nantes in France. Seeing this local food system as a “market agencement,” i.e., a sociotechnical arrangement capable of market action, makes it possible to underscore the many hybridities that compose alternative food networks: those of human, material, and natural entities; the local and global scales; and production and consumption; but also that of alternative and conventional actors and devices.