Critical Reflection and Civic Discourse within and across the Alternative Food Movement

Abstract

Born out of resistance to a faceless and essentially placeless food system, the alternative food movement has acquired a global reach. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the practice and politics of local food encompass everything from backyard (and front-yard) gardens, to national appellations, to calls for indigenous sovereignty. Organics are standardized, mass produced, and traded nationally and internationally. Fair trade products are familiar grocery store fare, their value represented by logos and their processes often dominated by multinationals. There are those who see these changes as evidence of the movement’s success. What was once an alternative vision has now moved into the mainstream, into popular (and global) awareness, bringing with it many enlightened values – care, ecology, sustainability, health, equity. There are others who see these changes as yet another demonstration of the power of market (or corporate) capitalism, its ability to commodify anything, underwrite neo-liberal policies, and reinforce the structures that gave rise to the original resistance. Frequently, opposing arguments (among practitioners, activists and academics) are as polarized and impassioned as the initial rhetoric that advocated ‘a turn toward the local’ and away from an industrial food system. But, there are problems with either/or thinking, with seeing the world only in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Not the least of these is the question of who gets to say – act on and enforce – what is and isn’t possible; who gets to decide what does or doesn’t matter. Stated a bit differently, such essentialist thinking can lead to a loss of critical insight into the behavioural and thought processes that play out in lived contexts as well as across the many levels of what hopefully will become a generative and socially just food system. Given the severity of the problems we face on this once blue-green planet and the essential nature of food to our survival, we really need to stop cleaving to simplistic images and attacking convenient straw men. We need to expand our thinking and our tool chest in ways that permit, no, I really mean continually enable, public discourse and engaged citizenship. We also need to learn how to listen. Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics is a bold step in this direction. From the outset, authors Goodman, DuPuis and Goodman explain that they want to steer a course between arguments of food system conventionalization and accounts celebrating the tenacity and virtuosity of the alternative vision. As they put it: