Food systems between resilience and change: a social network analysis perspective

Abstract

Today the food system is responsible for a "triple crisis" - combining increasing obesity, hunger, and climate change. While there is a widespread consensus that our food system must change, the extent and the direction of this change is contested. The contrast between a dominant corporate food regime and an increasing variety of hyper-local, alternative food networks, make it difficult to build a shared understanding of what a sustainable food system will be. This study offers a new methodological lens based on social network analysis to explore food systems resilience and change. Taking the socio-technical framework proposed by Geel and Shot (2007) as theoretical background, resiliency is conceptualized as the capacity of the food system to absorb innovations and adapt to new conditions without changing its structural configuration. Per-specified blockmodelling is used to capture the organizational structure of an observed food system and compare it to a stylized model of governance (i.e., hierarchy, core-periphery). This structural analysis of food system is particularly useful to compare alternative food systems across space or to monitor the evolution of food systems over time. The structural analysis proposed can be used as an effective policy tool to accelerate the transition toward more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient food systems.