Abstract
This study theorizes on the sociomateriality of food in authority-building processes of partial organizations by exploring alternative food networks (AFNs). Through the construction of arenas for food provisioning, AFNs represent grassroots collectives that deliberately differentiate their practices from mainstream forms of food provisioning. Based on a sequential mixed-methods analysis of 24 AFNs, where an inductive chronological analysis is followed by a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), we found that the entanglements between participants’ food provisioning practices and food itself shape how authority emerges in AFNs. Food generates biological, physiological and social struggles for AFN participants who, in turn, respond by embracing or avoiding them. As an outcome, most AFNs tend to bureaucratize over time according to four identified patterns while a few idiosyncratically build a more shared basis of authority. We conclude that the sociomateriality of food plays an important yet indirect role in understanding why and how food provisioning arenas re-organize and forge their forms of authority over time.
Highlights
An important stream of research in organization studies explains how grassroots collectives and social movement organizations construct arenas as space for organizing and developing forms of leadership, hierarchy and control over time – what we define as authority-building processes
This study aims to explore the role of sociomateriality in authority-building processes of partial organizations by focusing on the sociomateriality of food that shapes provisioning arenas in alternative food networks (AFNs)
Instead, ‘networked or institutionalized forms of order’ (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011), mediated through social interactions, ties and personal networks, may facilitate the emergence of forms of a shared basis of authority (Haug, 2013). We found this interplay between forms of social order and authority in grassroots collectives to be critical to make sense of how participants in AFNs organize responses to sociomaterial struggles in food provisioning arenas
Summary
An important stream of research in organization studies explains how grassroots collectives and social movement organizations construct arenas as space for organizing and developing forms of leadership, hierarchy and control over time – what we define as authority-building processes. Bicycle commuting routes (Wilhoit & Kisselburgh, 2015), bars, parks and parts of towns (Haunss & Leach, 2007; Reedy, King, & Coupland, 2016), Occupy Wall Street (Reinecke, 2018) and opensource platforms (Massa, 2017; Puranam, Alexy, & Reitzig, 2014) represent examples of arenas where grassroots collectives organize to shape and enact forms of protest and contestation (Haug, 2013). While grassroots collectives and social movement organizations appear boundaryless and leaderless from the outside (Dobusch & Schoeneborn, 2015; Wilhoit & Kisselburgh, 2015), a closer examination of how they organize their arenas reveals the presence of processes for maintaining order and social control. In food provisioning arenas this means looking at the interplay between participants and food provisioning practices, suggesting a sociomaterial perspective to investigate organizing in these arenas (Forssell & Lankoski, 2017; Sarmiento, 2017)
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