New Ways of Working and Organization: Alternative Agrifood Movements and Agrifood Researchers

Abstract

The remarkable growth of alternative agrifood movements—organics, fair trade, localism, Slow Food, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, food security, food safety, food sovereignty, anti–genetically modified organisms, animal welfare, and others—and their attraction to younger academic scholars offer a unique opportunity to explore ways to strengthen such movements utilizing the structural position and distinctive skills of academic researchers. The various movements constitute the major resource; sympathetic academic researchers are a second resource. Mobilizing these two resources in a new organization, the Alternative Agrifood Researchers without Borders, has the potential to contribute to strengthening the movements and their original progressive orientations and advancing civil society. To be effective, a new organization should parallel existing structures in state and market but focus on progressive goals aimed at reducing inequalities and expanding political and social participation. In building a body of literature usable for comparative analysis, the goal should be more effective alternative agrifood movements providing better services to broader global constituencies while simultaneously improving academic research quality. I draw on three social theories—resource mobilization, strategic intervention, and structural parallelism—to encourage careful revision of established academic paradigms.