Principles for designing Agroecology-based Local (territorial) Agri-food Systems: a critical revision

Summary Introduction The aims of this thesis are twofold; firstly, it aims to increase the understanding of the extent to which community gardens enhance social cohesion for those involved; secondly, it aims to gain insight into the importance community gardeners attach to food growing per se, and the extent to which participants perceive community gardens as an alternative to the industrial food system. I define community gardens as a plot of land in an urban area, cultivated either communally or individually by people from the direct neighbourhood or the wider city, or in which urbanites are involved in other ways than gardening, and to which there is a collective element. Over the last years, community gardens have sprung up in several Dutch cities. Although there are various reasons for an increasing interest in community gardens, there are two that I focus on in this thesis in particular. The first is the assumption made that community gardens stimulate social cohesion in inner-city neighbourhoods, to be seen in the light of the 'participatory society'. The second is community gardens' contribution to the availability of locally produced food, in the context of an increased interest in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The Dutch government aims to transform the Dutch welfare state into a participatory society in which citizens take more responsibility for their social and physical environment. This way the government not only hopes to limit public spending, but also wishes to increase social bonding and the self-organisational capacity of society. Community gardens fit the rhetoric around the participatory society, as they are examples of organised residents taking responsibility for their living environment. Moreover, the literature suggests that gardens are physical interventions that may decrease isolation by acting as meeting places. However, both the extent to which community gardens enhance social cohesion and under what conditions they may do so are unclear, especially as gardens come in various designs, shapes and sizes. The popularity of community gardens also seems to be related to an overall increasing societal interest in food, and can be discussed in relation to Alternative Food Networks. AFNs are food systems that are different in some way from the mainstream, and are seen as a reaction to consumer concerns about the conventional food system. They are often considered to be dictated by political motivations and injected with a 'deeper morality'. The category 'AFN' is however a heterogeneous category, as is the conventional food system; neither can be easily defined. The degree to which community gardens can be seen as AFNs is therefore unclear. While they do improve the availability of local food and operate outside of the market economy, we do not know how much and how often people eat from their gardens, nor do we know to what extent they are involved in the gardens in order to provide an alternative to the industrial food system. Hence, there is a lack of knowledge about the sense in which community gardens are alternative alternatives. Research questions The overall research question of this thesis is: What is the significance of community gardening in terms of its intention to promote social cohesion as well as its representation as an alternative food system? This broad question is instructed by the following sub-questions: Why do people get involved in community gardens? What are their motivations?How, to what extent, and under which conditions does community gardening promote the development of social relations between participants? How do participants value these social effects? To what extent do the diets of community garden participants originate from the gardens in which they are involved? What is the importance of food in community gardens?What is the importance of growing or getting access to alternative food for participants of community gardens? Methodology An important theoretical lens in this research is the theory of practice. Practices are defined as concrete human activity and include things, bodily doings and sayings. By performing practices people not only draw upon but also feed into structure. Routinisation – of practices, but also of daily life – therefore plays a central role in practice theory. Practice theory allows for an emphasis on practical reality as well as a study of motivations. This focus on how people manage everyday life, and how gardening fits within that, makes it particularly useful for this thesis. I define social cohesion as the way in which people in a society feel and are connected to each other (De Kam and Needham 2003) and operationalised it by focusing on 'social contacts, social networks, and social capital', one of the elements into which social cohesion is often broken up. This element was operationalised as 1) contacts (the width of social cohesion) and 2) mutual help (the depth of social cohesion). This research has a case study design; I studied four Dutch community gardens over a two-year period of time, and later supplemented these with an additional three cases. As practices consist of both doings and sayings, analysis must be concerned with both practical activity and its representation. I used participant observations to study practical activities, and interviews, questionnaires and document study to examine the representation of these activities. Findings Chapters 3 to 7 form the main part of this thesis. They are papers/book chapters that have been submitted to or are published by scientific journals or books. All of them are based on the field work. In chapter 3 we compare two of the case studies and determine to what extent they can be seen as 'alternative'. We argue that although reflexive motivations are present, most participants are unwilling to frame their involvement as political, and mundane motivations play an important role in people's involvement as well. By using the concept of 'food provisioning practices' we show that participants of community gardens are often required to be actively involved in the production of their food. This means that participants are both producers and consumers: the gardens show a 'sliding scale of producership'. This chapter also shows that political statements are not a perfect predictor of actual involvement in community gardening. This finding was one of the main reasons for starting to use the theory of practice, which is the main topic of the next chapter. In chapter 4 we compare one of my case studies with an urban food growing initiative in New York City. By comparing the internal dynamics of these two cases and their relations with other social practices, we investigate whether different urban food growing initiatives can be seen as variations of one single practice. We also study the question of whether the practice can be seen as emerging. In particular, we take the elements of meaning, competences and material (Shove et al. 2012) into account. We found both similarities and differences between the two cases, with the main difference relating to the meanings practitioners attach to the practice. We conclude, therefore, that it is not fully convincing to see these cases as examples of the same social practice. We also argue that urban food growing may be considered an emerging practice, because it combines various practices, both new and established, under one single heading. In chapter 5 we use the theory of practice to explore how urban food growing is interwoven with everyday life. We compare four community gardens - two allotments and two cases which we define as AFNs. We found that participants of the allotments are involved in the practice of gardening, while members of the AFNs are involved in the practice of shopping. The gardening practice requires structural engagement, turning it into a routine. The produce is a result of that routine and is easily integrated into daily meals. As AFNs are associated with the practice of shopping, they remain in competition with more convenient food acquisition venues. Eating from these gardens is therefore less easily integrated in daily life; every visit to the garden requires a conscious decision. Hence, whether members are primarily involved in shopping or in growing has an impact on the degree to which they eat urban-grown food. This shows that motivations are embedded in the context and routine of everyday life, and 'only go so far'. Chapter 6 concerns the organisational differences between the seven case studies in this thesis and the extent to which these influence the enhancement of social cohesion. We study people's motivations for being involved in the gardens and compare these with the three main organisational differences. This comparison reveals that the gardens can be divided into place-based and interest-based gardens. Place-based gardens are those in which people participate for social reasons – aiming to create social bonds in the neighbourhood. Interest-based gardens are those in which people participate because they enjoy growing vegetables. Nevertheless, all of these gardens contribute to the development of social cohesion. Moreover, while participants who are motivated by the social aspects of gardening show a higher level of appreciation for them, these social aspects also bring added value for those participants who are motivated primarily by growing vegetables. In chapter 7 we present a garden that exemplifies that gardens may encompass not only one, but indeed several communities, and that rapprochement and separation take place simultaneously. While this garden is an important meeting place, thereby contributing to social cohesion, it harbours two distinct communities. These communities assign others to categories ('us' and 'them') on the basis of place of residence, thereby strengthening their own social identities. Ownership over the garden is both an outcome and a tool in that struggle. We define the relationship between these two communities as instrumental-rational – referring to roles rather than individuals - which explains why they do not form a larger unity. Nevertheless, the two communities show the potential to develop into a larger imagined garden-community. Conclusions This thesis shows that the different organisational set-ups of community gardens reflect gardeners' different motivations for being involved in these gardens. The gardens studied in this thesis can be defined as either place-based or interest-based; gardens in the first category are focused on the social benefits of gardening, whereas gardens in the second category are focused on gardening and vegetables. Nevertheless, social effects occur in both types of gardens; in all of the gardens studied, participants meet and get to know others and value these contacts. Based on this finding, I conclude that community gardens do indeed enhance social cohesion. Place-based community gardens specifically have the potential to become important meeting places; they offer the opportunity to work communally towards a common goal, and once established, can develop into neighbourhood spaces to be used for various other shared activities. Most interest-based gardens lack opportunities to develop the social contacts that originated at the garden beyond the borders of the garden. These gardens are often maintained by people who do not live close to the garden or to each other, and those who garden are generally less motivated by social motivations per se. Important to note is that community gardens do not necessarily foster a more inclusive society; they often attract people with relatively similar socio-economic backgrounds and may support not one, but several communities. Most participants from place-based gardens eat from their gardens only occasionally; others never do so. This type of community garden can therefore hardly be seen as a reaction to the industrialised food system, let alone an attempt to create an alternative food system. Nevertheless, certain aspects of these gardens are in line with the alternative rhetoric. By contrast, most gardeners at interest-based gardens eat a substantial amount of food from their gardens, and to some of them the choice to consume this locally-grown food relates to a lifestyle in which environmental considerations play a role. However, this reflexivity is not expressed in political terms and participants do not see themselves as part of a food movement. Participants who buy rather than grow produce showed the greatest tendency to explain their involvement in political terms, but many of them have difficulty including the produce in their diets on a regular basis. I therefore conclude that community gardens cannot be seen as conscious, 'alternative' alternatives to the industrial food system. Nonetheless, the role of food in these gardens is essential, as it is what brings participants together – either because they enjoy gardening or because the activities which are organised there centre around food. Theoretical contributions In this thesis I used and aimed to contribute to the theory of practice. Using participant observations to study what people do in reality was particularly useful. It turned research into an embodied activity, enabling me to truly 'live the practice', and therefore to understand it from the inside. Deconstructing the practice of food provisioning into activities such as buying, growing and cooking was helpful in gaining an understanding of how people manage everyday life, and how food acquisitioning fits into their everyday rhythms. It sheds light on how and to what extent people experience the practice of community gardening as a food acquisitioning practice, and to what degree they relate it to other elements of food provisioning such as cooking and eating. The focus on the separate elements of food provisioning practices helped me realise that acquiring food from community gardens represents a different practice to different people; some are engaged in the practice of growing food, others in the practice of shopping for food. This thesis showed that motivations delineate how the practice 'works out in practice'; the way in which a practice such as community gardening is given shape attracts people with certain motivations, who, by reproducing that practice, increase the attractiveness of the practice for others with similar motivations. This implies that while community gardening appears to be one practice, it should in fact be interpreted as several distinct practices, such as the practice of food growing or the practice of social gathering. Motivations therefore influence a garden's benefits and outcomes. This thesis thus highlights that motivations should not be overlooked when studying practices. Apprehending the motivations of community gardeners is also an important contribution to the literature around AFNs, since it helps us to understand the extent to which urban food production is truly alternative. By studying motivations, this thesis reveals that AFNs do not necessarily represent a deeper morality, or that not all food growing initiatives in the city can be defined as alternative. However, participants of community gardens are often both producers and consumers (there is a 'sliding scale of producership'); the gardens are thus largely independent from the conventional food system. Moreover, for participants who buy produce, the meaning of the gardens often goes beyond an economic logic (there is a 'sliding scale of marketness'). Hence, while the gardens studied in this thesis are no alternative alternatives, most of them can be qualified as 'actually existing alternatives' (after Jehlicka and Smith 2011). This thesis showed that even those gardens in which the commodification of food is being challenged do not necessarily represent a deeper morality, which is contrary to what is argued by Watts et al. (2005). This implies that understanding whether or not initiatives resist incorporation into the food system is insufficient to be able to determine whether or not they can be defined as alternative food networks. However, determining whether or not deeper moral reflection is present is not a satisfactory way of defining food networks as alternative either, as this neglects the fact that motivations do not always overlap with practical reality. This suggests that establishing whether a food network can be regarded as alternative requires studying both motivations and practical reality. The thesis also raises the question to what extent the label AFN is still useful. Since it is unclear what 'alternative' means exactly, it is also unclear whether a given initiative can be considered alternative. Moreover, the world of food seems too complex to be represented by a dichotomy between alternative and conventional food systems; the gardens presented in this thesis are diverse and carry characteristics of both systems. I therefore suggest considering replacing the term AFN with that of civic food networks, as Renting et al. (2012) advocate.

Despite the various studies on food governance structured around alternative food systems (AFS), analysis of the essential characteristics of it which facilitate the sustainability of the food system (FS) is still incipient. This study aims to clarify the debate on the role of governance in sustainability of the FS by way of the following two objectives: (i) to characterise the analytical approach of the literature in the processes of structuring of food governance related to AFS, and (ii) to reflect qualitatively on the essential factors to be considered which ensure sustainable processes and trajectories of the AFS. The research methodology is based on a systematic review of the literature in order to define the approaches identified in the relevant studies in their analysis of the food governance process. From the results, a conceptual framework is proposed that determines the strategies related to food governance which can help meet the challenges of the AFS. A multi-actor and multilevel governance is identified that takes into account both structural and variable aspects linked to the interdependent relationships that are involved in the construction processes of the alternative food networks (AFN). We conclude our study by identifying certain gaps in the knowledge as well as new lines of study that we deem necessary in order to consolidate the AFS from a vision of sustainability.

Understanding the dynamics of food and sustainability are pressing academic and public policy concerns. The food system in developed countries, especially that of the UK, often seems to be bedevilled by periodic alarms, for example, about the safety of food or its nutritional value. Anxieties about food safety and quality are allied to broader concerns about the relationships between producers and retailers, between retailers and manufacturers, and between economic actors in the food chain and policy makers and regulators. While public policy concerns relating to food are long-standing, contemporary debates on food and sustainability appear to have their own distinctive features. First, they involve a wider range of actors: all players in the supply chain have a legitimate voice in raising issues about how sustainability should be thought about and acted upon, and so too do a variety of other actors, ranging from bodies concerned with trade, alternative food networks, health, the environment and so on. In short, the public policy arena for dealing with food issues has become more crowded. Second, and partly as a consequence of the plethora of voices clamouring to be heard on food and sustainability, there is no fixed or agreed agenda. Many issues appear to wax and wane with regularity as their promoters bring them to the fore only to see them rapidly replaced by another issue, while others appear to have greater longevity, such those linked to climate change. Issues, however, do not simply disappear; rather they help to inform the way in which subsequent issues emerge. Policies are layered one upon another (Feindt and Flynn, 2009); issues interact, coalesce and compete in highly dynamic ways. Growing awareness of global threats to the food system has contributed to these debates, adding a further layer as concerns of food security and those of ecological sustainability converge (Godfray et al., 2010; SDC, 2009). This has prompted calls for new agri-food systems that recognise the multi-functionality of food; its social and environmental contributions in addition to its economic ones (IAASTD, 2009; House of Commons, 2009; Foresight, 2011). Advocates argue that new food systems need to be shaped to withstand greater volatilityand uncertainty (Ingram et al., 2010; Foresight, 2011) and need to operate within ecological limits, remain competitive while delivering fairer returns and greater social benefit (Pretty, 2008; Ambler-Edwards et al., 2009; The Royal Society, 2009; Garnett and Godfray, 2012). So, in recent years there have been, and continue to be, debates on food miles, food and health, food and climate change, the environmental impacts of food products, food and trade, alternative food systems, and food security. In this chapter we ask, to what extent is the current dominant food system capable of internal transformation to make it more sustainable? What is the potential for, perhaps, the key alternative food system, organic production, to engender change in the broader food system? The chapter is organised around five themes: the first discusses food supply chains in a global context; second, what is meant by food systems; third, the nature of alternative food systems; fourth, the potential transformative capacity of organic food; fifth, the environmental impacts of the food system, and concludes by pointing to some of the pressing academic and policy concerns.

Trust is an important concept in our food systems. Global food systems are witnessing challenges regarding trust. Alternatives to global food systems, generally referred to as alternative food systems, emphasise trust through local and short food initiatives, commonly referred to as alternative food networks. Alternative food networks can benefit from the trust characteristics inherent in digital technology advances such as blockchain. A key characteristic of blockchain is trust. Knowing how blockchain trust characteristics and trust mechanisms can be used to facilitate trust in the supply chains of alternative food networks will be helpful. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature and an understanding of how trust is captured in architectures of blockchain-enabled food supply chains and highlights possible extensions towards facilitating trust in the supply chain of alternative food networks. A distinction is made between the trust characteristics inherent in blockchain and those that apply to alternative food network supply chains. A framework to integrate trust enabled by blockchain into supply chains of alternative food networks is proposed. Areas of future work are recommended, including a need to validate the proposed framework.KeywordsShort food supply chainsLocal foodTrustFood supply chains Industry 4.0

This article examines the diversity of food networks that fit within the alternative food system of the United States. While farmers' markets, community supported agriculture schemes, and corporate organic food markets all fit within the alternative food system, they differ greatly in the conventions and beliefs that they represent. The alternative food system has divided into two movements: corporate, weak alternative food networks; and local, strong alternative food networks. The weak corporate version focuses on protecting the environment; however, it neglects issues concerning labor standards, animal welfare, rural communities, small-scale farmers, and human health. Local, strong alternative food networks not only assure environmental protection, but they also address the issues that weak alternatives neglect. Using three case studies from the Washington, D.C. metro area, the author explains that strong alternative food networks are better suited to create social and political change because they challenge the foundations of the conventional food system: standardized and generic products, price-based competition, consolidated power, and global scale. To affect true social and political change in the United States, the author recommends supporting strong alternative food networks by creating the requisite cultural and political space for them to succeed.

The concept of the moral economy directs attention to the moral and ethical frameworks through which everyday decisions are framed and enacted. This chapter shows that by exposing the very real differences in the priorities and actions of EarthShare members, people can escape imaginings of local food systems as perfect or entirely free from ambiguity or conflict but still see them as sites of political potential. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and locating CSA within a broader literature on local food, moral economies and ethics of care. CSAs have been heralded as offering opportunities to strengthen place-based community relationships between food growers and eaters. Community Supported Agriculture has been identified specifically as a form of food production/consumption that can be characterised as caring practice. EarthShare is a not-for-profit co-operative organisation which was founded in 1994 in Forres near Inverness, Scotland. It is the longest running CSA in Britain.

Food systems are vulnerable to the impacts of resource scarcity, climate change, and population growth, as well as the issues associated with unsustainable social, environmental and economic practices. These challenges have encouraged local food systems as an alternative to global supply chains. This thesis studies this trend at the urban level in order to explore issues and opportunities for change. It argues that urban food systems need to embrace both sustainability and resilience. A sustainable urban food system has an economy that serves social needs while safely operating within ecological limits. Resilience, on the other hand, includes the ability to recover from shocks such as extreme weather events, as well as the capacity to adapt and ultimately transform in response to the ongoing impacts of climate change. The main research question that this thesis investigates is “How can alternative food networks help to foster sustainable and resilient urban food systems considering climate change and increased urbanisation?” A comparative case study approach was used involving local initiatives in the Brisbane and greater Melbourne metropolitan regions (Australia). Both Australian urban areas have similar economic development; however, differences can be found in terms of institutional interest and the existence of food policies. The gathering of a diverse picture of alternative food networks was the strategy adopted for selecting the initiatives that participated in this research. The criteria that alternative food networks should attend were the existence of goals related to access to healthy food, fairer conditions for food workers, and reduction of environmental impacts. The thesis used multiple sources of data including primary (semi-structured interviews with founders or members of initiatives and field observation) and secondary data (publicly available documents such as annual reports). The findings of this research contribute to the conceptualisation and planning of sustainable and resilient urban food systems, as well as, to the knowledge on the role and limitations of alternative food networks in achieving this. The case study conducted in this thesis revealed how alternative food networks can contribute to the creation of food provision systems that are aligned with environmental sustainability and social justice. The thesis exposed the particularities of initiatives that, among other aspects, have minimal food loss and waste, supports agroecology, provides farmers with fair payment and makes organic food affordable. Alternative food networks demonstrated to have resilience building capacity, something that is not confined to its borders and can impact on the whole urban food system. Alternative food networks’ values travel and allow the replication and creation of new models, however, not in the pace necessary for a wider urban food system transformation. The main challenge exposed by this thesis for alternative food networks is the need for scaling up by influencing institutions and policies more broadly.

With the growing interest in short food chains from farmers, consumers, private and public institutions around the world, it proves that it is necessary to look for alternative food systems which are able to provide some of the "requirements" that the traditional short food chain does not currently meet. Alternative food networks (AFN) are local food systems and networks with short supply chains replacing global food systems. They are often located at the interface between the countryside and the city and, as a result of the high effort towards innovative network organization, they have different forms. As the demand for locally sourced, sustainable food continues to grow, alternative food networks have emerged as a promising solution to connect small producers with urban consumers. The aim of the case study is to find out the organizational models of alternative food networks in Europe and to identify the specific parameters of these networks using case studies. Another goal of the study is to identify and describe food initiatives on the territory of the Slovak Republic based on available sources. To achieve these goals, it was necessary to conduct a systematic review of the literature on this topic. Content analysis has the task of mapping alternative food chains and proving that these chains can be a suitable way for short food chains. The findings show that alternative food networks have the potential to support a food system that is more sustainable and equitable. However, the success of these networks depends on how well they can work at the urban-rural interface.

Progressing knowledge in alternative and local food networks: Critical reflections and a research agenda

In this paper, we critically interrogate the benefits of an interdisciplinary and theoretically diverse dialogue between ‘local food’ and ‘alternative food networks’ (AFNs) and outline how this dialogue might be enriched by a closer engagement with discourses of food sovereignty and the politics of scale. In arguing for a shift towards a greater emphasis on food sovereignty, we contend that contemporary discourses of food security are inadequate for the ongoing task of ensuring a just and sustainable economy of food. Further, rather than treating the local and the global as ontologically given categories around which to contest the politics of food, it is our contention that recognising the socio-spatial aspects of the politics of scale has the potential to reinvigorate discourses of food security, food sovereignty and AFNs. Understanding scale as both fixed to a degree as well as contingent and dynamic has implications for an understanding of the role of food systems, for how the rescaled state privileges certain food systems and the possibilities for resistance through ‘jumping scale’ and food utopias. All of these aspects are significant if we are to fully comprehend and contest the challenges of envisioning and enacting real utopias of food sovereignty.

Alternative Food Networks (AFN) is a concept that has emerged in opposition to conventional food systems and the global food regime. AFN are localized food networks that connect actors from food producers to consumers creating a pathway that strengthens ecological, social, and economic sustainability. Much of the literature on AFN focuses on geographies and food systems in the Global North, often recommending schemes such as farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, organic certification, and fair trade. However, these strategies are not always appropriate for food systems in the Global South. In Colombia, small producers have maintained a parallel traditional food system, despite the growing pressure and investments to transition to a conventional food system. This research analyses the local food system of Cauca addressing the following questions: 1) what are the dynamics of the local food system in the Andean region of Cauca and 2) how can the local food system in the Andean region of Cauca be conceptualized as an alternative food network in the context of the Global South? To answer these questions, transdisciplinary research was carried out using SWOT analysis during multiple stakeholder workshops, followed by a reflexive thematic analysis of the results. The results show coexistence of both traditional and conventional food system dynamics, with participants assigning greater value to traditional food systems and agroecological production (akin to AFN literature), yet the economic insecurity and socio-political unrest that underlies daily life prohibits a more robust transition from conventional food system. It is argued that the understanding of AFN should be expanded to incorporate socio-cultural context as well as the dynamics of AFN in the Global South.

Good food or industrial food: Discourses of the rural idyll and alternative food networks

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.

Antecedentes: el abastecimiento de alimentos en las ciudades es mayoritariamente dirigido por empresas transnacionales; usa circuitos largos, estimula el uso de agroquímicos en la producción de alimentos y con frecuencia no genera precios justos. Estas características han llevado a la construcción de un sector alternativo que articule nuevos mecanismos de producción, distribución y consumo de alimentos. Objetivo: describir las principales características de las redes alimentarias alternativas de Medellín y la subregión Oriente del departamento de Antioquia, sus actores, procesos y relacionamiento entre productores, distribuidores y consumidores. Materiales y métodos: estudio cualitativo de casos colectivos; se entrevistaron personas relacionadas con 15 redes alimentarias alternativas, se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas, observación participante en espacios de distribución y no participante en zonas de producción. Resultados: se halló en estas iniciativas el cimiento de un sistema alimentario alternativo, fundamentado en la agroecología, el comercio justo y el consumo saludable. Al ser analizadas desde los constructos teóricos del capital social, se halló que estas redes trabajan por tender puentes entre productores y consumidores y reforzar lazos entre los primeros eslabones del sistema; sin embargo, un posicionamiento más fuerte requiere fortalecer la asociatividad. Conclusiones: el naciente sector alternativo representa una oportunidad para consolidar sistemas alimentarios que contribuyan a generar capital social como bien público colectivo.

The increasing diversity of food networks and initiatives has given rise to a variety of analyses and approaches among which the literature on “Alternative Food Networks” (AFN) and the “quality turn” stand out for the role of European and more specifically French and Italian contributions and the richness of the debates between authors from different horizons. These debates focus especially on the transformative power of alternative and/or quality food networks at the scale of larger agrifood systems and the risks of territorial and social inequity that they may embody, thus raising social justice issues. However, in the AFN literature, the central focus on specific networks (mostly emanating from the civil society) often leads to overlook the effects of possible interactions between different networks and stakeholders, while in the “quality” literature, the central focus on specialty products often leads to a lack of consideration of entire food diets and agrifood systems as well as social justice issues. Based on a focused critical review of these literature, we thus argue for an intertwined approach that aims at assessing food systems as territorial constructions. In this purpose, our approach defines the research object by starting from a hypothesis of territorial assemblage instead of from specific initiatives considered in isolation. This allows taking into account various initiatives, different ambitions and their combined effects in facilitating – or not – just sustainable transitions. We do not base our argument on an optimistic vision of the potentials of hybridisations and combinations, but rather on a critical perspective focused on the effects of the alternative/conventional confrontations (and controversies) in terms of “re-differentiation” processes. Based on two case studies in Southern France and Northern Italy, we demonstrate how this approach can be applied and contribute to wider debates over the key questions related to the AFNs’ transformative power and social justice.