Reflexive Localism: Toward a Theoretical Foundation of an Integrative Food Politics

Abstract

This book is neither simple nor easy to read. It is an attempt to systematize and update the work on alternative/local food networks that has engaged the authors for many years and that has produced many articles, published mainly in Sociologia Ruralis and the Journal of Rural Studies. It is a complex read, because it puts together different contexts (USA and the ‘UK and Western Europe’) and it draws from many different social theoretical traditions. But it is worth the effort, since it engages the reader in a vast and deep, reflexive analysis of alternative food networks (AFNs). The authors’ interest focuses on the big question that has animated the debate on alternative food movements during the past two decades: are AFNs a failed project, due to the influence of neo-liberalism, or are they an expression of prefigurative politics, alternative, not because they are oppositional, but because they are an expression of food production and consumption practices that are incompatible with the dominant organization of the food system (‘resistance of the third kind’, in the words of Van der Ploeg, 2007)? The authors take a critical perspective and try ‘to strike a balance... between critique and constructive analysis of the problems facing those working to change the place of food in our lives, practices, politics’ (p. 249). A critical perspective means rejecting the interpretation of AFNs as failed projects, but also the ‘normative portrayals of the local as places with conflict-free, communitarian values of reciprocity and fairness’ (p. 8). They propose the concept of ‘reflexive localism’, as the foundation of a democratic local food politics. The first part of the book – which is divided into four parts – is the theoretical foundation of a ‘reflexive localism’ the other three parts are an application of the concept to alternative food movements in the ‘UK and Western Europe’1 (Part 2), in the USA (Part 3) and to the ‘cultural material politics of fair trade’ (Part 4). My comments concentrate mainly on two points: first, the complexity of the theoretical construction; second, the application of the concept of reflexive localism to AFNs and to fair trade networks.