Abstract
This article presents a case study of the solidarity economy in Italy: the Italian G.A.S. – Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, which I translate as Solidarity Purchase Groups. GAS are often conceptualized as "alternative food networks". Beyond this categorization, I highlight their novelty in relational, political, and ecological terms, with respect to their capacity to forge new partnerships between consumers and producers. Introducing an ethnographic study that I have developed in a recent monograph (Grasseni 2013), I dwell here in particular on how the solidarity economy is embedded in practice. I argue that gasistas' provisioning activism is something different to mere "ethical consumerism." Activists use the notion of "co-production" to describe their engagement as a concurrent rethinking of the social, economic, and ecological aspects of provisioning. Building also on a quantitative survey of the GAS movement in northern Italy, I pursue an ethnographic understanding of "co-production." I argue that producers and consumers in GAS networks "co-produce" both economic value and ecological knowledge, while re-embedding their provisioning practice in mutuality and relationality.Keywords: Solidarity economy, solidarity purchase groups, Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, alternative food networks, provisioning, co-production, Gibson-Graham, Italy.
Highlights
This article presents a case study of the solidarity economy in Italy: the Italian G.A.S. – Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale, which I translate as Solidarity Purchase Groups
Each activist circle underlines particular aspects of this critical moment and their proposal for a reinvention of society through a radical rethinking of the economy and the ecology of capitalist consumption: degrowth theory critiques the idea of sustainable growth, ethical finance responds to the deadly loops of capitalism "dumping" ecologic and social costs on the most disenfranchised, while "zero-mile democracy" proposes to rethink the political fabric of society through a defense of the commons and a reconstruction of short supply chains
In this paper I argue that Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (GAS) function as political-ecological networks, namely that Italian Solidarity Purchase Groups exercise an intentional politics of provisioning tthrough a specific and original provisioning practice, which in turn is transformative of gasistas' lifestyles
Summary
Amid concerns about climate change and an unresolved financial crisis, Europeans are experimenting with a range of collective practices of food provisioning. GAS practice introduces a novel element to the debate about "alternative food networks", in that they veritably re-invent everyday provisioning in collective and participatory ways They are grassroots aggregations of consumers who involve producers in direct and collective transactions. By creating new direct producer/consumer economic circuits, they wish to responsibly collaborate with the farmers, enabling them to conduct an economically viable business, and negotiating quality criteria and encouraging "conversions" to organic farming.4 In their support for quality farming, Solidarity Purchase Groups are similar to community-supported agriculture in the US. In this paper I argue that GAS function as political-ecological networks, namely that Italian Solidarity Purchase Groups exercise an intentional politics of provisioning tthrough a specific and original provisioning practice, which in turn is transformative of gasistas' lifestyles
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