Abstract
In exploring the social dynamics of agrofood movements in Ecuador as examples of self-organization (i.e., locally distributed and resolved development), this article departs from a preoccupation with innovation by means of design and the use of scaling as a metaphor for describing research contributions in agriculture and food. The case material highlights that much development is contingent, unpredictable, and unmanageable as well as unbound to fixed spaces or places. In their study of people’s daily practice, the authors do not find clear boundaries between dichotomies of internal–external, lay–expert, traditional–modern, or local–global organization, but heterogeneous blends of each. For the purposes of sustainable development, this highlights the need for attention to be paid to relationships (social, material, and biological), adaptation (the capacity to innovate), and responsibility (adherence to norms of sustainability). Far from romanticizing self-organization, the authors acknowledge that people and their institutions share varying degrees of complicity for the goods as well as the bads of their economic activity, such as mass soil degradation, agrobiodiversity loss, and poisoning by pesticides. Nevertheless, even under highly difficult conditions, certain actors effectively bypass the limitations of formal institutions in forging a socio-technical course of action (i.e., policy) for relatively healthy living and being. As such, the authors have come to appreciate self-organization as a neglected, if paradoxical, resource for policy transition towards more sustainable agriculture and food.
Highlights
While we find continued usefulness in working with agricultural innovation systems, such approaches necessarily run the risk of perpetuating some of the flaws of agricultural modernization and risk reproducing its institutional shortcomings [9]
The creativity and potentialities in people’s practice and civic organization has gained the attention of researchers from highly different theoretical traditions, including cognitive, behavioral, cultural, social, and socio-biological systems literature, but we find people’s self-organization so far to be largely unexplored in agrofood policy reform
Far from objective, fact-seeking researchers, in Ecuador we find that scientists are involved in the country’s lively actor networks that are organized through processes of translation, where like-minded people from different walks of life work together to problematize experience, normalize behavior, enroll new actors, and mobilize resources
Summary
In exploring the social dynamics of agrofood movements in Ecuador as examples of self-organization (i.e., locally distributed and resolved development), this article departs from a preoccupation with innovation by means of design and the use of scaling as a metaphor for describing research contributions in agriculture and food. Far from romanticizing self-organization, the authors acknowledge that people and their institutions share varying degrees of complicity for the goods as well as the bads of their economic activity, such as mass soil degradation, agrobiodiversity loss, and poisoning by pesticides. The authors have come to appreciate self-organization as a neglected, if paradoxical, resource for policy transition towards more sustainable agriculture and food. Climate change and rising rates of climatic variability have added new complexities and uncertainties to the already overwhelming challenges of meeting people’s ever-growing food demands [7,8]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
