Abstract
Grassroots initiatives for sustainable development are blossoming, offering localised alternatives for a range of societal functions including food and energy. Research into grassroots organisations often recognises the difficulties grassroots groups face to continue operations. However, there is a need for better understanding dynamics that enable or constrain grassroots organisational survival. Here, we specifically shed light on how such survival is dependent on the organisation’s ability to construct legitimacy. In the context of community supported agriculture (CSA), we explore different legitimacy types and strategies. We learned that CSAs predominantly work to garner legitimacy from their members and that survival seems associated with social capital building. In addition, we observed a moralisation of food provision that describes why new and possibly inconvenient terms of exchange still amass legitimacy. As external audiences remain at a distance, they often misunderstand CSA, their deliverables and impacts on social welfare.
Highlights
Global societal challenges, such as climate change and food security, emphasise the need for more sustainable modes of production and consumption in various sectors
In pursuance of the paper’s aim, we provide a detailed account of legitimacy creation in Dutch community supported agriculture (CSA) posing the following research questions: What type of legitimacy do CSAs seek and what legitimation strategies are used to acquire these types of legitimacy?
Its theoretical roots draw on the characterisation of legitimacy type and legitimation strategy, while its empirical focus is on the case of community supported agriculture (CSA)
Summary
Global societal challenges, such as climate change and food security, emphasise the need for more sustainable modes of production and consumption in various sectors. There is still a strong bias towards market-driven technological innovation in sustainable development, the potential of grassroots initiatives in re-shaping unsustainable practices is increasingly being acknowledged (Hermans et al, 2016; Ornetzeder and Rohracher, 2013; Seyfang and Smith, 2007; Seyfang et al, 2014; Seyfang and Longhurst, 2016) Grassroots organisations, it is argued, involve committed activists experimenting with “novel, bottom-up solutions for sustainable development; solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved” (Seyfang and Smith, 2007:585). Local food networks oppose ‘big food’ developments and aim to re-connect farmers and consumers; and re-localise food production through innovative re-organisations of the food supply chain
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