Value(s) in Community Food Work: The Dynamics of the Field, Funding and the Limits of Metrics

Abstract

Despite talks of increasing data-saturation and the metric society, there are still many ordinary situations that are neither ‘smart’ nor digitised. Nevertheless, a logic of evidence and measurement can be demonstrated in the mundane spaces of community organisations, raising questions about how such logics travel and are engaged with in the everyday. Taking three everyday spaces, this article uncovers the dynamics of valuation in community organisations. This article argues that field dynamics of evaluation and measurement warp community organisations through creating a funding game (a competition) that values evidenced outcomes over long-term goals, undervaluing and making invisible the community-value of such organisations. It addresses the capacity at a local level to play the game and argues that only limited spaces exist to work against the logics of measurement. Thus, this article highlights what is at stake in the measurement of community organisations.