This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This study theorizes on the sociomateriality of food in authority-building processes of partial organizations by exploring Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). Through the construction of arenas for food provisioning, AFNs represent grassroots collectives that deliberately juxtapose their practices from mainstream forms of food provisioning. Based on a sequential mixed method analysis of 24 AFNs, where an inductive chronological analysis is followed by a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we found that the entanglements between participants’ food provisioning practices and food itself shape how authority emerges in AFNs. Food generates biological, physiological and social struggles for AFN participants who, in turn, respond by embracing or avoiding them. As an outcome, most AFNs tend to bureaucratize over time according to four identified patterns while a few idiosyncratically build a more shared basis of authority. We conclude that the sociomateriality of food plays an important yet indirect role in understanding why and how food provisioning arenas re-organise and forge their forms of authority over time.

No abstract

No abstract

Science fiction has often been at the forefront of popular renderings and exploration of various “subaltern” groups, including that of nonhuman animals. I argue that science fiction’s freedom from the boundaries of what is currently possible allows writers such as Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, Olaf Stapledon, Daniel Keyes, Octavia Butler, Cordwainer Smith, and H. Beam Piper to explore ethical possibilities regarding animals that are diverse from those of the context in which they wrote. It is also notable that the earlier science fiction writers only critique majority views regarding animals, whereas their antecessors go so far as to suggest the empowerment of the “Other,” in this case, nonhuman animals.