The aim of this article is to show Actor-Network Theory's (ANT) potential for accounting for the alternative-conventional hybridity of alternative food networks. A review of the literature shows that this has not yet been done. Consequently, this article proposes to fill this gap with findings from ANT research regarding such notions as "market devices," "market mediation," and "market agencements." The theory is backed up by an analysis of a local food system involving five small fishermen and the delivery of fish to 1500 households in the area around Nantes in France. Seeing this local food system as a "market agencement," i.e., a sociotechnical arrangement capable of market action, makes it possible to underscore the many hybridities that compose alternative food networks: those of human, material, and natural entities; the local and global scales; and production and consumption; but also that of alternative and conventional actors and devices.
Contemporary alternative food movement implement various means of action, which were previously developed by movements that were striving to construct citizenship through consumption. Drawing on the results of in-depth ethnographic studies, this article analyses the main fields of action of three French organisations: consumer education, implementation of alternative forms of trade and consumer mobilisation in protest campaigns. It shows that these actions require the movement to build representations of consumers, highlight their potential power within the framework of regulations and provide them with various tools to make the right choice. The article also presents the difficulties these organisations face in articulating political action and economic engagement. Consumption remains an important means for recruiting and mobilising individuals. Yet neither individuals nor movements can entirely overlook certain consumerist modes of functioning that stem from the current features of the agro-food system and the irreducible nature of the freedom of choice.
This article argues for including the projective dimension of agency in research into alternative food networks. Starting from a review of the literature, I show that referring to the notion of project is useful to answer the questions raised by the use of the term “alternative” and to reinforce analyses of hybridisation and conventionalisation processes. I argue that alternative food networks are characterised by a “promise of difference” in the projects of the actors who promote them. To clarify this notion of project, I rely on the work of French sociologists concerning the creation of “organised action”. I posit that taking account of the project amounts to recognising human beings' abilities to imagine and to construct new collectives such as those that are studied in research into alternative food networks. I also underscore the need to envision the project not as a clear determinant of action, but rather as a fuzzy landmark, meaning that negotiation and arbitration are required to set the rules involved in its implementation.
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