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Civic food networks and agrifood forums: a social infrastructure for civic engagement

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  • I.-Liang Wahn

Abstract

This paper explores how civic food networks (CFN) use public forums to engage with other initiatives and stakeholders in civil society. It develops the concept of social infrastructure to capture the assemblages of discourses, networking and spaces around agrifood forums. The research then examines how social infrastructures support CFNs’ capacity to organize communities and challenge power relations in the agrifood system. Two cases are compared: News&Market, a Taiwan-based agrifood news platform which also sells organic food products, and Foodthink, a collective blog created by a farmers’ market in China. Both started in the late 2010s but one focuses on policy critiques while the other focuses on market critiques. A comparison finds that CFNs develop different critiques to address the specific challenges facing local alternative food networks (AFNs), and use networking and space creation to promote social dialogue with other stakeholders or build networks across AFNs and NGOs. The paper argues that a social infrastructure such as that built around agrifood forums enables CFNs to shape food democracy and food citizenship practices in new ways.

Suggested Citation

  • I.-Liang Wahn, 2024. "Civic food networks and agrifood forums: a social infrastructure for civic engagement," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 41(3), pages 1069-1083, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:41:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-023-10536-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-023-10536-1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Leigh Martindale, 2021. "‘I will know it when I taste it’: trust, food materialities and social media in Chinese alternative food networks," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(2), pages 365-380, June.
    5. Laura DeLind, 2011. "Are local food and the local food movement taking us where we want to go? Or are we hitching our wagons to the wrong stars?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(2), pages 273-283, June.
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