Beyond Alternative Food Networks: Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups

Food activism is core to the contemporary study of food - there are numerous foodscapes which exist within the umbrella definition of food activism from farmer’s markets, organic food movements to Fair Trade. This highly original book focuses on one key emerging foodscape dominating the Italian alternative food network (AFN) scene: GAS (gruppi di acquisto solidale or solidarity-based purchase groups) and explores the innovative social dynamics underlying these networks and the reasons behind their success. Based on a detailed ‘insider’ ethnography, this study interprets the principles behind these movements and key themes such as collective buying, relationships with local producers and consumers, financial management, to the everyday political and practical negotiation involving GAS groups. Vitally, the author demonstrates how GAS processes are key to providing survival strategies for small farms, local food chains and sustainable agriculture as a whole. Beyond Alternative Food Networks offers a fresh and engaged approach to this area, demonstrating the capacity for individuals to join organised forms of alternative political ecologies and impact upon their local food systems and practices. These social groups help to create new economic circuits that help promote sustainability, both for the environment and labor practices. Beyond Alternative Food Networks provides original insight and in-depth analysis of the alternative food network now thriving in Italy, and highlights ways such networks become embedded in active citizenship practices, cooperative relationships, and social networks.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of Figures Introduction Alternative Provisioning Networks The Reinvention of Food Re-weaving the Economy Networks in Labor Seeds of Trust Conclusion Notes Glossary References Index

About the Author :
Cristina Grasseni is a tenured researcher at Bergamo University, Italy, and Visiting Scholar at the Anthropology Department of Harvard University, USA (2012-14). She was David & Roberta Logie Fellow and Harvard Film Study Center Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2011/12). Amongst her recent books are: Developing Skill Developing Vision. Practices of Locality at the Food of the Alps (2009) and Skilled Visions. Between Apprenticeship and Standards (2007).

Review :
This stimulating book helps move our thinking about ethical consumption into new areas, for it shows how alternative food networks can lead to new forms of social organisation that raise questions about civil society and co-operation and, ultimately, about states and political legitimacy. Beyond Alternative Food Networks is a richly detailed ethnographic exploration of Italy's agricultural "solidarity economy" movement, in which farmers and consumers negotiate the terms of producing, selling, buying and preparing food. But it is much more than a book about alternative ways of sourcing and consuming food. Grasseni's work challenges the rationalist mythology at the heart of capitalism and reveals the affective relations and contingent practices that constitute community and economy in today's world. Much more than a food book, Grasseni has gifted us with a new way of thinking about transforming capitalism into something more humane and sustainable. Her account of the Italian model of Solidarity Purchase Groups should be required reading for everyone involved in building alternatives to corporate and industrial food. It is also a groundbreaking account how people organize and manage cooperative democracy. At a time of economic crisis in many parts of the world, this book gives us a positive model for rebuilding local economies. With an anthropologist’s eye for detail and a philosopher’s capacity to see the big picture, Cristina Grasseni provides a fascinating look at how collective action and solidarity are transforming food systems, culture and activism. Focusing on recent developments in northern Italy, her study yields valuable insights into how alternative approaches to food provisioning can transform social and economic relationships in ways that bode well for contemporary global challenges of sustainability, social justice and rebuilding human relations based on trust. Grasseni challenges the reader to ponder a variety of questions she has come across in her studies, including whether a truly socialist network of citizens can change our current reliance on commodity-based, cheap, unsustainable food chains, or if we have gone too far in our destruction of the environment and our own willingness to sacrifice personal health to recover.