Alternative Food Networks in the South West of England: Towards a New Agrarian Eco-Economy?

Abstract

Reflecting on recent questions concerning the meaning and implications of food “re-localization”, in this chapter we utilize the concept of “embeddedness” as an analytical tool to deepen and broaden the investigation of the relationships between food and territory. After pointing to some limitations inherent in the conventional use of the concept of the embeddedness, in the first part of the chapter we suggest a more holistic approach that takes into consideration its implications in the wider political, natural and socio-economic environments in which food networks develop and operate. In the second part of the chapter, we apply this holistic approach to the analysis of three alternative food networks in the South West of England: Cornish clotted cream, Steve Turton meats and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese. By focusing on the different dimensions of the territorial embeddedness of these networks, we attempt to show that their real distinctiveness comes from their variable ability to reconfigure (“re-localize”) the time-space and the spatial relations around them. Through this actively constructed process of re-localization, we argue, alternative food networks in the South West are signalling the emergence of a new agrarian eco-economy that is vertically (i.e., politically and institutionally) disembedded and horizontally (i.e., spatially and ecologically) embedded. As we discuss in the conclusions, this further complicates the competitive relationships between the alternative and the conventional food sectors, while also providing new insights into the likely sustainability of these networks and their contribution to rural development.

Citation

Sonnino, R. and Marsden, T. (2006), "Alternative Food Networks in the South West of England: Towards a New Agrarian Eco-Economy?", Marsden, T. and Jonathan Murdoch†, J. (Ed.) Between the Local and the Global (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 299-322. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-1922(06)12012-0