Beyond Alternative: Exploring the Potential for Autonomous Food Spaces

Abstract: Much attention has been given in recent years to the rise of alternative food networks However, the very concept of “alternative” has come under increasing scrutiny, as theorists grapple with what is meant by alternative and whether the concept adequately captures the key components of such a diverse range of networks and communities. Drawing on poststructuralist political economy, I propose the concept of autonomous food spaces as one possible lens for approaches food‐provisioning activities that situate food within the broader context of non‐capitalist communities seeking to build relationships of mutual aid and non‐market exchanges. I use the examples of a radical collective kitchen, Food Not Bombs, and a community‐supported agriculture operation, Vegetables Unplugged, to explore the potential for autonomous food spaces as part of a broader “politics of possibilities” beyond capitalism.     

A POLYMORPHIC APPROACH TO POLICY ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY OF ONTARIO'S ETHANOL IN GASOLINE REGULATION

This article develops a “polymorphic” approach to policy analysis, that is, an approach that draws on multiple forms of spatial reasoning. Specifically, the proposed framework deploys scale and network not merely as epistemological devices that make sense of “horizontal” and “vertical” politico‐institutional structures, but as co‐constitutive ontological processes that involve an ever‐shifting interplay among legacies, rhythms, and events. This polymorphic approach, we argue, facilitates the identification and the examination of the mobilization of social networks and of the attendant cross‐scalar interactions that must be articulated whenever a given policy is framed as a sensible and politically viable place‐based solution. The novel conceptual framework is then applied to the empirical investigation of the formulation of the complex moral, political, and economic environment that enabled the emergence of Ontario's controversial Ethanol in Gasoline Regulation. Our polymorphic approach reveals how this regulation is a (failed) attempt to reconcile Canada's legacy as a resource‐based economy and Ontario's legacy as a manufacturing‐based economy where value is added, with the need for more rational and less harmful resource extraction and for greener fuels that can sustain the current order. We build on the lessons drawn from this case study to suggest that our approach has wider applicability in that it can help create a process‐oriented, dynamic, and multi‐dimensional geography of policy‐making.     

The Difference that Class Makes: Neoliberalization and Non‐Capitalism in the Fishing Industry of New England

Abstract: Fishing economies are typically represented as pre‐capitalist and as a barrier to capital accumulation rather than as an alternative economy with its own potentials. Privatization (and capitalism) appears logical and inevitable because “there is no alternative” described or given. The class analysis presented here focuses on questions of property and subjectivity and describes fishing as a non‐capitalist and community‐based economy consonant with both a tradition of common property and an image of “fishermen” as independent and interested in fairness and equity. While the latter is associated with a neoliberal subject aligned with the capitalist economy, a class analysis of fishing repositions “fishermen” as community subjects aligned with a community economy.     

Emancipatory or Neoliberal Food Politics? Exploring the “Politics of Collectivity” of Buying Groups in the Search for Egalitarian Food Democracies

In the context of apolitical tendencies in food studies, this paper explores how alternative food networks can contribute to developing emancipatory food politics rather than constitute a tool to reproduce neoliberal subjectivities. For this purpose, I contend that the post‐political literature offers a useful approach to examining the concept of food politics by developing a more robust theoretical framework, permitting the establishment of linkages with broader contemporary processes of social change. The analysis of an action‐research process with buying groups in Spain is used to examine the “politics of collectivity” at play, that is, how these initiatives institutionalise “the political”. Specifically I explore the motivations mobilised to construct place‐based ethical repertoires and unveil how these groups govern the relationality of consumption practices in the pursuit of broader processes of change. I conclude by discussing the contribution of these initiatives to building egalitarian food democracies.     

Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe

What happens to labour when major redistributive land reform restructures a system of settler colonial agriculture? This article examines the livelihoods of former farmworkers on large‐scale commercial farms who still live in farm compounds after Zimbabwe's land reform. Through a mix of surveys and in‐depth biographical interviews, four different types of livelihood are identified, centred on differences in land access. These show how diverse, but often precarious, livelihoods are being carved out, representing the ‘fragmented classes of labour’ in a restructured agrarian economy. The analysis highlights the tensions between gaining new freedoms, notably through access to land, and being subject to new livelihood vulnerabilities. The findings are discussed in relation to wider questions about the informalization of the economy and the role of labour and employment in a post‐settler agrarian economy, where the old ‘farmworker’ label no longer applies.     

“Moral Panic” or Pejorative Labelling? Rethinking the Mazengarb Inquiry into Underage Sex in the Hutt Valley in 1954

This article re‐examines the interpretation of widespread concern over significant underage sex in the Hutt Valley, Wellington, which resulted in a government inquiry in 1954. It challenges the typical “moral panic” interpretive lens concerning the inquiry, arguing that the term obscures more than it reveals. The term focuses on reaction to the Hutt Valley affair but fails to address sufficiently the causative question of why such concern existed in the first place. The “moral panic” framing of the Hutt Valley incidents has failed to give adequate recognize that the developments were early indicators of increasing societal shifts that threatened long‐held public views on sexuality; that manifest, societal, sexuality values changes in the next two decades showed that concerned people of 1954 were right within the framework of their worldview to have such concern; and that the so‐called “moral panic” concern of 1954 already existed prior to the Hutt Valley disclosures.     

Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Closing the Neoliberal Gap: Risk and Regulation in the Long War of Securitization

Abstract: When US military commanders refer today to the “long war”, they could more instructively refer to the “long war of securitization”, involving both practices of war and reconstruction that have always been based on a therapeutic logic of preemption and an endgame of protection from global economic risk. Since the early 1980s, the centrepiece of US foreign policy has been the securitization of the Persian Gulf region, with the newly created United States Central Command (CENTCOM) given the task of effecting a grand strategy that has subsequently been consistently based on two interrelated tactics: first, the discursive identification and positing of the Persian Gulf as a precarious yet pivotal geoeconomic space, essential to US and global economic health; and second, the enactment of a dual military–economic securitization strategy to secure, patrol and regulate designated “vital interests” in the region. With the rhetorical power of “risk management” perhaps more palpable today than ever, this paper reflects on the neoliberal discourses of “risk” and “regulation” that sustain a “long war” in which the perennial potentiality of a volatile global political economy necessitates securitization by US military force.     

Foodscapes and the Geographies of Poverty: Sustenance,Strategy, and Politics in an Urban Neighborhood

This paper argues that food should be a more central focus of critical geographical research into urban poverty and that the concept of “foodscape” can contribute to this literature. We utilize the concept in a study of the daily practices of accessing food among low‐income residents of the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, BC. We highlight how food access for the urban poor involves a complex and contradictory negotiation of both sites of encounter and care and also exclusion and regulation. Focusing on foodscapes emphasizes the social, relational, and political construction of food and thus highlights not simply food provision but also questions of existing power structures and potentialities for future change. Therefore, we discuss efforts to question the existing food system in Vancouver, to resist the gentrification processes that threaten the Downtown Eastside's food resources, and to build alternative strategies for urban food justice.     

A Fleet of Mediterranean Border Humanitarians

EUrope has created a space of human suffering within which military‐humanitarian measures seem urgently required if the mass drowning is to be halted. The framing of migration governance as humanitarian has become commonplace in spectacular border practices in the Mediterranean Sea. Nonetheless, maritime disasters continue to unfold. This article discusses three non‐governmental actors, part of an emerging “humanitarian fleet” that seeks to turn the sea into a less deadly space: the Migrant Offshore Aid Station, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Sea‐Watch. While the rescue of precarious lives and the alleviation of suffering are central concerns, they imagine their humanitarian practices, the subjects of their compassion, and EUrope's role in shaping borderzones in different ways, pointing to a wide humanitarian spectrum. Engaging with the different discursive frames created by the three “border humanitarians”, the article explores what possibilities exist for political dissent to emanate from within humanitarian reason.     

The Impact of a Customs Union with the European Union on Internal Migration in Turkey

Abstract The impact of the recent Customs Union (CU) agreement between Turkey and the European Union on internal migration is studied using an intra‐industry trade Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with intersectoral capital mobility under two alternative specifications for the labor market: the traditional Harris‐Todaro approach and the existence of a “wage curve” in the urban sector. Under both specifications, the numerical results show that the CU is welfare enhancing and causes a reduction of the urban‐rural wage gap as suggested by theoretical studies. At the same time, it leads to rural‐to‐urban migration and raises the capital rent, results that are counter intuitive with respect to the dual economy literature. Furthermore, the rise in formal labor demand and the migration response to the CU have not resulted in an increase in urban unemployment (i.e. the “Todaro paradox”), but rather to a fall in the unemployment pool. The study also shows that the Bhagwati‐Srinivasan proposal of maximizing welfare by uniformly subsidizing the entire labor market is impracticable, especially if the high wage union sector can negotiate employment conditions.     

The cultural practices of Europeans

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a rapid rise in “atypical”, precarious forms of employment in all European Union states, and the political significance of the issue of “employment in the cultural sector” has increased noticeably. There are several reasons for this. One is the change from a post-industrial economy to a cultural economy and a forced process of economisation of societal welfare-state fields such as health, education and culture. The “marketisation” of culture and the “culturalisation” of the market means that on the one hand “high” culture is becoming increasingly commercial and, on the other, cultural content is increasingly shaping commodity production. These processes run concurrently and are part of a general trend in post-modern society.

The article follows the thesis of a recently published EU study on job potential in the cultural sector [MKW Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH / Österreichische Kulturdokumentation. Internationales Archiv für Kulturanalysen et al., (2001). Exploitation and development of the job potential in the cultural sector in the age of digitalisation (Brussels: European Commission DG Employment and Social Affairs) (summary: http://www.kulturdokumentation.org/eversion/rec_proj/potential.html)] which identifies a new type of employer and/or employee—the “entrepreneurial individual” or “entrepreneurial cultural worker”—who no longer fits into previously typical patterns of full-time professions of the European welfare state system.

The former “cultural worker” has been transitioning into a “cultural entrepreneur” or—as others put it—into a “sole service supplier in the professional cultural field”. According to the historian Heinz Bude's argument, western European societies find themselves in a process of “transformation into flexible, digital capitalism, away from the Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian performance state and a ‘variable geometry of individual incentives’”. What is developing here is the guiding concept of the “entrepreneurial individual”, i.e. individuals who do not follow prescribed standards but who (have to) try out their own combinations and assert themselves on the market and in society. In this context, the creative cultural sector is of broader interest for new labour market concepts and strategies. In addition to the general change, new technology is leading to the emergence of new job profiles in the creative cultural sector so that the image of artists and creators is changing fundamentally. The new creative workforce is meant to be young, multiskilled, flexible, psychologically resilient, independent, single and unattached to a particular location. The article stresses the argument that these new realities of work and labour have to be recognised more extensively in up-to-date labour market strategies and cultural policy concepts. Western societies have to learn to cope better with these new general working and living conditions which affect a continuously increasing number of cultural workers/entrepreneurs—people who have to make their living from micro-entrepreneurialism. The article argues that cultural and employment policies should find innovative ways to accommodate the ambivalent efforts and needs of cultural workers/entrepreneurs (without capital). In conclusion, it will point out that the knowledge-based society has also given birth to historically new forms of employment not yet represented in the traditional canon of the political representation system (political parties, interest groups, etc.). Cultural policy-makers should take this into account in thinking about adequate social security schemes for their clientele, and labour policy-makers should be more aware of the major employment potential of the cultural sector on the one hand and, on the other, of the often precarious working and living conditions currently prevailing in it.     

Rules for Cultural Radicals

Abstract: This article explores the various forms of “social skill”, what we call “rules for cultural radicals”, that the Amber Film and Photography Collective (and primarily its founder and leading visionary, Murray Martin) used to create and sustain an egalitarian arts organization and oppositional cultural movement in the Northeast of England. The collective represented a radical challenge to the world of British filmmaking, featuring innovative practices of cultural work, non‐commodified forms of cultural economy and a commitment to a democratic culture. These “rules” constituted innovative forms of strategic action—visionary leadership, improvisation, risk taking, brokerage—that helped create a durable collective identity and networks of solidarity. We explore the extent to which Amber's “rules” are prefigurative of contemporary forms of cultural activism and radical artistic practice.     

Determinants of Variation in Population–Employment Interaction Findings: A Quasi‐Experimental Meta‐Analysis. 人口‐就业相互作用的决定因素研究：一种准实验元分析法

This article reports about a metaregression analysis of empirical results generated using data for the northern Netherlands (1988–2002) in order to investigate the ambiguity in results in the population–employment interaction literature. Specifically, the analysis deals with the issue whether “jobs follow people” or “people follow jobs.” The article starts with introducing the basics of quasi‐experimental meta‐analysis and with identifying some advantages of using quasi‐experimental meta‐analysis as compared with the standard meta‐analysis approach. Two subsequent sections document the selection of the population–employment interaction model and salient characteristics of the data set as well as the setup of the primary analyses. A total of 4,050 quasi‐experimental empirical results for the jobs–people direction of causality are generated using different specifications and estimators for a spatial econometric interaction model. The subsequent metaregression analysis reveals that the empirical results are largely shaped by the spatial, temporal, and employment characteristics of the data sampling. The results also appear much more sensitive to different measurements of the model's key variables when compared with alternative specifications of the spatial weights matrix. The main determinant driving empirical results about jobs–people causality are differences in model specification and estimation, as revealed by an inherent bias in parameter estimates and misguided inferences for some of the commonly used specifications. Finally, suggestions for future research are identified.     

Reading fair trade: political ecological imaginary and the moral economy of fair trade foods

This paper begins to explore the changing political geographies of alternative development as practiced and envisioned in the global South. Looking specifically at the growing movement and market for fair trade foods, this form of alternative development has become the moral business of latte drinkers and other reflexive consumers in Europe and the US. Fair trade attempts to re-connect producers and consumers economically, politically, and psychologically through the creation of a transnational moral economy. This re-connection is accomplished through material and semiotic commoditization processes that produce fair trade commodities. The semiotic production of these commodities and their traffic in particular ‘political ecological imaginaries’ is essential to the formation of ethical production-consumption links, acting to also politicize consumption and fair trade eaters. Fair trade's moral economy rides the tension between the ethical relationships it fosters and the need for the wily characteristics of enterprise in the construction of transnational trade networks. Bringing recent work on moral geography to bear, constructing this moral economy is an attempt to facilitate a sense of ‘solidarity in difference’ in the experiences of global economic inequalities between North and South and growers and eaters. At the same time, fair trade networks look to produce an expansive ‘spatial dynamics of concern’ in the fashioning of ethical places of production and consumption. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the continuing dilemmas critical for fair trade and suggestions for further empirical study of fair trade provisioning and alternative development networks.     

A social practice perspective on meat reduction in Australian households: Rethinking intervention strategies

Recent widespread calls and strategies for consumers to change and reduce meat consumption position meat as both an environmentally unsustainable and highly desired food. Such change is often understood as an unattractive and difficult process of relinquishment, and that perspective informs interventions designed to lessen the presumed hardship involved. This article troubles such assumptions by reference to a practice theoretical approach and by extending conceptual debates circulating within consumption geographies. The work explores food preferences and tastes generated in what I describe as everyday “mealing” practices, within which meat's relevance may be diminishing, contingent, or negotiable. I draw on go‐along stories about meals‐in‐flux told to me by Australian householders participating in “Meat Free Mondays” and/or consuming meat substitute products. I analyse the practical, material, and sensorial aspects of “mealing‐practice” change and show how the stir‐fry is a meal displacing “meat and three veg.” The work contributes to geographical research increasingly focused on understanding desires and tastes produced through everyday practices. In the process, it complicates understandings of meat consumption reduction as sacrifice and points to possibilities for new research and more effective forms of intervention.     

Constructing Policy Narratives in 140 Characters or Less: The Case of Gun Policy Organizations

This study examines interest groups’ framing of gun policy issues via an analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association spanning from 2009 to 2014. Utilizing the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), I investigate the extent to which interest groups use social media to construct policy narratives. This research shows that much can be conveyed in 140 characters; both gun control and gun rights organizations used Twitter to identify victims, blame “villains,” commend “heroes,” and offer policy solutions. This research sheds light on the politics of gun control by revealing trends over time in groups’ framing and suggests refinements for hypotheses of the NPF. Finally, this work underscores the importance of social media for public policy scholarship.     

KARL POLANYI AND THE REALITY OF SOCIETY

This essay reconsiders Karl Polanyi's famous thesis about the “embeddedness” of the economy through an examination of two recent books: For a New West, a collection of previously unavailable essays by Polanyi, and Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers's The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique. The guiding thread of this analysis is the claim that a constant in Polanyi's thought was his belief in what he called “the reality of society,” that is, that society exists as a social fact over and above the individuals that constitute it. The essay begins by tracing Polanyi's intellectual development, drawing primarily on the essays found in For a New West. Polanyi's quest to reconcile individual freedom with social solidarity led him first, in the years between the First and Second World Wars, to embrace liberal socialism, before his readings in anthropology persuaded him that traditional economies “embed” the economy in social relations and that the nineteenth‐century liberal project of a “disembedded” economy (through the so‐called free market) is a departure from this anthropological norm. The essay then examines and questions Block and Somers's claim that Polanyi maintained that the economy is always “already embedded,” arguing notably that Polanyi believed that the advent of market society entailed an economy that was actually disembedded from social relations, not merely one that was re‐embedded in an alternative set of institutions.     

Restructuring the Architecture of State Regulation in the Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand Cleaning Industries and the Growth of Precarious Employment

This paper examines changes in the commercial cleaning industry in Australasia which are occurring against a backdrop of significant transformation in the mode of labour market regulation in both countries. Specifically, whereas for most of the twentieth century both Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia had systems of labour market regulation in which the state provided minimum wage and work protections through the interventions of arbitration courts, in the past few years these courts have either been abolished (in the case of New Zealand) or severely restricted in their ambit (in the case of Australia), all as part of a neoliberal effort to introduce “flexibility” into labour markets. The result has been an erosion of wages and a worsening of conditions of employment for cleaners and many other groups of workers. At the same time, this transformation in the architecture of labour market regulation poses significant challenges to unions seeking to represent cleaners and other low‐paid service sector workers.     

The Moral Economy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Agent Sovereignty,Customary Law and Market Convention

The ethical authority carried in the conventions of fairness and human well-being has been widely adopted under the idea of “moral economy,” forming an eclectic and interdisciplinary debate. Significant, though external to this debate, is a corpus of medieval thought which exhibits a fundamental interest in legitimate market protocols, and the political rights and obligations of agents in relation to the common good of the community. This article asserts the imperative status of a customary basis for understanding not just the analytic version of moral economy but the legacy contained in what might be termed the “the moral economy of Aquinas.”