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

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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.

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Notes

  1. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/areca-betel-nut/ accessed 2023/9/12.

  2. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/tag/covid-19-topic/ accessed 2023/9/12.

  3. WeChat has been described as China’s “app for everything” as it is used for messaging, photo and video sharing, games, and payment. It is China’s equivalent of Facebook and Twitter, which are both banned there.

  4. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/herbcides/ accessed 2023/9/12.

  5. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/cabbage/ accessed 2023/9/12.

  6. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/solar-invasion/ accessed 2023/9/12.

  7. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/category/columns/school-lunch/ accessed in 2023/9/12.

  8. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/category/columns/crep/ accessed in 2023/9/12.

  9. See https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/areca-betel-nut/ accessed in 2023/9/12.

  10. See news series https://www.newsmarket.com.tw/blog/tag/%E8%BE%B2%E5%9C%B0%E9%81%95%E7%AB%A0%E5%B7%A5%E5%BB%A0/ accessed in 2023/9/12.

  11. See https://foodthink.cn/%e5%bb%ba%e7%ab%8b%e9%9f%a7%e6%80%a7%e9%a3%9f%e7%89%a9%e4%bd%93%e7%b3%bb%e6%9c%80%e5%a5%bd%e7%9a%84%e6%97%b6%e9%97%b4%e6%98%af%e5%8d%81%e5%b9%b4%e5%89%8d%ef%bc%8c%e5%85%b6%e6%ac%a1%e6%98%af%e7%8e%b0/

Abbreviations

AFN:

Alternative food network

CFN:

Civic food network

N&M:

News and Market

NGO:

Non-government organization

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Acknowledgements

The paper is based on a research project funded by National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (grant 109-2410-H-029 -063 -MY2). I thank Chang Tianle, Xue Yufang, Rao Qihong, and many interviewees for their help during fieldworks in Beijing and Guangzhou. I also thank the insightful and constructive comments from two referees and the editor, making this paper a better version.

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  1. Taichung City, Taiwan

    I.-Liang Wahn

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Wahn, IL. Civic food networks and agrifood forums: a social infrastructure for civic engagement. Agric Hum Values (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10536-1

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