Towards a trans-local food governance: Exploring the transformative capacity of food policy assemblages in the US and UK

Highlights

• Cross-sectoral and multiscalar networks connect local food policy groups (LFPGs).

• We propose a policy assemblage framework to explore LFPGs and trans-local networks.

• These networks help legitimize, shape narratives of, and spread local groups.

• We examine these governance innovations and their transformative capacity.

• Elements of these networks may limit collective action to advance systemic reform.

Abstract

A diversity of cross-sectoral, multi-scalar networks are emerging to connect place-based food governance initiatives, such as food policy councils and partnerships, aimed to foster sustainable food security. Yet little research has explored how local food policy groups (LFPGs) are (horizontally) connecting to share knowledge and resources, or interacting (vertically) with other scales of food governance. To address this gap, we examine the trans-local dimension of food policy networks—and its potential to facilitate transformative food system reform. We build on alternative food network, social network, and assemblage thinking to develop an analytical framework that unveils the mobile, unstable, and relational processes and spatialities of LFPGs and the networks which connect them. Through an action-research project comprising a comparative analysis of the Food Policy Networks project in the US and Sustainable Food Cities Network in the UK, we explore how LFPGs connect across different scales and emerge as social-spatial assemblages of food system knowledge, practices, and infrastructure. The findings suggest that conceptualizing these entities as dynamic and place-contingent enables evaluations of their relations and effects to account for features that (could) make them more interconnected, resilient, and transformative, but may also limit their ability to address structurally entrenched food system challenges.

Introduction

A new geography of food policy networks is transforming the food governance landscape. In the last decade, academics and practitioners have devoted increasing attention to how municipalities can foster sustainable food security through holistic and place-based strategies that integrate health, environmental, social, and economic dimensions (Sonnino et al., 2014, Moragues-Faus and Morgan, 2015). Epitomizing local innovations in food system governance are food (policy) councils or partnerships—hereafter local food policy groups (LFPGs), as coined by Halliday (2015)—which have been rapidly emerging across industrialized countries. These groups assemble stakeholders from government, civil society, and the private sector to reform food policy and programs, as well as foster new relationships and interconnections between food system initiatives at municipal and state/provincial, regional, and tribal/First Nations levels¹. Place-based LFPGs have recently started collaborating in wider alliances, at global (e.g., Milan Food Policy Pact), regional (e.g., EAT Nordic Cities Initiative, African Food Security Urban Network) and national levels, generally aimed at cross-pollinating good practices. These alliances—or trans-local networks of place-based LFPGs—posit new questions around the role of multi-level and multi-site networks in food system governance, such as if and how they may facilitate wide-scale social, environmental, and economic food system reform.

To date, researchers have explored the creation, actions, and initial impacts of individual LFPGs (Mendes, 2008, Blay-Palmer, 2009, Santo et al., 2014, Packer, 2014, Coplen and Cuneo, 2015). Others have compared the structures, issues, and activities of multiple LFPGs (Lang et al., 2004, Clancy et al., 2007, Schiff, 2008, Scherb et al., 2012, Moragues-Faus and Morgan, 2015, Halliday, 2015, Horst, 2017), although with limited evaluation of their collective impact on changing policy or shifting conventional food governance paradigms (Clark et al., 2015). Scant research exists on how LFPGs connect with one another, why these trans-local networks emerge, or what achievements and challenges these initiatives are experiencing. As Blay-Palmer et al. (2016) point out, the increasing diversity of cross-sectoral, multi-scalar networks arising to facilitate knowledge and resource sharing between local, place-based food initiatives deserves greater academic attention.

Furthermore, little comparative research exists on how LFPGs manifest in different countries. Hunt (2015) contrasted the US and UK’s national food movements, but excluded municipal reforms. Others have juxtaposed urban food strategies from different countries (Mendes and Sonnino, 2018). Yet, the evolution, governance, and capacities of networks of LFPGs have not been compared across scales and geographies. Given increasing spatial and scalar food governance interdependencies (Moragues-Faus et al., 2017), comparative research may prove useful for exploring how network dynamics evolve in different contexts and their capacity to alter foodscapes at different levels.

This research sought to fill these gaps by exploring the emergence and development of trans-local food policy networks through analyzing two national initiatives: the Sustainable Food Cities Network (SFCN) in the UK and Food Policy Networks (FPN) project in the US². The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future launched FPN in 2013 to build the capacity of new and existing LFPGs that had thus far been mostly isolated³ (Clancy, 2012). Meanwhile, British LFPGs have been spurred by national leadership through SFCN, established in 2011⁴ by a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—Soil Association, Sustain, and Food Matters—to help “people and places share challenges, explore practical solutions, and develop best practices” (SFCN, 2016).

In comparing these two initiatives, we aim to progress our understanding on how complex, interconnected, dynamic, and geographically dispersed networks constitute new forms of food governance and their role in building more sustainable and just food systems. We first compare three frameworks that have been used to explore networks—social network analysis, actor-network theory, and assemblage theory. This review highlights how the policy assemblages approach provides an innovative and useful lens to explore the mobile, unstable, and relational processes and spatialities of emergent initiatives like LFPGs and their associated trans-local networks. Particular attention is also paid to how these bodies of work conceptualize transformative capacity.

The policy assemblage approach allows us to examine the extent to which LFPGs and their associated trans-local networks function as emergent and evolving social-spatial assemblages of food system knowledge, practices, and infrastructure. Specifically, we asked: How are LFPGs coming together and relating to one another over space and time through the emergence of trans-local networks? How do these trans-local networks shape local food governance ideas, practices, and policies? What transformative capacities do these networks have; could they help scale food system reform up from place-based initiatives to regional, national, and international levels and out to more municipalities?

We explored these questions through a comparative case study analysis of SFCN and FPN. These two national initiatives were selected because they represent the first trans-local networks of LFPGs; other networks are only in nascent stages (Fig. 1). The multi-method qualitative approach employed included participant observation in network member and advisory group meetings; document analysis of websites, member resources, and listserv emails; and 22 semi-structured interviews carried out with key participants from each network from January-August 2016. Interviewees in each country were selected based on purposive sampling. The first interviews were conducted with network practitioners and advisors, in order to strengthen the research’s contextual background and solicit recommendations for additional interviewees. Interview transcripts were thematically coded. Discourse analysis of transcripts, meeting notes, and other documents was then conducted. As an FPN staff member and an SFCN academic partner for over three years each, we developed our project with a participant-action research framework. Such positionalities bolstered our aim to balance academic theory and practice through a praxis useful to the networks we were evaluating (Fuller and Kitchin, 2004, Taylor, 2014).

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section two reviews academic literature on networks in agri-food studies and emerging theories about how to analyze their relations, processes, and effects. We critically discuss social network and policy assemblages literature to develop an analytical framework through which to explore the mobile, dynamic, and relational processes and spatialities of emerging multi-level food policy networks. We then present key characteristics of the SFCN and FPN case studies in section three. Subsequently, these cases are examined through three analytical sections. First, we discuss how the fluid, ever-changing characteristics of LFPGs lend these entities to an exploration as assemblages, and the groups which connect them—SFCN and FPN—as assemblages of assemblages. Secondly, we address which factors are stabilizing and destabilizing the collective identities of these assemblages. The final analytical section assesses their capacity for transforming the food system. We conclude by discussing how and with what effect LFPGs in the UK and US are assembling and the usefulness of our analytical approach.