Recent research on alternative food networks has highlighted the centrality of placeembeddedness as a strategy in constructing alternatives to conventional agri-industrial food systems, and has illustrated the political nature of these strategic localisms. Recently, critical human geographers and sociologists have drawn on relational theory to criticise the localism of alternative food networks as representing a politics of place which is unreflexive or defensive. Furthermore, some readings of alternative food networks argue that they reproduce the very neoliberal subjectivities that they seek to oppose. This article argues that agri-food scholars should be aware of the ways in which their readings of alternative food networks can guide and reproduce alternative food network practice. Drawing on Gibson-Graham's technique of 'reading for difference', I argue for a reading of alternative food networks that sees difference beyond the discursive field of neoliberalism. The article explores recent debates around governmentality as the mechanism through which neoliberal subjectivities are reproduced, and draws on a preliminary discussion of the alternative food network practice of the 100 Mile Diet in order to illustrate the arguments made.

In recent years those seeking alternatives to industrialized and globalized food systems have looked beyond organic production to develop a range of alternative food networks (AFNs). Alongside these developments in sustainable food and agriculture activism, a body of literature has emerged in rural sociology, agri‐food studies and human geography exploring the development of alternative food networks. This article explores some potential synergies between this literature and geographical theory surrounding space and place. Place has been identified as central to AFN discourse and efforts to localize food systems, and while the benefits of localized food systems can be accepted uncritically by activist communities and the media, important questions have been raised about the reflexivity of local food activism. This article argues that a closer engagement with place theory would help avoid the fetishized constructions of the local often present in alternative food politics. Drawing on geographical debates about place, this article demonstrates the ways in which geographical place theory could inform and develop literatures examining alternative food politics.

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The management of residential landscapes occurs within a complex socio-ecological system linking householder decision-making with ecological properties, multi-scalar human drivers, and the legacy effects of past management. Conventional wisdom suggests that resource-intensive turfgrass yards are the most common landscaping outcome, resulting in a presumed homogeneous set of residential landscaping practices throughout North America. We examine this homogenization thesis through an interview-based, cross-site study of residential landscape management in Boston, Phoenix, and Miami. Counter to the homogeneity thesis, we find that yard management practices often exhibit heterogeneity, for example, in groundcover choice or use of chemical inputs. The degree of heterogeneity in management practices varies according to the scale of analysis, and is the outcome of a range of constraints and opportunities to which householders respond differently depending on their existing yard and landscaping preferences.This study highlights the importance of multi-scalar and cross-site analyses of decision-making in socio-ecological systems, and presents opportunities for longitudinal and cross-site research to examine the extent to which homogeneity is actually present in the management of residential landscapes over time and in diverse places.

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