There is growing recognition that sustainable innovation is not necessarily about new technologies, but about new or adapted organisational models, behaviours, and networks. How people engage in or with innovation is driven by values, but values differ across actor categories in agri-food value-chains. Understanding actors’ values helps us to identify potential for collaborative innovation within agri-food value-chains, and to address potential barriers and obstacles. In the context of the Ploutos H2020 project, we conducted participatory focus group (FG) sessions at the EU level involving actors across the value-chain to brainstorm values, enablers, and hindrances in the process of sustainability-oriented innovation. Participants co-created stories showing scenarios within sustainability-oriented innovation where conflicts could occur between values and others where mutual values were created by multi-actor alliances. Based on a qualitative description of the data collected in these FGs, we identify a range of cultural and social values in decision-making and innovation processes, creating dilemmas and trade-offs, but also opportunities for sustainability-oriented innovation. A strong ecosystem of collaboration across the value-chain, based on relationships of shared interests and trust, is fundamental to innovation. We provide detailed insights regarding the use of participatory approaches to working with innovation actors to increase awareness of diversity in value systems and how it can be negotiated. Our findings are of particular interest to practice oriented scholars, practitioners, and innovation brokers working on the ground to further SOI.

This article provides an introduction to the themed section 'Anarchism and the national question-historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives.' We discuss first the long and often overlooked engagement of anarchists with the colonial and national liberation question, particularly-but not exclusively-in the heyday of the movement (from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th century). We discuss in particular the overlaps and tensions between anarchists and republicans (those who favoured republics as opposed to monarchies) and anti-colonial nationalists (anti-colonialists who defended the right of national self-determination). Then we proceed to discuss the potential for a dialogue between anarchist and nationalism studies based on three interventions. First, to problematise the narrative that conflates nations with state-building processes. Second, to better grasp the emergence of alternatives to the nation-state as a historical construct. Third, to complicate narratives that associate in an unproblematic fashion internationalism and classless society. Finally, the introduction highlights the four questions which lie at the core of the themed section and discuss briefly how the papers relate to these.

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