Building networks for sustainability?: Food surplus redistribution, non-profit organisations and neoliberalism in Turin, Italy

Abstract

Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Turin between 2019 and 2020, this article critically analyses the reorganisation of non-profit organisations engaged in the collection and redistribution of food surplus into a network. It specifically addresses the following questions: why are these non-profit organisations forming a network? What skills do the workers of these organisations have to mobilise in response? What does such reconfiguration denote in terms of the meaning of sustainability in the context of neoliberalism and welfare reform? I discuss the case of Food Pride -standing for Participation Recuperation Inclusion Distribution Education -a network that came into being in 2019. I explain their activities and the ways in which transforming into a network became a funding requirement and governance repertoire, but also translated into the need for new communication and liaison skills to be taken up by non-profit workers. I argue that the development of this network sheds light onto the ways in which neoliberal urban governance and notions of sustainability can be interconnected: I show how the network becomes a way of "making into value" (Elyachar 2005) specific practices and skills, fosters moral ideals of self-governance and naturalises the progressive increase of public responsibilities taken up by non-profit organisations.