Exploring the Role of Community Self-Organisation in the Creation and Creative Dissolution of a Community Food Initiative

Abstract

Community food initiatives are gaining momentum. Across various geographical contexts, community food initiatives are self-organising, providing communities with inspiration, knowledge and the opportunity to work towards responsible and socially acceptable transformations in food systems. In this article, we explore how self-organisation manifests itself in the daily activities and developments of community food initiatives. Through the conceptual lens of community self-organisation, we aim to provide a more detailed understanding of how community food initiatives contribute to broader and transformational shifts in food systems. Drawing on a multi-method approach, including community-based participatory research, interviews and observations, this article follows the creation and creative dissolution of the Free Café—a surplus food sharing initiative in Groningen, the Netherlands, which in the eye of the public remains unified, but from the volunteers’ perspectives split up into three different initiatives. The results suggest that community self-organisation accommodates differing motivations and experiences embedded in the everyday collective performances of community rationalities and aspirations. This article also points to the changing individual and collective perspectives, vulnerabilities and everyday politics within community food initiatives. This paper contributes to emerging debates on community self-organising within food systems and the potential of community initiatives to promote broader social realignments.

Citizen participation at the micro-community level: The case of the green alley projects in Quebec City

“…As other researchers have stated (Aalbers and Sehested, 2018;Cloutier et al, 2015;Hasanov et al, 2019;Nunbogu et al, 2018), we argue that small-scale initiatives can offer insight into how citizen initiatives themselves can contribute to improving civic engagement by representing a sort of neutral ground to collaborate with public authorities (Bakker et al, 2012;Hurenkamp et al, 2006). This improved civic engagement can subsequently improve the urbanscape.…”

“…A number of local initiatives have been studied in recent years to better understand citizen participation: greening initiatives (Bherer and Montambeault, 2018), urban spatial planning Rauws, 2016) and community food initiatives (Hasanov et al, 2019), among many others. Initiatives like green alleys are interesting because they occur in different American and Canadian cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Trois-Rivières and Québec, but the greening programs all have different objectives and aims.…”

“…Grassroots initiatives may also fall into this category (Newman et al, 2008). Others, who work in fields more closely related to urban planning, use self-organization to describe a whole spectrum of activities -participation, inclusivity, volunteerism, neighbourhoodism and informal or natural support networks (Hasanov et al, 2019).…”

The role of local energy initiatives in co-producing sustainable places

“…Citizen initiatives mobilise resources which potentially can contribute to social innovation and new institutional arrangements (Horlings 2017;Ulug and Horlings 2019). They might have a transformative potential where they operate through upscaling their practices or influencing their social and institutional environment (Hasanov et al 2019).…”

“…As of the beginning of 2019, more than 3400 LEI were active in Europe, representing more than a million European citizen investors (Derveaux 2019). These initiatives are seen as a grassroots way of contributing to a transition to a lowcarbon economy (Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012;Wierling et al 2018;Soares da Silva et al 2018;Hasanov et al 2019). Local energy initiatives involve the participation of engaged local citizens, something authors such as Ornetzeder and Rohracher (2013) see as vital for a successful energy transition.…”