Prefiguring an alternative economy: Understanding prefigurative organizing and its struggles

Abstract

Cooperatives, post-growth organizations, common good organizations, community-supported agriculture, transition towns or ecovillages are examples of alternative forms of organizing economic exchange. Their social practices embody and reproduce alternative moral values to the ones dominating the economy and society. They are regarded as prefigurative: They prefigure an alternative economy, both by creating imaginaries of an alternative future and by showing their viability in their everyday practices. As such, they are important actors for a social transformation of the economy which is also reflected in an increasing scholarship on alternative organizing and prefiguration in organization studies. However, the meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative organizing in this literature is not always made explicit and differs across research work. Furthermore, how prefigurative organizing relates to alternative organizing remains rather vague, as does its close relationship to anarchism. In its first part, this paper therefore informs about the main use of the concept of prefiguration in social movement studies and organization studies and describes the various meanings attached to it in this literature. It then develops a definition of prefigurative organizing that not only allows to differentiate it from alternative organizing but also to reflect its inherently political nature—its intricate linkage to multiple struggles, tensions, and conflicts. In the second part, the paper presents a systematic overview of various types of struggles around prefigurative organizing and briefly introduces each of them with reference to exemplary research. Finally, the paper argues that studying prefigurative organizing involves an alternative praxis in academia.

Knowing Food: Sustainability Politics, Food Policy Councils and the Co-Production of Knowledge

“…AFOs' crucial role in food system transformation lies in their focus on prefigurative organising (Monticelli, 2021;Schiller-Merkens, 2022a;Yates, 2015). By practicing just, democratic and ecologically sustainable forms of organising food production, distribution and consumption (Forno & Graziano, 2014;Lorenzini, 2017), these organisations prefigure alternative practices and values around food that are not yet realised at a broader scale (Bosi & Zamponi, 2015;Monticelli, 2018;Schiller-Merkens, 2020). They act as "laboratories of the future" (Burkhart et al, 2020, p. 5) where participants experiment with social innovations around sustainable food.…”

“…Uniting citizens from all societal spheres is also challenging when it comes to actors who are less critical of the current food system. Most FPCs are alternative food organisations where "alternative" means contestation of the current system and continued mobilisation for its fundamental transformation (Schiller-Merkens, 2020). FPCs thereby commonly pursue an activist agenda-that is, they question the whole system and mobilise towards its fundamental change-that can be much more radical than the dominant ideas, beliefs, values and worldviews of other citizens.…”

Community-supported agriculture as food democratic experimentalism: Insights from Germany

“…The concept of democratic experimentalism, found in many recent conceptions of transitional change, has prominently been reinvigorated by Wright's (2010) notion of "real utopias." Such real utopias may pave the way for interstitial change to overcome capitalist structures, or the emerging discourse on prefigurative politics (Monticelli, 2021) and organization (Reinecke, 2018;Schiller-Merkens, 2020;Chen and Chen, 2021). Initiatives that aim to decentralize, democratize, and socially embed the economy are seen as opportunities to repoliticize the economy (Deriu, 2012;Asara et al, 2015).…”

“…Yet, the collaboration between consumers and producers and the democratic modes of governance suggest there is a political dimension to this phenomenon. This type of food movement is less about mobilization of resources to gain political power, and more about prefiguring sustainable food production and consumption on a small scale (Mert-Cakal and Miele, 2020 on CSA; on prefiguration see Yates, 2015;Schiller-Merkens, 2020;Monticelli, 2021).…”

Introduction: Sustainability, Democracy and the Dark Sides of Civil Society

“…Civil society politics of sustainability can be detected in, and constituted by, the formation and sustaining of groups and movements who might on the one hand stabilise the status quo, but who might on the other resist and challenge it (Kamruzzaman, 2018, p. 2;Habib, 2003, p. 238), and who do not only engage in protest but who create, experiment with and live alternatives (Adloff, 2021;Schiller-Merkens, 2020. NGOs have been shown to have an impact on cancelling environmentally damaging policies and campaigning for environmentally friendly legislation (Neumayer, 2013, p. 92), in setting standards (Lambin & Thorlakson, 2018, p. 371) and in holding governments and organisations at various levels accountable (Newell, 2008).…”