Eating Quality Orders of Worth and Strategic Mimicry in Alternative Food Networks

Filippo Barbera (2025)

In Rainer Diaz-Bone & Guillemette de Larquier (eds.), Handbook of economics and sociology of conventions. Cham: Springer, Online first

Abstract. Alternative food networks (AFNs) emphasize the symbolic value of food, often linking it to its territorial origins and/or distinctive production methods. These networks typically prioritize direct or minimally mediated exchanges between producers and consumers, whether through spatial proximity or functional integration. Despite their empirical diversity, two analytical dimensions consistently stand out as key: proximity and quality. This chapter illustrates how the economics and sociology of conventions (in short EC/SC) applied to AFNs shifts the emphasis from proximity to quality, conceptualizing quality as a pragmatic process of valuation. Accordingly, quality becomes a social practice open to various possible outcomes. From being a substance, quality transforms into a process, allowing it to take on an action-oriented function. As a pragmatic process of qualification, hence, quality needs to be understood as a performative outcome of valuation that occurs among actors, objects, devices, and contexts. The chapter discusses the implications of this perspective for the analysis of AFNs, arguing that consumers in both alternative and conventional food systems engage with quality methods by pragmatically recombining the dichotomy between “hard” and “soft” components of quality in novel ways. In parallel, producers continuously blur the quality components bidirectionally, moving from mainstream to alternative food networks and vice versa. The chapter concludes discussing the conditions under which EC/SC can contribute to the revitalization of AFNs analysis.

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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
GdL (14 juillet 2025). Eating Quality Orders of Worth and Strategic Mimicry in Alternative Food Networks. Économie des conventions. Consulté le 8 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14cbm