AFN as Bricolage Towards an alternative notion of “alterity” as “hybridity”
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Published
01-04-2025
Chenjia Xu
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7303-5659
Abstract
The alterity of alternative food networks (AFN) is increasingly difficult to define, given the multiplicity of their ‘hybrid practices’ that intersect both the ‘alternative’ and the ‘conventional’. This article proposes the framework of bricolage to address the alterity-hybridity tension. Building on the post-binary construal that sees both the alternative and the conventional as hybrid collectives, bricolage registers the alterity of AFN and their transformative potential in the mode in which resources and values are hybridised. With the ethnographic account of how a famers’ market in Beijing ‘makes do’ with the available resources in its multi-layered environment, and subsequently ‘skews’ and subverts the ‘conventional’ from within, the article demonstrates that it is through the distinct modus operandi of hybridity that the prospects of doing food otherwise are opened.
How to Cite
“AFN as Bricolage: Towards an alternative notion of “alterity” as ‘hybridity’” (2025) The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 31(1), pp. 53–69. doi:10.48416/ijsaf.v31i1.671.
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Keywords
bricolage, alterity, hybridity, AFN, Beijing
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de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley California: University of California Press.
Chau, Adam Yuet. 2005. Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China. Stanford University Press.
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Chiffoleau, Yuna. 2009. From Politics to Co-operation: The Dynamics of Embeddedness in Alternative Food Supply Chains. Sociologia Ruralis 49: 218–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.2009.00491.x.
Corvo, Paolo. 2018. The new ‘online’ alternative food networks as a socio-technical innovation in the local food economy: Two cases from Milan. In Services, Experiences and Innovation, Ada Scupola and Lars Fuglsang, 301–315. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788114301.00026.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
DuPuis, E. Melanie, and David Goodman. 2005. Should we go “home” to eat?: toward a reflexive politics of localism. Journal of Rural Studies 21: 359–371. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2005.05.011.
Dwiartama, Angga, and Cinzia Piatti. 2016. Assembling local, assembling food security. Agriculture and Human Values 33: 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9624-9.
Fendrychová, Lenka, and Petr Jehlička. 2018. Revealing the hidden geography of alternative food networks: The travelling concept of farmers’ markets. Geoforum 95: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.06.012.
Feyereisen, Marlène, Pierre M. Stassart, and François Mélard. 2017. Fair Trade Milk Initiative in Belgium: Bricolage as an Empowering Strategy for Change. Sociologia Ruralis 57: 297–315. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12174.
Forney, Jérémie. 2021. Farmers’ empowerment and learning processes in accountability practices: An assemblage perspective. Journal of Rural Studies 86: 673–683. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.05.021.
Forney, Jérémie, Dana Bentia, and Angga Dwiartama. 2025. Everyday Agri-Environmental Governance: The Emergence of Sustainability through Assemblage Thinking. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003271260.
Forney, Jérémie, Chris Rosin, and Hugh Campbell, ed. 2018. Agri-environmental Governance as an Assemblage: Multiplicity, Power, and Transformation. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315114941.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2008. Diverse economies: performative practices for “other worlds.” Progress in Human Geography 32. SAGE Publications Ltd: 613–632. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508090821.
Goodman, David. 2001. Ontology Matters: The Relational Materiality of Nature and Agro-Food Studies. Sociologia Ruralis 41: 182–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9523.00177.
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“AFN as Bricolage: Towards an alternative notion of “alterity” as ‘hybridity’” (2025) The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 31(1), pp. 53–69. doi:10.48416/ijsaf.v31i1.671.