Municipal Prefiguration: How Creative Politics Can Shape Urban Foodscape Governance

Sebastian Malte Carlsson, Jonas Bååth and Kes McCormick
Additional contact information
Sebastian Malte Carlsson: Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Jonas Bååth: Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden / Centre for Innovation Research (CIRCLE), Lund University, Sweden
Kes McCormick: Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden / International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE), Lund University, Sweden

Politics and Governance, 2027, vol. 15

Abstract: As the horizon for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development draws nearer in an increasingly urbanised world, questions remain about how urban governance can promote a more just and resilient food system. Municipalities are often tasked with the local implementation of national policies, a form of top-down governance. However, municipalities can also engage in bottom-up governance by cooperating with alternative food networks (AFNs) to influence, for example, the city’s political agenda. Thus, investigating the dynamics of municipalities and AFNs in bottom-up governance is crucial to explaining and supporting urban food system transformation. This article explores how municipalities can act as agents of “prefigurative politics”—enacting the values and practices of ideal, contested food futures. Drawing on interviews and participant observations in Malmö, Sweden, we show how the municipality supports local AFNs and actively participates in their development. These practices reveal how municipalities negotiate power, cultivate diverse relationships, and embed alternative temporalities of change within urban food governance. By examining the municipality’s role in the establishment of the Malmö Food Council, this article advances debates on how municipalities can contribute to post-2030 urban food agendas. Using prefiguration as an analytical lens to understand how power operates across scales of governance, our analysis reveals how municipalities can become sites where future food systems are not merely planned and governed but also imagined, enacted, and negotiated in the present. It also reveals the challenges and limitations facing municipalities in working towards a just and resilient food system.

Keywords: alternative food networks; experimental governance; food democracy; food policy councils; food systems transformation; grassroots organisation; prefigurative politics; social movements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2027
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/12912 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v15:y:2027:a:12912

DOI: 10.17645/pag.12912

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().