Alternative food networks and Karl Polanyi

Maris Boyd Gillette

Chapter 8 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 129-133 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Alternative food networks have elicited significant attention from anthropologists and other social scientists. Many use the ideas of economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi to analyze such efforts to counteract conventional food provisioning. Yet, while Polanyi's concepts are productive, they have their shortcomings, not least in the analysis of alternative food movements. In this entry I argue that scholars might also find inspiration in Polanyi's insistence on the importance of political decisions and institutions in enacting societal change and his relentlessly historical and empirical approach. As Polanyi cautioned in The Livelihood of Man, we should “beware of the abstract generalizations in things economic that tend to obscure and oversimplify the intricacies of actual situations, for these actualities alone are our concern” (1977, xlvii). Drawing on ethnographic research from diverse European, North American, and Chinese contexts, I reflect on Polanyi's contributions to the study of alternative food networks.

Keywords: Capitalism; Direct marketing; Multi-level marketing; Seafood; Halal food; Health food (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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