Are vegetables political? The traces of the Copenhagen Food Coop

Summary, in English

The Copenhagen Food Coop (CFC) is an alternative food community in Copenhagen that provides locally grown organic vegetables and fruits to its members. It also disseminates knowledge on organic and sustainable food production, distribution, and consumption and aims to develop a participatory and inclusive community organisation. Some scholars see such alternative food networks as having great potential for creating environmentally and economically sustainable societies, while others see them as a way of ‘de-politicising’ the local. We intervene in this debate, using in particular Bang’s distinction between mode 1 (traditional) and mode 2 politics (network politics) and an actor-network methodology. We find that rather than being ‘apolitical’, CFC is ‘double political’ in the sense that members are involved in mode 1 as well as mode 2 politics. So, vegetables are indeed political. However, they need not be. For some stakeholders the story of the CFC is synonymous with community or health, which implies that the organisation is non-political. However, we have chosen to tell the story of CFC as a political topos, a story that allows us to demonstrate not only the political, but also some of the organisation’s economic, cultural, and discursive traces.

• Author: Jens Hoff; Mine Islar
• Editor: Jens Hoff; Quentin Gausset; Simon Lex
• Department/s: LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
• Publishing year: 2019
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: The Role of Non-state Actors in the Green Transition : Building a sustainable future
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429280399-5
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Routledge
• Topic: Political Science; Environmental Sciences
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 978-0-429-28039-9; ISBN: 978-0-367-23559-8