The Organization of Practices for Instituting Economic Processes: Alternative Food Networks in Beijing

Abstract

Recurrent food safety scandals have prompted Beijing consumers to organize farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs as a way to access organic food. This article draws on practice theory to understand the way in which these networks use the idea of “good food” to reorganize practices of farming, food purchase, cooking, and eating. The article uses the Polanyian concept of “instituted economic processes” to analyze specific modes of orientation and exchange between organic farmers and urban consumers and specific instituted forms of production and consumption. The article illustrates that “good food” became a shared element in practices and the system of provision. Through the qualification of food and associated discourse relating good food to practices and the food system, practices from production to exchange and consumption share an orientation and institute distinctive economic processes.

Keywords

Alternative food networks China food quality instituted economic processes practice theory

Introduction

Following a series of food safety scandals beginning in the late 2000s, Chinese urban consumers began to organize farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs as a way to access safe and high-quality foods. Such groups have been previously analyzed as alternative food networks (AFNs), providing an alternative to the industrialized food system that is seen as the source of food safety problems (Schumilas, 2014; Scott et al., 2014). Xiu and Klein (2010) argue that these AFNs build consumer trust among social groups in contexts where there is limited room for social participation in food safety policy (Mol, 2014; Wahn, 2019; Yan, 2012). Si (2014) and Si and Scott (2016) also situate the emergence of AFNs in relation to the participation of urban consumers in the New Rural Reconstruction Movement.¹ However, researchers have also noted the limited nature of consumers’ collective action (Veeck et al., 2010, Wahn, 2017; Wang et al., 2015), suggesting that these networks reflect an attempt by the urban middle class to protect its health and status, and a new strategy to signal cultural tastes (Liu et al., 2013), rather than an organized social movement seeking to form a collective voice and put pressure on the state, agribusinesses and retail industry for policy change.

Despite the limits of collective action, these networks demonstrate creativity in sourcing good food and building solidarity between farmers and consumers. The organizers construct specific small systems of production and consumption by carefully selecting trustworthy organic farmers, attracting consumer members and organizing consumer-producer interaction or specific delivery schemes. Zhang (2018) argues that these consumers draw on experiences of AFNs in other countries to construct a local food community in the face of globalizing food risks. Zhang and Barr (2018) further illustrate the networks’ “commoning” strategy in aligning diverse personal interests into a common pursuit.

Closer examination shows that these networks not only create new channels of food consumption, but also encourage certain practices, by recruiting local farmers who practice organic farming and recruiting consumers to adopt specific purchasing, cooking and eating practices. These practices are connected as the Beijing Farmers’ Market requires its farmer members to explain their farming methods to consumers. The farmers’ market also organizes workshops to teach consumers cooking and using food waste for composting, and provides discount schemes to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags and waste sorting. These alternative systems of provision are constructed as a network of coordinated practices, connecting the appropriation of food (farming and the system of provision) and the appreciation of food (cooking and eating) (Warde, 2005).

When looking at the AFNs as a network of coordinated practices, two phenomena stand out. These AFNs stress that their food practices are aimed at accessing and appreciating fresh, healthy and sustainable foods and establishing relations of solidarity between producers and consumers. This indicates that food quality is co-constructed by farmers and consumers by highlighting certain attributes of food (its production, consumption, tastes, and social relations) and downplaying other attributes such as appearance, size and the convenience of access. This also indicates that food quality becomes a key element in both farming and consuming practices, as well as the foundation of the alternative system.

Moreover, the AFNs also find it necessary to fit new practices into consumers’ existing habits and routines, thus creating a hybrid of alternative and mainstream systems, as well as a hybrid of online and offline practices. For example, the Beijing Farmers’ Market opened two community shops and developed a service to help established customers buy food from market vendors online through WeChat. Market staff collect the customer’s selections from various vendors and keep it on site in a reusable shopping bag for pickup at the customer’s convenience. This “help buy” service shows how the networks try to organize direct exchange between consumers and farmers but have to compromise and arrange for food shopping services which accommodate consumers’ work schedules, practical issues such as car parking and family relations.

The existing literature on AFNs mainly focuses on the social relations in constructing different conventions of food quality, rather than practices per se (Goodman, 2003). Scholars have examined how AFNs reconfigure the relation between production and consumption in local settings (Barbera et al., 2014; Sonnino and Marsden, 2006; Watts et al., 2005), and how consumer–farmer interaction generates trust (Grasseni, 2014; Thorsøe and Kjeldsen, 2016). Others have examined how embedded relations facilitate risk sharing (Pascucci et al., 2016) and governance of networks (Higgins et al., 2008). Little and colleagues (2010) also highlight how interactions change consumers’ appreciation of food. Thus the coordination of multiple food practices, and the hybridization of practices in Chinese AFNs present an additional angle to understand AFNs that has not yet been analyzed.

Social practice theory provides a useful framework to analyze AFNs. At the same time, Chinese AFNs are a unique case, the analysis of which contributes to the development of a practice theory of consumption. Practices can be coordinated in a variety of ways, but in these AFNs, food practices are connected both on the consumption side as well as to the practices of producers on the production side and market actors in the exchange process, displaying a specific dynamic of the alternative economic system as a whole. This coordination of practices is achieved by defining the traded material, food, and the nature of market exchange. This turns our attention to the interaction between appropriation and appreciation (definitional elements of Warde’s (2005) understanding of consumption) and between practices in different stages of the economic process.

Therefore, the article addresses one of the lacunae in current practice theoretical accounts of consumption—the lack of an economic perspective—that concerns this special issue (see the Introduction and especially Evans, this issue).

This article thus explores the role played by the alternative economy in the organization and coordination of food practices in AFNs in China. The Chinese case is helpful for exploring the economic coordination of practices because in an authoritarian political context Chinese AFNs focus on practices that resist the dominant food system in the absence of a political space for seeking policy change or forming a collective political voice. The article combines a Polanyian economic analysis with social practice theory to empirically explore the practices organized and hybridized in the AFNs that form economic processes and analyzes their coordination through the discourse of “good food.” It also draws upon Callon et al.’s (2002) notion of “qualification” to explore how in making the materiality of food meaningful to different economic agents, economic practices of AFNs are coordinated. It therefore contributes to reconciling a practice theoretical account of consumption with broader economic processes, or as Evans (this issue) puts it an “account for the intersection of everyday life and political economy.”

The remainder of this article is structured as follows: the second section reviews the relevant literature on practice theory and the Polanyian concept of instituted economic processes to develop a framework for the analysis of the coordination of practices in these networks. The next section introduces the cases and method of data collection and analysis. The fourth section explains the organization of different and hybridized practices in production, market exchange, and consumption processes. The fifth section discusses how discourse on “good food” institutes specific economic processes and serves as the shared material and discursive elements in the coordination of practices. The final section presents conclusions on the theoretical implication of the findings.

Practices and Instituted Economic Processes

This section reviews practice theoretical approaches to consumption and discusses concepts that try to situate consumption as part of the system of provision. I then discuss how a Polanyian concept of instituted economic processes (IEP) can help develop a framework to analyze the coordination of practices from consumption to production.

Practices

Rooted in the early works of Bourdieu (1990) and Giddens (1984), practice theory has become a popular approach in the sociology of consumption (Halkier and Jensen, 2011). Reckwitz (2002) argues that practice theory provides a different model of social action to both rational choice models and norm-following sociological models. Reckwitz defines a practice as:

forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge. (2002: 249)

This model of social action has inspired the sociology of consumption to shift its focus from signs and identity to practices (Warde, 2017). Warde (2005: 132) argues that consumption should be conceptualized as a moment in practices and conceptualizes practice as a “nexus through which doings and sayings hang together and can be said to be coordinated.” He proposes examining understandings, procedures, and engagements as three components of a practice. Researchers use the links between the elements to explain how a specific practice is configured, for example, heating and cooling practices (Gram-Hanssen, 2010), laundry routines (Jack, 2013), and energy consumption (Strengers and Maller, 2011). The elements of a practice are also used to analyze the relation between different practices. Practices can be connected through co-location, coexistence, or by sharing an element (Shove et al., 2012), for example by the alignment of values (Skålén et al., 2015).

While useful in understanding how a specific consumption practice is configured, is connected to other practices, and evolves, practice theory is criticized for downplaying wider social structures (Warde, 2017; Welch, 2020). To address this, Nicolini (2009) argues that “zooming in” to analyze the elements of practices needs to be complemented by “zooming out” to understand how practices are embedded in wider networks of practices. Scholars have also theorized how practices are situated in the wider socio-technological system (Shove et al., 2012; Southerton et al., 2004). Halkier’s (2010) empirical study of the cooking and eating of organic foods shows the dynamics of social interactions in contesting as well as regrouping practices, and thus situates focal practices in a wider system.

Moreover, practice theory is criticized for not considering the economic dimension in conditioning consumption practices (Warde, 2017; Welch and Warde, 2015). Macrorie and colleagues (2015) use the concept of a “system of practices” to underline how practices of professionals and market actors interact with and shape consumer practices through the design of products and services. This idea can be extended to look at how the economic system involving a particular good shapes related practices. For instance, while using practice theory we can explain the configuring of farming, food purchase, cooking and eating practices respectively as a system of practices in AFNs, but practice theory cannot capture the way that food practices are part of and contribute to the operation of the alternative economic system. How multiple food practices constitute different parts of an economic system that is supported by a distinctive valuation of food needs to be included in the analysis of the coordination of practices.

This also echoes Fine and Leopold’s (1993) argument that theories of consumption had developed in a horizontal fashion that looks at particular consumption practices by examining various elements on the consumers’ side. Fine and Leopold (1993) developed the “systems of provision” approach that takes a vertical approach and situates consumption in the chain of activity of commodity provision. The systems of provision take socially and historically specific forms and have distinctive dynamics. From this perspective, consumption is not only shaped by practices, their elements and the intersectional (horizontal) dynamics but the analysis of consumption needs to be complemented by examining the vertical dynamics conditioned by specific processes of production, distribution and market exchange.

Furthermore, Wheeler (2019) uses the Neo-Polanyian concept of “instituted economic processes” (IEP) (cf. Harvey, 2017) to highlight interactions between the moral discourse of consumption and systems of provision. She distinguishes three layers of moral discourse of consumption: “state regulation of the economy, the collective customs and critical discourse of different groups in society and the lay normativities of consumers” (Wheeler, 2019: 277). The three layers can configure economic processes, while those economic processes can influence how institutions, communities and people enact morality within the market. In a similar vein to Fine and Leopold’s work (1993), Wheeler (2019) places consumption within instituted economic processes or systems of provision. Wheeler (2019) further specifies how the moral discourses of consumption are shaping not only practices but also the system of provision, and are thus a pivotal point to understand the interaction between practices and system of provision. This is especially helpful for us to understand how AFNs articulate a specific discourse of food to support a distinctive system of provision and shape consumption practices that are part of those networks.

Welch (2020) takes a different angle to look at how various practices are coordinated by sharing certain directions and purposes. He uses historical commercial communication such as advertising and other market discourses to show how specific actors created new understandings of the consumer and provided cultural resources for consumption norms and legitimation for capitalist society. Such communication is aimed at building a broader project. To capture these discourses, he develops the concept of “teleo-affective formation” that:

enjoin[s] those practices to common ends, ordering their affective engagements and offering general understandings through which participants make sense of the projects they pursue. (Welch, 2020; 61)

As an element of individual practices, general understandings can inform practitioners’ knowledge about the practice, its materials, rules, and purposes. Teleoaffective formations carry a nexus of general understandings through which practitioners make sense of related practices as part of wider projects (Welch, 2020). In this perspective, practices are coordinated by the construction and communication of a shared purpose, which relates practices to the system or formation. In the case of AFNs, food practices carry a general understanding of food quality, about food production and consumption. A nexus can be formed between general understandings of ‘food quality’, ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘organic produce/production’ in food production, exchange and consumption, which orients practices towards an alternative food system.

In different ways, these theoretical accounts situate food consumption practices in the system of provision. They point to the moral discourses that legitimate the system or the teleoaffective formation that brings together general understandings of different practices to coordinate them toward certain shared goals. Such accounts also enable questions concerning criticism of the system of provision, or concerning how actors construct a teleoaffective formation which orients practices into an alternative system of provision. To analyze the interaction between practices and the system of provision, I will follow Wheeler in drawing on the IEP approach to conceptualize how systems of provision can be analyzed as practices.

Instituted Economic Processes

For Karl Polanyi, economy “is an instituted process of interaction between man and his environment, which results in continuous supply of want-satisfying material means” (1957: 248). There are two components in this concept. Process suggests analysis in terms of motion (1957: 248) and Polanyi distinguishes “locational movements”—changes of the place of goods—and “appropriational movements”—changes in who owns or has access to certain goods (Mosar, 2019). These processes are always instituted, meaning that “the economy acquires unity and stability, that is the interdependence and recurrence of its parts” (1957: 250).

While the Polanyian concept is mostly applied to analyze the formation and transformation of the market economy and market society in a macro perspective (Block and Somers, 2014; Buğra and Ağartan, 2007; Cangiani, 2011; Gemici, 2015; Hodgson, 2017; Holmes, 2012), it can also be applied to meso and micro economic systems. For instance, Mark Harvey has used IEP to analyze: tomato-based food products and their interaction with changes in food retail brought by supermarkets (Harvey et al., 2002); drinking water (Harvey, 2017); and knowledge (Harvey and McMeekin, 2007). His works turned IEP from a theoretical concept into a framework for analysis. In Harvey’s perspective (2002), economic processes are instituted in combinations of four processes:

transformations of qualitative characteristics, transformations of spatial location, transformations of functionality, and transformations of control. Taken separately, none of these four transformational processes are in themselves economic. Only when instituted in combination with each other do they become constitutive of economies, recognisable under the guise of respectively, production, distribution, use and appropriation.

Figure 1 illustrates the relations between these processes. In this framework, the interaction between consumption and production is coordinated by the distribution and the appropriation of goods.

Figure 1.

The instituted economic processes (Harvey, 2007: 489).

The IEP approach highlights that the analysis of economy needs to focus on the specific and varied configuration of these processes and thus IEP is ideal for analyzing alternative economic projects like AFNs. Applying IEP to farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs helps us grasp the specific configuration of production, distribution, appropriation and consumption. However, the framework pays more attention to the configuration of these processes than the consumption process itself. This is where IEP can be combined with practice theory to examine consumption processes in terms of practices and to analyze the configuration of consumption practices with other economic practices.

An AFN can be reconceptualized as a network of practices, with different practices constituting the processes of production (farming), exchange (purchase), and consumption (cooking and eating) as outlined by IEP. While practice theory often focuses on analyzing mundane and routine consumption, it can be used to analyze reflexive, intentional activity such as that being configured in AFNs, as exemplified by Welch’s work on advertising (2020). The AFNs emphasize direct market exchange and associated personal interaction to legitimize food quality. As a result, food processing is limited (although there are some food processors selling noodles, steam buns and cookies). Seen in terms of practices, the IEP then becomes a framework for us to analyse the interaction of multiple food practices. In the IEP, distribution and appropriation processes integrate the whole economic process and link production to consumption. To simplify the analysis, I will use the term “exchange process” to analyze a combination of both the IEP terms “distribution” and “appropriation.”

There are two elements that run through multiple practices from production and consumption: food as material and the meaning of food practices in the food system. It is then important to understand how food as material is defined and moves from production to consumption, and how the meaning of the food system is constructed and becomes an element in food practices. In farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs, the two sides of the exchange need to agree on the quality of food, as a general understanding of their practices. In addition, the interaction between farmers and consumers also constructs and communicates moral discourses about the food system to make sense of their exchange and practices. Thus we can analyze the two processes, the construction of food knowledge and the articulation of the meaning of the system, to better understand the interaction between IEP and practices.

The article uses this framework to analyze moral discourses that configure different processes in the IEP to form AFNs and highlight the role played by the co-construction of food quality as a teleoaffective formation in shaping and coordinating food practices in each of those processes. The framework starts from analyzing the organization of food purchases (market exchange and distribution in IEP) in farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs and the way interactions between farmers and consumers construct moral discourse about good food. This allows for a discussion of how moral discourses help connect food purchase, cooking and eating practices (“consumption” in IEP). It also helps us explore how the construction of good food configures distinctive farming practices (“production” in IEP). Finally, to bring these different processes in the IEP together, we examine how the networks communicate the teleoaffective formation that coordinates farming practices, food purchase, cooking and eating practices to reproduce the whole economic process.

By combining practice theory and IEP, the article frames the farmers’ market and buyers’ club as instituting specific economic processes of production, exchange and consumption. This framework highlights how economic processes are also a configuration and connection of practices. I argue that the coordination and reproduction of the economic processes, including consumption practices, relies on the co-construction of materials and meanings.

Cases and Method

I adopt a three-part empirical strategy. First, I investigate how AFNs in China criticize current food systems and use moral discourses to legitimize their construction of an alternative economy; second, how that moral discourse led them to organize production, exchange and consumption practices; and third, how these practices are coordinated by the teleoaffective formation based on food quality co-construction.

The Chinese AFNs are a civil society response to the transformation of food systems that emerged from popular concerns about persistent problems relating to food safety, the environment and the livelihood of smallholders. AFNs associate these problems with the pursuit of profit at all costs in the industrialization of agriculture supported by the Chinese state, eager to feed a growing population and pursuing high economic growth as a major source of political legitimacy. Yet AFNs find themselves unable to criticize state policy. At the same time, food concerns have also prompted mainstream food retailers to offer organic food sourced from industrialized and large-scale farms. Caught between political limits and competition from commercialized organic food, the AFNs thus construct business-like operations to focus on encouraging different food practices that demonstrate a different meaning of good and sustainable food (Wahn, 2018).

This study examines three AFNs in Beijing: Beijing Farmers’ Market (BFM), Pure Land consumer cooperative, and TsinPe consumer cooperative. Different types of AFNs in China first emerged in Beijing, including the first farmers’ market and the first community-supported agriculture farm (Little Donkey Farm), and Pure Land is also probably the first buyers’ club. Being first, these networks had to cope with specific political constraints and adapt to local food culture as well as the habits of consumers. As a result, networks in other parts of China have drawn inspiration from their experiences. The different forms of AFNs allow for the analysis of different forms of economic processes and the reconfiguration of different kinds of practices.

The Beijing Farmers Market was created by a group of consumers in 2010 as a platform for small organic farmers to sell directly to urban consumers. After years of adjustments and growth, BFM now has a dozen salaried staff members organizing three regular market gatherings. One takes place on a Sunday every other week in a 5-star hotel in west Beijing, the other two take place weekly in two different shopping malls in east Beijing. BFM works with 30–40 member farmers and attracts 5000–10,000 consumers in each market gathering. Since 2013, BFM has opened two community grocery shops, located near the two market gathering sites in east Beijing, selling food products from their partner farmers and partner AFNs in China. In 2016, BFM launched Know Your Food, a WeChat platform that invites farmers, consumers, and experts to write about agrifood movements in China and around the world.

Pure land (PL) was created in 2014 by several Waldorf school parents inspired by the Homemaker Consumer Cooperatives in Taiwan. PL’s leader Sue is responsible for recruiting organic farmers to partner with PL, and Amy, a Taiwanese immigrant to China, is responsible for the operation of collective purchasing. PL mainly provides processed and dry foods, and conducts collective purchasing twice a month. It is currently partnered with 30 farmers and has 800 followers in PL’s WeChat group, of which about 200 are active buyers and about a dozen Taiwanese consumers.

TsinPe (TP) was created in 2016 by Lin, a PhD student in Tsing Hua University, and the group’s members are mainly professors and staff members from Tsing Hua University and Peking University; thus the name of the group is the combination of the first two initials of the universities. Similar to PL, Lin wanted to organize a consumer cooperative to mobilize urban consumers to use food purchasing to address agricultural and environmental problems in China. PL currently has 5 full time staff, 10 to 12 advisors (mainly academics), and 530 WeChat members including 150–160 active buyers, of which 60% are people from the universities and 40% are members’ friends and families. In contrast to PL, TP provides vegetables and other fresh foods and thus conducts collective purchasing twice a week.

While PL and TP identify themselves as consumer cooperatives, their members do not own shares or participate in decision making due to legal limitations in China. Thus I will refer to them as buyers’ clubs instead. According to Lin and Sue, the two organizations share about 20% of their memberships because they offer complementary products. Relations between BFM, PL and TP staff are friendly and they collaborate on joint activities and conferences, making these three networks part of a wider national network of AFNs.

The study draws upon data from multiple sources, including online texts and media reports, interviews, and participant observations. The online text was sourced from each network’s WeChat public platform, through which organizers explain the network, promote products, organize events, take orders and answer member questions. I also collected media coverage of the networks and organizers, and conducted fieldwork over two weeks in April 2018 and in May 2019 during which I interviewed a variety of actors (61 in total). Interviews with network organizers each lasted between 1 and 3 hours. I interviewed 6 farmers and about 10 consumers in all three BFM market gathering sites, each lasting between 5 and 20 minutes. I also interviewed staff members working on each network’s WeChat platform, staff from the community shops, and organizers in other networks as well as a Hong Kong-based NGO that promotes alternative food networks in China (20 in total).

During the fieldwork, I observed interactions between farmers and consumers and consumers’ shopping practices in five market gatherings. I also observed consumer food shopping and interaction with family members and shop staff in the two BFM community shops. I observed two internal BFM staff meetings. Moreover, I was invited by BFM to one of their learning events to discuss my research with local consumers and farmers, and received feedback regarding my observations.

The data analysis uses the concepts developed in the previous section to understand the organization of alternative food systems in terms of food practices. Following Wheeler’s argument on the moral discourse of consumption, I look at how producers and consumers criticize current food systems and food practices, and how they construct an alternative system by promoting different farming, food purchase and cooking and eating practices. This allows me to identify the elements in the food practices, and how practices are organized in both the current and alternative food systems. In this process, I find that interviewees’ understanding of food quality is the shared element of practices and the food system. I then further analyze the construction of food quality in relation to practices and to food systems. Finally, I use the construction of food quality as a teleoaffective formation to reinterpret data and theorize how this element coordinates a variety of practices and the configuration of alternative economic processes.

Practices in Exchange, Production and Consumption

It is important to start from how these alternative systems are set against the dominant food system as the networks attribute food safety problems to every stage in food production and consumption. Table 1 (upper part) shows problems identified by the networks in the production, exchange and consumption of the current food system. Note that the criticisms are directed at practices in each process. To address these problems, the lower part of Table 1 also shows that the networks aim to organize direct exchange between organic farmers and consumers, and encourage certain practices in each of the economic processes that together constitute an alternative economic system. These practices, as will be discussed later, are a mix of alternative and mainstream practices.

Table 1.

Critique of current food systems and alternative processes and practices.

Identified problems in production process	Identified problems in market exchange	Identified problems in consumption process
Highest chemical use in the world. Soil, water and air pollution.	Excessive processing and packaging. Prioritizing appearances and low price.	Consumers lack the ability to distinguish good food and develop good taste. Consumers lack skills and time for cooking.
Alternative production process	Alternative exchange process	Alternative consumption process
Recruit local farmers (specific types) to produce good food. Monitor farming practices (soil, biological control, inputs). Establish farmers’ support groups.	Organize direct market exchange (farmers market/ buyers club). Encourage farmer–consumer interaction (on farming and cooking methods). Encourage reusable shopping bags. Create QR codes for farm information. Provide a help buy service. Establish pickup points.	Recruit consumers (specific types) to buy good food. Provide learning activities (cooking, composting and recycling). Reading and sharing (Wechat group/ Know Your Food forum). Farm visits.

Specific types of actors are recruited to the direct exchange. The networks seek to source good food from farmers/producers from three overlapping categories. “New generation farmers” are young educated people who do not have a background in agriculture but have decided to engage in organic agriculture, usually starting from a small plot. Young returnees, a new phenomenon in China, are those who have given up careers in other sectors and return to their home in the countryside to make a living through farming. Small food processors are artisan food producers who lack proper licensing.

The networks also identify their consumers as mainly coming from three broad categories. One group consists of retired people who have time to cook for their children and grandchildren. For them, organic food is not only a safer option, but also reminds them of how “food used to taste in our days,” as one interviewee claimed. Another interviewee explained that the second group, young mothers:

[want] to feed their only child better and safer food. They may not eat organic food themselves, as it is expensive, but they would spend much more for their child.

The third group, young professionals, have been exposed to information about farmers’ markets or buyers’ clubs on mass media, social media or through peer recommendations. They join these networks to support smallholder organic farmers.

The specific organization of exchange between farmers and consumers is the distinguishing feature of the farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs. Thus I start with market exchange processes and food purchasing practices, then move on to discuss how that shapes production and consumption processes and practices. I will show how the organization of economic processes is achieved by configuring new practices based on the network organizers’ idea of food quality.

Organizing Exchange and Purchase Practices

Network organizers frequently explain their work by first criticizing how the current food retail system has detached consumers from food production, creating ignorance about the origins of the food they eat. As one organizer expressed it: “It’s too convenient now. You can order food through mobile apps and have it delivered to your home or office within 20 minutes.” As a consequence, consumers lack food knowledge and “you never know what’s in there.” Thus direct exchange between consumers and organic farmers is considered a solution to help consumers to “know who grows your food” and to develop food knowledge. BFM, in its introductory flyer explains that:

Farmer markets present opportunities for producers and consumers to participate in direct exchange. Consumers can obtain fresh, local food with a transparent “history”, and farmers can obtain a fair price for their high-quality products. More importantly, personal interactions at the point of sale transform the market into a mechanism for articulating and reinforcing a common notion of community, as well as notions about what constitutes “good food” in every sense of the word.

The networks instituted two different modes of direct exchange, according to specific modalities of time and space. The exchange process organized by BFM involves three weekly farmers’ markets, two community shops, and an online shop. One market gathering is held in the courtyard of a 5-star hotel, and two others in the lobbies of two different shopping malls. BFM selected these locations to attract upper-middle class consumers and the shopping malls charged them reduced fees. The market runs from 10 am to 1 pm and consumers usually show up early to get the best selection before going back home to cook lunch for their family.

PL and TP buyers’ club instituted a different mode of exchange using warehouses and pickup points, also with specific venues and times. The network uses WeChat groups to collect orders from members, and the producers then deliver the ordered food to the warehouse. The organizers, a few volunteers or in some cases their family members will sort bulk food items into labeled boxes which are then sent to pickup points by truck for morning delivery. PL and TP respectively have 9 and 14 pickup points which are selected by the organizers and consumers, and are usually located in grocery stores, libraries, or community security offices that provide easy access to consumers to pick up food on their way home from work.

It is important to highlight that the two modes of exchange also entail the promotion of different food purchasing practices, showing the relation between economic processes and practices. In contrast to the usual way people buy food from supermarkets, BFM expects consumers to interact with farmers, ask them questions and taste food samples. This is encouraged by the material setup in BFM. At the market entrance are flyers explaining the aim of the market, with QR codes that connect the reader’s smartphone to online information and the BFM WeChat group. In addition, BFM requires that each producer provide cards with the name of his/her farm and QR codes leading to additional information.

Similarly, the buyers’ clubs expect consumers to develop new food purchasing practices. Their members have to read WeChat posts to keep up to date about food availability (especially fruits). Moreover, both TP and PL require consumers to bring back used boxes to the pickup points, to reduce waste and costs. The organizer of TP, Lin, explains how the whole process works:

We have 14 pickup points that can be linked up like a bus route. We drive to them one by one, deliver food boxes and then collect empty food boxes from each pickup point. That way, two things can be done in one trip. We have 60–70% recycle rate, which is pretty nice!

The organizers also hope that members can interact with each other at the pickup points, but realize that the new practices need to be coordinated with other daily routines. As Lin further explains:

We want consumers to make an extra effort (to understand organic farming and to reduce plastic bag usage), but not to the point where people are discouraged from joining the group.

For most consumers, the primary reason for buying food from these networks is food taste and quality. For example, one consumer told me that “the taste reminds me of my childhood [when farmers used no chemical fertilizers and pesticides].” Another commented that “the vegetables have a strong taste . . . because they don’t use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.” This access to higher-quality food motivates these consumers to accept inconvenience (including traveling up to an hour to the farmers’ market, reusing shopping bags, and regularly following the group’s WeChat page). The food quality is not certified by the state authority, but is rather guaranteed by a social group that sources food from reliable farmers willing to be transparent about production practices.

The organization of two different modes of direct exchange described here shows that they were driven by a discourse of consumption that criticizes the detachment of consumers from food producers and attempts to change the current system of provision (Wheeler, 2019). They are instituted by recruiting specific economic agents (specific types of farmers and consumers) and limit trade to goods (foods) with a specific nature. Moreover, the exchange process configures specific purchase practices that are not very convenient and relies on consumers’ understanding of what constitutes good food.

Organizing Production and Farming Practices

The organization of a different production process in these networks is similarly based on criticisms of dominant food production practices and the fact that Chinese farmers are among the world’s most prolific users of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, resulting in widespread water and soil pollution. The networks also criticize the excessive use of food additives to enhance product color and smell, to meet the requirements of food retailers.

The networks screen food sources by excluding farms that use chemical inputs, and these networks aim to support organic smallholders who cannot afford organic certification. Hence the networks rely on organizers to find suitable and trustworthy farmers on a case-by-case basis. The following description of the selection process will illustrate how the organization of the production processes is at the same time the organization of farming practices based on food quality.

The BFM’s search for good farmers relies on recommendations and word of mouth, and farming assessments. Some farms were already engaged in organic farming before the BFM was established and these made up the initial source base. Recommendations from these farmers brought in new suppliers, and suitable farms were also encouraged to apply to join the BFM network. Wu is responsible for assessing applicants through farm visits, during which he focuses on soil, inputs, systems and beliefs:

I would look at the condition of the soil. This is the most fundamental. I would also look at the inputs he uses, which affects the soil condition. What kind of organic fertilizer he uses, the biological control, and how he does compositing. You can tell a lot from these things.

Then I would talk with the guy. He’s eager to explain how he does farming anyway. What I am looking for is his system, how he makes sense and connects these activities together. This would show how much he thinks and his commitment. I want to know his beliefs, whether he is experimenting and finding his own way of managing his farm and finding solutions to problems. Just to know his thoughts and that he is not hiring some old folks from the village to do the work.

After farm visits, Wu and colleagues would discuss their findings in BFM internal meetings. It often takes two to three visits before a farmer is formally admitted to BFM.

Farms in the BFM network are inspected at least once a year. BFM encourages consumers to visit farms to monitor farming practices and as a way to educate consumers. For instance, in early 2019, BFM invited a dozen consumers to visit a strawberry farmer. The farmer briefed the consumers on the farming methods and biological control techniques that he developed through trial and error. Then consumers helped clean the farm and shared lunch prepared by the farmer.

The PL buyers’ club has a slightly different approach to evaluating farmers. The organizer Sue, who is responsible for farmer assessment, would observe potential suppliers’ online activities:

I’ll observe what he likes and what he talks about, I don’t like those who do organic because they think they can make higher profit . . . if he is a right person, then I can visit his farm.

When visiting the farms, she similarly examines farm inputs and how the farmer constructs and manages biodiversity on the farm. She describes the process as:

looking at things on the ground, the grass and insects, then looking at things underground to examine roots and worms.

For her, a good farmer is a reliable person with proper knowledge and competence, following the right procedures and understanding the true meaning of organic farming.

The networks organize farmers into a community of mutual support, which has also become a resource for other networks. TP buyers’ club organizers lack the agricultural expertise of BFM and PL buyers’ club organizers, and thus rely on recommendations from other networks to find suppliers, indicating that being a listed supplier brings a certain reputational benefit. Many farms have applied to join the TP supplier list, and TP sends their food samples to a lab for inspection. The organizers also try to conduct farm visits, so that when consumers raise questions in their WeChat group, the organizers can say that they “go and see the farm and they are really doing good work.”

The foregoing description illustrates that the networks institute specific production processes. Through assessment and monitoring, the networks select farmers based on their farming practices, examining the elements and their combination, including materials (soil and inputs), competencies (composting), procedures (managing biosystems and greenhouses), knowledge (about organic agriculture), and commitment. Supplier searching and screening is a qualification process (Callon et al., 2002) managed by network organizers who collaborate with farmers to ensure that they can answer consumers’ questions regarding quality in the exchange process.

Organizing Consumption, Cooking and Eating Practices

Despite their efforts to find smallholders and organize their direct exchange with consumers, the networks found that current food culture has left consumers unable to appreciate the quality of the food or to understand why they should support organic smallholders. As one organizer said:

People are too busy. Young people are encouraged to focus on studying and working, so they don’t cook anymore. They have lost the ability (to cook) and they don’t value cooking. When they come home late, they would just order in. You know how easy it has become and this is getting very popular particularly in China these days. You use an app and your dinner is delivered to your home in 20 minutes.

In accounts like this, consumers’ ignorance about food and agriculture is attributed to their lifestyle, especially their lack of time and ability. In this view, consumers have lost the ability to distinguish, prepare or appreciate good food.

Thus, apart from building direct exchange for the appropriation of food, the networks seek to reconstruct the appreciation of foods. The networks use WeChat to promote food products. In addition to the details of the farmer and farming practices in growing the food, the posts on WeChat also include instructions for cooking and eating that product, thus linking food quality to methods of consumption. For instance, a post on 29 May 2019 on BFM’s WeChat platform promoted sticky rice dumpling for the Dragon Boat Festival. The post shows where the rice came from, describing a visit by BFM staff to the farm the previous year and an interview with the farmers about their method of growing rice. The post also provided detailed steps of making the dumplings, how much rice to use, how to fold the bamboo leaves, and how to cook the dumpling.

The use of social media provides a sense of trust among consumers for the networks and their farmers by making farming practices transparent. Some interviewees also explained that the social media posts cause them to rethink their food practices:

They say that we shouldn’t buy for the sake of buying. I was just like that . . . I buy the cheapest and good looking products. But I don’t do that anymore, rather I’ve started to see the connections [between food, consumers and producers].

Some consumers have thus started to enjoy cooking, with one farmer noting that consumers now share their cooking techniques using his products. “I’d never imagined that you can cook my vegetables that way,” he said.

Social media is also used to construct a moral discourse about food systems and how the practices relate to each other in the alternative system. BFM has launched the “Know Your Food” forum on WeChat for participants and experts to write about alternative food movements. In addition to a regular column on BFM farmers and seasonal foods, another column collects the firsthand experiences of writers and consumers interacting with farmers’ markets, consumer cooperatives, community-supported agriculture in other countries including the USA, European countries, Japan and Taiwan. While the BFM WeChat platform provides knowledge about food products and practices, “Know Your Food” explains motivations for shopping at farmers’ markets and eating local organic food.

However, the organizers acknowledge that they also “need to go offline to gain influence” by using community shops to hold irregular workshops on cooking and on using food waste for home composting. Moreover, the rethinking of cooking and eating also prompted the networks to encourage consumers to adopt pro-environment habits as reflected in a BFM organized competition around sorting home waste. Consumers are also encouraged to attend talks by partner farmers and farm visits.

Hence, a diverse range of practices are organized as food consumption process in the networks. The consumption process involves reading (WeChat platforms and the forum), cooking, eating, composting food waste at home, attending workshops and farm visits. In terms of practice theory, these works configure materials (food) with competence, knowledge, procedures, and meaning to form new cooking, eating and other consumption practices.

Reading is central to organizing practices. The online posts define good food from the perspectives of different practices and, as a consequence, good food becomes a shared element in cooking and eating, just as it is a core element in the production and purchasing of food. Furthermore, as “KnowYourFood” explains the vision and functioning of alternative food movements, these articles can be viewed as contributing to the construction of a teleo-affective formation (Welch, 2020) that frames the consumers as active social actors with specific social concerns, using their consumption to construct an alternative system. The general understanding and affective engagement of solidarity between organic farmers and active consumers serve to orient practices of farming, along with food purchasing, cooking and eating toward a shared concept of food quality and a vision for an alternative food system.

Discussion

The preceding analysis illustrates that each network instituted specific modes of alternative food economic processes, built on criticisms of the dominant food system and aimed to source good food directly from organic smallholders. Furthermore, the economic processes involve the requalification of food (Callon et al., 2002) through farming practices, food purchase practices, reading and cooking and eating practices. Thus, good food as the material element as well as general understandings regarding food and food systems are configured with specific competences and meanings in these new practices.

This article argues that the idea of good food is the core element in how these networks construct alternative economic processes as a series of practices and how different practices are coordinated. The construction of food quality analyzed in this study can be further unpacked into three interrelated aspects: it simultaneously defines the traded entity in the exchange processes, the material for practices, and a collectively shared orientation in the multiple practices in the new economic processes. In other words, good food justifies the need to reorganize production, exchange, and consumption to source good food and also explains how new practices are configured to produce, exchange and consume good food. It is through the combination of the three aspects of food qualification that good food becomes the shared element in both processes and practices, highlighting the central role played by organizers and their interaction with producers and consumers to construct the meaning of good food. This also involves incorporating that meaning in practices to appreciate good food and to frame the orientation, thus coordinating the system of practices to source good food.

This shows how IEP contributes to social practice theory of consumption by providing a framework to analyze a specific type of interaction of practices. IEP helps us to see the connection of practices from consumption to exchange and production, and explain their coordination through the qualification of the goods as well as through discourses that provide orientation for the economic system.

We can also use this argument to understand current food systems and the food practices within them. The industrialized and market-oriented food system is not only a structure of production and consumption, but is also built on and encourages specific practices for farming, and the purchasing, preparation and consumption of food including the reduced need for cooking. As reflected in AFN’s criticisms, consumer practices of retail or online purchase of cheap and convenient food results from their detachment from food production and reflects their limited understanding of food quality. Consequently, consumer food practices are geared toward a similar set of orientations of efficiency (convenience) and profit (cheapness), collectively shared with producers and sellers in their economic practices.

Moreover, AFN studies have already pointed out that AFNs and conventional food systems should not be understood as opposites (Maye and Kirwan, 2010). Similarly, this study also found that alternative food networks rely on mainstream food systems while criticizing and resisting them. The farmers’ market relies on shopping malls to attract consumers and the buyers’ clubs rely on existing distribution systems that support popular online shopping practices. Both also rely on social media to communicate and organize activities. This shows that the alternative economic processes are not separate from mainstream economic processes but rather the two are interdependent.

This interdependence can be best understood from the intersectional dynamics between practices (Halkier and Jensen, 2011). Empirical analysis indicates that food purchasing, cooking and eating practices need to be coordinated with other practices such as commuting, work schedules, food shopping and associated transport, and family caring. Hence, farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs try to minimize inconvenience in a way that illustrates how the current food systems consist of a series of practices that are hard to break, and that an alternative system must leverage aspects of existing practices to achieve improvements. The new practices are constructed by incorporating a new element, a specific understanding of food quality. It is through the shared orientation for good food that practices from production to exchange and consumption can be coordinated as distinct from current food systems and practices.

This hybridity of mainstream and alternative practices illuminates how social practice theory of consumption adds to our understanding of AFNs. By looking at AFNs as consisting of practices, we can analyze the recruitment of practitioners, and how the interaction, competition, and hybridization between practices shape the specific configuration of production, exchange and consumption.

Conclusion

Farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs in Beijing show that the system of provision and the practices of farmers, organizers and consumers are co-constitutive through the qualification of food. Their efforts reveal the necessity of instituting new economic processes for organic farming practices to be supported by organic consumers. At the same time, their efforts show that it is difficult to break away from the current system and create new consumption practices without corresponding changes in the way people commute, work and eat.

This study shows how practice theory can be complemented by IEP to analyze the overlooked economic dimension in understanding consumption practices (Evans, this issue; Welch and Warde 2015). While acknowledging that practices are situated in the socio-technological system (Shove et al., 2012; Southerton, 2004), this article focuses on the vertical in addition to the horizontal dynamics of practices (Fine, 2013), and the construction of specific modes of exchange that link and coordinate production and consumption practices. It is helpful to use the interaction of the moral discourse of consumption with instituted systems of provision (Wheeler, 2019) to highlight how the criticism of current systems requalifies traded entities and reconfigures a variety of practices in the system of provision. Moreover, borrowing the concept of teleoaffective formation (Welch, 2020), this study underscores the shared orientation of practices across different economic processes for the development of an alternative system. This draws our attention to two ways in which consumption practices are instituted in economic processes: through the appropriation of materials from production to exchange and consumption; and through the appreciation of the material. The latter is reflected in the three aspects of qualification that define the value of traded entity and construct the meaning of good food in practices and the shared orientation of the alternative food system.

The framework developed in this study may also be useful for understanding how AFNs change conventional food systems and food practices. AFN practices have led supermarkets to sell organic food and provide cooking instructions and farmer profiles on their shelves and online platforms. This shows that commercial food systems are reconstructing food quality to reconnect food purchase practices to eating practices, and perhaps to institute different modes of economic processes to reconnect farmers and consumers.

This analysis of farmers’ markets and buyers’ clubs in Beijing points to the role played by the qualification of materials, and the associated criticisms and shared orientation, in the coordination of practices from production to exchange and consumption. As such, its specific analytical contribution to this special issue is to offer a practice theoretical account of the intersections of everyday consumption and broader economic processes through articulating the material and the semiotic (see Evans, this issue).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Tianle Chang from Beijing Farmers’ Market and many friends in Beijing for their kind and tremendous help during my field work. I am also grateful for the guest editors’ guidance and advice on revising the article.

Funding

The research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (grant number: MOST106-2410-H-035-001-MY2).

Notes

Author biography

I-Liang Wahn is assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Public Affairs and Social Innovation, Feng Chia University, Taiwan. His research focuses on consumer politics and sustainable consumption in East Asia. His recent research compares alternative food networks and social economy in China and Taiwan. His work has been published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Consumer Culture, the Sociological Quarterly and Router: A Journal of Cultural Studies.

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