Alessandra Manganelli - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Alessandra Manganelli

Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022

Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation

By building community-based food systems informed by transformative ideologies and principles, Co... more By building community-based food systems informed by transformative ideologies and principles, Community-Based Food Organisation (CBFOs) can be understood as agents of critical food guidance from the bottom-up. This paper focuses on the notion of reflexivity as pivotal to the implementation of critical food guidance in CBFOs. Reflexivity is defined as the capacity of actors and organisations to establish as well as to self-reflect upon key food system principles and scale out these principles across communities. To examine reflexivity and its connection to critical food guidance, this paper retraces the story of FoodShare Toronto, a CBFO whose core mission is to foster “good healthy food for all”. Going through different stages of its life-course, this paper highlights the ways in which this organisation reframes core values and principle through time and how it attempts to scale out these principles through partnerships and programs. Learning from FoodShare´s trajectory, this paper...

Urban Agriculture

The Urban Agriculture Book Series at Springer is for researchers, professionals, policy-makers an... more The Urban Agriculture Book Series at Springer is for researchers, professionals, policy-makers and practitioners working on agriculture in and near urban areas. Urban agriculture (UA) can serve as a multifunctional resource for resilient food systems and socio-culturally, economically and ecologically sustainable cities. For the Book Series Editors, the main objective of this series is to mobilize and enhance capacities to share UA experiences and research results, compare methodologies and tools, identify technological obstacles, and adapt solutions. By diffusing this knowledge, the aim is to contribute to building the capacity of policy-makers, professionals and practitioners in governments, international agencies, civil society, the private sector as well as academia, to effectively incorporate UA in their field of interests. It is also to constitute a global research community to debate the lessons from UA initiatives, to compare approaches, and to supply tools for aiding in the conception and evaluation of various strategies of UA development. The concerned scientific field of this series is large because UA combines agricultural issues with those related to city management and development. Thus this interdisciplinary Book Series brings together environmental sciences, agronomy, urban and regional planning, architecture, landscape design, economics, social sciences, soil sciences, public health and nutrition, recognizing UA's contribution to meeting society's basic needs, feeding people, structuring the cities while shaping their development. All these scientific fields are of interest for this Book Series. Books in this Series will analyze UA research and actions; program implementation, urban policies, technological innovations, social and economic development, management of resources (soil/land, water, wastes…) for or by urban agriculture, are all pertinent here. This Book Series includes a mix of edited, coauthored, and single-authored books. These books could be based on research programs, conference papers, or other collective efforts, as well as completed theses or entirely new manuscripts.

This dissertation focuses on the governance of alternative food networks (AFNs). The aim is to id... more This dissertation focuses on the governance of alternative food networks (AFNs). The aim is to identify, conceptualize and empirically investigate the critical governance tensions conditioning the genesis and the life-course of alternative food initiatives. To this purpose this dissertation develops a Hybrid Governance Approach (HGA) which identifies three types of governance tensions - i.e. organizational, resource and institutional - and analyses the interrelations among them in different case-studies of local food initiatives in the Brussels-Capital Region. An international case study - Toronto - is investigated to learn from similarities and differences in the ways local food networks experience and address governance tensions in the two city-regions' food policy trajectories. The empirical findings of this dissertation help to unravel the contradictions and dilemmas that AFNs face in their dynamic reproduction. The need to cope with their own spatial-material growth, to sec...

Rivista impresa sociale -, Dec 1, 2017

This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of a local food network organ... more This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of a local food network organization. Hybrid Governance captures the key governance tensions experienced by alternative food organizations in their spatial-material dynamics of development and growth. These tensions are framed according to three types: ‘organizational, resource and institutional (governance) tensions’. Interrelations among the tensions are also key aspects of the analysis. After an explanation of the conceptual framework and the methodology (section 2), the paper pursues the empirically analysis of the GASAP (section 3), a producersconsumers network developed in Brussels since 2006. The analysis identifies three phases in the GASAP’s life-course, showing how governance tensions and their interrelations emerge and play a role in conditioning the governance and the overall development of the organization through time. A concluding section 4 highlights the governance outcomes produced by the tensions i...

Enabling urban agriculture and Local Food Networks in urban and peri-urban areas is a real challe... more Enabling urban agriculture and Local Food Networks in urban and peri-urban areas is a real challenge. Serious constraints relate to the access and use of land and related resources for urban agriculture: scarcity of quality land, urban development pressures, unfavorable planning systems, administrative fragmentation, etc, pose huge barriers to the enablement of urban agriculture. Land being an essential and yet very contended resource, it becomes essential to sort out the ways access, distribution and fair use of land for urban agriculture are actually governed. To address that, this article capitalizes from recent theoretical and empirical work on the hybrid governance of alternative food networks (Manganelli and Moulaert 2017a, 2017b-in preparation). The hybrid governance approach identifies interrelated governance tensions among organizational, resource and institutional aspects, showing how these tensions condition the governance and the overall development of urban agriculture and alternative food networks. Having addressed organizational governance tensions in a previous work on the Brussels' GASAP consumers-producers' network, this article focuses on land-resource aspects, as primary sources of organizational and institutional governance tensions in the development of urban agriculture and local food networks. The hybrid framework is applied to a case study-the Boeren Bruxsel Paysans (BBP) project-conceived to implement urban agriculture and local food networks in a peri-urban area of the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) called Neerpede. Urban expansion as well as institutional complexity, due to the proximity with the Flemish Region, add on the land governance pressures to protect agriculture and develop local food networks in this area. The analysis of the BBP actor's network also shows how accessing and using land for urban agriculture is becoming a sensitive and contentious governance issue not only at the local, but also at the Regional and, potentially, interregional scales.

support. However, the institutional environment with which alternative food initiatives are confr... more support. However, the institutional environment with which alternative food initiatives are confronted, is not always favorable and accountable. Changes in political priorities, precariousness of land agreements, constraining regulations affecting bottom-up initiatives, are some examples of such tensions. Disentangling the politics of urban food transitions, the research focuses on both, the internal governance dynamics of urban food initiatives as well as on the relation with key external agents and multi-scaled institutions. What are the internal incentives fostering organizational dynamics in grass-root urban food projects? What kind of relations and adaptations such initiatives develop with a wider range of institutional and urban actors? The Brussels-Capital Region is the main empirical case study in which such questions are tested. The research starts from the analysis of key grass-root movements or intermediary organizations establishing alternative food projects. The GASAP movement, a spatially extended Community Supported Agriculture, and the urban agriculture organization "Le Debut des Haricots", are among the main cases selected. The research develops a diachronic analysis of such movements and their ways of developing and diversifying. Attention is paid to the horizontal relations with other initiatives or networks as well as to the areas of intersection with institutional agents, political programs, funding schemes, at the municipal, regional and wider institutional scales. The empirical work is informed by a theoretical framework which identifies key governance tensions, i.e. organizational, institutional, power and spatial tensions. Organizational tensions refer to the internal governance dynamics of Alternative Food Networks, i.e. the need to foster trust and cooperative linkages among the participants. Institutional tensions connect to the external governance, highlighting frictions between the informal/customary rules of Alternative Food Initiatives and the broader system of multi-scaled institutions with which such initiatives interact. Institutional tensions are directly linked to power tensions, which concern the need for empowerment and representation of alternative food actors. Spatial tensions refer to frictions in the use of space, when Alternative Food Initiatives need to secure land, open new markets, or develop alternative supply systems. This framework combines elements from different governance traditions, i.e. social innovation theories (

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2019

Alternative food networks (AFNs) encounter governance challenges stemming from their own organiza... more Alternative food networks (AFNs) encounter governance challenges stemming from their own organizational growth pains and their search for cultivable land, but also from their confrontation with urban planning policy and state structures whose affinity with urban agriculture is on average quite low. The agro-food literature does not sufficiently account for the governance complexity of AFNs. As AFNs develop, different governance tensions arise both within their organization as well as in the institutionalization processes in which they are embedded. This theoretical paper makes use of a redefined concept of hybrid governancedifferent from that in neo-institutional economics (NIE)to elucidate the governance dynamics of AFNs. Finding inspiration in three strands of theory belonging to the 'institutional turn in social science', it redefines hybrid governance as a dialectical nexus of four basic forms of governance (solidarity based, networked, hierarchical, market stirred) reproducing three types of governance tensions (organizational, resource oriented, institutional). Using hybrid governance as an analytical mirror, the paper examines to what extent the agro-food literature has addressed the complexity of AFNs' governance and how its analysis can be improved.

Land Use Policy, 2019

This paper unravels the key governance tensions stemming from the scaling out and up of the acces... more This paper unravels the key governance tensions stemming from the scaling out and up of the access to land for urban agriculture. A hybrid governance approach-showcasing interrelated organizational, resource and institutional governance tensions-is used to shed light on: (a) the ways actors mobilize and build networks to address the land-resource governance; (b) the ways these actors experience and attempt to tackle diverse landresource constraints; (c) the institutional responses to the land question and the challenges to address the landresource governance at higher spatial-institutional scales. The hybrid governance approach is used to analyze an empirical case study-the Boeren Bruxsel Paysans (BBP) coalition-a network of actors aiming to implement urban agriculture and enhance local food networks in the Brussels-Capital Region (BCR). The analysis of the BBP's case clearly shows that scaling out the access and use of land for urban agriculture represents a sensitive and contentious governance issue not only at the local, but also at the Regional and at wider spatial-institutional scales. Learning from the hybrid governance analysis, this paper highlights valuable directions for a more sustainable governance of the land-resource. These directions include: a) building reflexivity in the mode of operating of relevant institutions and jurisdictions; b) improving connectivity among diverse spatial-institutional scales; c) sustaining cross-organizational and cross-jurisdictional cooperation.

Local Environment, 2018

This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of the GASAP (Groupe d'Achats... more This paper applies the concept of Hybrid Governance to the analysis of the GASAP (Groupe d'Achats Solidaires de l'Agriculture Paysanne), a solidarity based producers-consumers network established in Brussels in 2006. The Hybrid Governance concept allows to capture the role of key governance tensions in driving the self-organization, scaling out and self-reflexive dynamics of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). The approach provides a multifaceted and sound socio-political account of the ways AFNs arise, self-organize, associate and build networks in the pursuit of their food allocation objectives, often facing a contradictory socio-institutional environment. Three types of governance tensions, i.e. organizational, resource, and institutional, as well as the interactions among them, are analysed throughout the life-course of the GASAP network. The analysis identifies three phases in the GASAP's life-course, showing how governance tensions and their interrelations arise and play a critical role in conditioning the overall development of the organization through time. The paper concludes with highlighting prospective values of the hybrid governance approach for the analysis of alternative food networks in general. These values relate to: the role of the hybrid approach in illuminating on key drivers behind the scaling out of AFNs; the hybrid governance as a tool to conceptualise and sustain the self-reflexive capacity of local food initiatives; the ways by which this approach unravels challenges to build cooperative alliances and networks among a diversity of agents in the food arena.

Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022

Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation

Urban Agriculture

Rivista impresa sociale -, Dec 1, 2017

Territory, Politics, Governance, 2019

Land Use Policy, 2019

Local Environment, 2018