Allowing for detachment processes in market innovation. The case of short food supply chains

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to study the place of detachment processes in market innovation. The authors draw on the case of short food supply chains, especially those established to provide local produce for mass catering. They characterise short food supply chains as “market innovations through withdrawal”, i.e. market innovations aiming at detaching farmers and consumers from the middlemen of mainstream markets and reducing the number of food miles. They argue that detachment from mainstream market mediators generally calls for the creation of new mediators and highlight the difficulties of this agencing work. In line with research on path dependence, they also show that existing attachments may impede detachments. Finally, the authors show that short food supply chains combine the establishment of new detachments and new attachments, and the maintenance of pre-existing attachments and pre-existing detachments. They sum up this combination of processes with the term “quasi-detachment”.

KEYWORDS:

• Local food
• market agencements
• market mediation
• market innovation
• mass catering

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jean-Pierre Bréchet, Ivan Dufeu, and Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier for their help in developing the position put forward in this article, the organisers of and participants in the Economies of Detachment Workshop in Toulouse for their comments on the first version, and Gabrielle Leyden for her translation of the French text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 We use the term “sociology of market agencements” to label a series of works in market studies inspired by Actor-Network Theory that has also been associated with terms such as “economy of qualities” (Callon, Méadel, and Rabeharisoa 2002), “market devices” (Muniesa, Millo, and Callon 2007), “market work” (Cochoy and Dubuisson-Quellier 2013), and “marketization” (Çalişkan and Callon 2010). This research has grown considerably over the past ten years and been the subject of numerous publications, especially in the form of special issues and collective books (in addition to the previous references, see notably MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu 2007; Geiger et al. 2014; Cochoy, Deville, and McFall 2015; Kjellberg, Azimont, and Reid 2015; Cochoy, Trompette, and Araujo 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ronan Le Velly

Ronan Le Velly is a professor of sociology at Montpellier SupAgro and a member of its research unit on innovation (UMR Innovation). His research is at the crossroads of market sociology and rural studies and focuses on alternative agri-food networks such as fair trade, short food supply chains, and organic agriculture.

Frédéric Goulet

Frédéric Goulet is a researcher at CIRAD (French agricultural research and international development organisation) and a member of UMR Innovation. His research concerns technical innovation in agriculture and contemporary developments in agricultural research in France and South America.

Dominique Vinck

Dominique Vinck is professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Lausanne, member of the STSLab. He directs the UNIL Institute of Social Sciences and the Doctoral Program in Digital Studies. His research focuses on the sociology of science and innovation. He is Chief Editor of the Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances. He published among other: Everyday engineering. Ethnography of design and innovation (MIT Press, 2003), The Sociology of Scientific Work. The Fundamental Relationship between Science and Society (Edward Elgar, 2010), Critical studies of innovation: Alternatives to the Pro-Innovation Bias (Edward Elgar, 2017).