Category — schooling

This was written as a response paper for a course on social networks. We were asked to write three essays critiquing network research in our area of interest at the micro (people), meso (organization/community/infrastructure), and macro (nation scale) levels.

Generally, we chose essays that used structural network analysis themselves; in this case, I chose a paper that adopted a network (or relational) way of looking at the world, but didn’t use these formal methods. Structural network methods are a set of (mostly) quantitative approaches that (as their name implies)  describe the structure of relationships (ties) between different actors (nodes) or the position of a particular actor within this structure.

For more on network analysis, here’s a pretty good simple overview of some basic concepts.

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Unraveling Agro-food Network(s)

Drawing inspiration from Granovetter’s (1985) seminal work on embeddedness, food systems researchers in the late 1990s began to integrate economic, social, and political approaches to food systems into a network-based ontology.  Rather than look at global food systems as structurally ossified “regimes,” linear commodity chains, or markets made up of rational, disconnected actors, researchers re-imagined food systems as complex webs of actors linked by social, political, economic, and physical ties. Despite the popularity of the network metaphor, there are still few examples of researchers employing formal network methods to describe the structure of agro-food networks.

Raynolds’ (2004) is no exception. Her study of organic agro-food networks falls within a family of research that has blossomed in the last decade, which focuses on “alternative” agrifood networks (e.g. local and regional, fair trade, artisanal, etc).  She employs commodity network analysis to examine consolidation in global organic networks focusing on network governance, or the mechanisms that underlie the development of network ties. She demonstrates that certification standards play a major role in determining and maintaining an inequitable structure of relations between organic food actors in periphery and core (South-North) nations, but stops short of explicitly specifying and measuring this structure. Finally she observes that there is a “bifurcation” in organic agro-food networks between this “globalized system of formally regulated trade” and networks based in “alternative movement conventions,” and suggests that these alternative networks may offer opportunity to upend the reproduction of traditional South-North inequities, as well as inequities between large and smaller scale firms (Raynolds, 2004:725).

By design, the commodity network approach looks at multiple dimensions of global organic networks simultaneously. It describes social, political, cultural, and economic ties. Nodes aren’t limited to one type, but at times are hemispheres, at times, nations, firms, and individual consumers. The boundaries of analysis shift at times from a North-centered organic processing and distribution network to a movement network of consumers directly connected to local farmers to a global exchange between North-South nations.  What might we might learn by focusing in and using formal network methods to measure the observable interactions between a specified set of actors? In the following paragraphs, I unravel three of the many networks that Raynolds (2004) invokes, specify the nodes, ties, and boundaries, and use her analysis to make guesses at network measures like degree, density, and centrality. Then I describe how network analysis might be used specifically to add depth to Raynolds’ final conclusion about the “bifurcation” between mainstream and alternative organic agro-food networks.

The main thrust of the argument takes place at the macro-level, looking at the relationships between periphery-core nations, specifically between Southern countries (especially in Latin America) and Northern markets (especially in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan). In this network, the nodes are countries, the ties are imports and exports, and the boundaries are (mostly) limited to Latin America and the major markets described above. From this, we can infer that Northern countries will tend to have higher in-degree centrality than Southern countries (hence their “core” status).  Raynolds also describes a robust “inter-core” trade “dominated by US exports to Europe and Japan, trade between European nations, and exports from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to the top markets” (p. 725). Considering this, and that products might flow more than one step (e.g. organic tomatoes produced in Chile, processed and canned in the US, and sold in Japan; peanuts grown and shelled in Canada, included in mueslix in Germany, shipped to the UK), we might meaningfully measure betweenness and closeness centrality. This might help to identify particular Latin American countries as “bridges” that are serving as a gateway between Southern producers and Northern markets; certain Northern countries (the US, for example) with high betweenness scores might also be brokers with more power to set the global organic agenda. These measures would require data measuring the flow of some subset of organic products (all edible organic products, organic fruits and vegetables, all processed products etc.) between each country dyad. With this data, we could also compare a network of actual trade with a network of trade that we might estimate based on a gravity model based on “distance” as measured by cost of transport between countries, and “size” as measured by number of organic hectares, length of growing season, and total population. The differences between the actual and estimated networks would shed light on political, social, and cultural structures that intervene in the network. Though the data required for this analysis would not be easy to compile, it might be possible to get at by combining a variety of sources and using estimates, and the result could a more nuanced view of North-South organic agro-food trade dynamics.

Raynolds (2004) also considers a meso-level network of organic agro-food firms. In this case, the nodes are all organic firms (including farmers, aggregators, distribution companies, processors, and retailers) and the ties could be any type of business relationship (e.g. sales between firms). Raynolds describes a change from a “loosely coordinated local network of producers and consumers to a globalized system of formally regulated trade which links socially and spatially distant sites of production and consumption” (p. 725). The trend is towards greater spatial distance between nodes (which would not necessarily be captured in the network I specified above), and also towards consolidation: in network terms, a decrease in the overall size of the network and increased density. Howard (2009) documents this trend in his visualization of consolidation in the North American organic industry, but his study also does not employ formal network measures. Again, data is difficult to obtain on relationships between organic firms, especially given such a broad boundary; however, it is possible to limit the boundary to a particular commodity or limit the type of firm (e.g. only farmers and distributors) to get at a particular aspect of this broader network. This would make it possible to identify more “powerful” firms, not just in terms of endogenous characteristics like size, but also in terms of their position in the network.

Finally, operating beside the macro and meso-level networks is a micro/meso-level network of movement actors and industry groups that shape and challenge norms within the organic movement as well as certification standards. This network could be operationalized as a two-mode network of organic food movement organizations, industry groups and policy-making bodies like the USDA tied by common individuals (e.g. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of the USDA formerly staff at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, or former president of the Organic Farming Research Foundation currently head of an organic department at USDA); it could be a two-mode network of movement organizations tied by association with broader trade associations or participation in specific political campaigns; or it could be a network of social movement organizations tied by some other indicator of collaboration. Specifying and mapping these relationships would allow us to see more clearly which agencies, industry groups, and movement organizations occupy more influential positions in the network. If we notice particular clusters of groups, we might look to see if shared norms exist within these clusters and if they specific capacity for collective action. We might also be able to characterize more clearly the “conflict” that Raynolds (2004) describes between movement actors and industry groups in determining certification standards. If we were able to measure this over time, we might also see whether movement advocates like Fred Kirschenmann (2007), who have advocated for a more harmonious marriage between the organic industry and the organic movement into a more integrated organic community, have had any effect.

The article ends by reasserting this conflict between two parts of the organic agro-food network: the one that is governed by organic certification standards driven by commercial and industrial conventions that privilege economies of scale and efficiency, versus the one that is governed by domestic and civic conventions of trust, tradition, and overall good to society. Raynolds (2004) bases this on her observations of “alternatives” to “mainstream” organic networks that represent the “theoretically important […] contested terrain negotiated within and between commodity networks” (p. 738). This dichotomization of movement-based “alternative” networks versus “mainstream” or “industrial” networks is typical of contemporary food systems studies, yet little research has been done to examine these supposedly different networks systematically to compare their structures and ask whether they are really as “bifurcated” as theory assumes.

To systematically analyze this assumed separation, we might choose a particular organic product within a given geography that we believe has strong “mainstream” and “alternative” networks of production and consumption; say, for example, organic berries in the Pacific Northwest which might be produced by small local farms and sold at Farmers Markets and through Community Supported Agriculture schemes or produced in Latin American countries, imported, and sold at larger retailers. We could set the nodes as all firms that participate in production, aggregation, processing, and sale of the particular product, and stipulate ties as total volume of transactions between firms. The data could be collected through a mix of interviews, publicly available data, and estimates based on observations. With this data, we could do a better job answering questions like: Are “mainstream” and “alternative” networks really so bifurcated, or do firms actually overlap (we might expect, for example, some overlap in mid-sized producers who sell both at farmers markets and to larger supermarkets)? If two separate cliques of firms do emerge, are they different structurally: More or less dense? More or less centralized? Which firms have power in each clique? Are norms really different in each clique? How so?

To date, food systems researchers have not yet embraced structural network analysis despite a network-based ontology that recognizes the relational aspect of both industrial and alternative food chains. For one thing, as in the case of the above examples in the organic agro-food sector, data can be difficult to collect. In network analysis, missing data has particularly strong negative consequences on the statistical validity of the data. Even where it is possible to collect data, social network methods can seem inaccessible and overly technical. Yet these methods have the potential to bring more clarity to specific questions about how global, organizational, and individual actors connect to one another to both uphold and upend our current systems of producing, processing, distributing, selling, and consuming food.

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Works Cited

Granovetter, M. 1985. “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness.” American journal of sociology 481–510.

Howard, Philip. 2009. “Consolidation in the North American Organic Food Processing Sector, 1997 to 2007.” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 30.

Kirschenmann, Fred. 2007. “Guest Feature: Beyond Organic, What’s Really At Stake?”

Raynolds, Laura T. 2004. “The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks.” World Development 32(5):725-743. Retrieved April 17, 2012.

A short summary that I wrote for a class on Participatory Modes of Inquiry about Action Science — one of many threads in the participatory action research (PAR) tradition. “Participation” is a tricky concept in academic realm where the “experts” who do the studying tend to exert power over “laypeople” who get studied. As I consider the academic lifestyle more seriously, I wonder in what ways my work can subvert this dominant mode of operation? Participatory research tends to take longer and hence be more expensive because it requires real relationships with people and lots of listening. On the other hand, one can argue it’s more likely to have catalytic validity especially when it comes to “wicked problems” — the kind that deal in human values and can’t be solved, but only “managed.”

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The Action Science (AS) approach to action research (AR) distinguishes itself from other forms of AR in its attempt to remarry practical action with scientific method and scientific rigor (Greenwood & Levin, 2007). The strand of research offers a direct response to the problem of “rigor versus relevance” in which norms of ‘rigorous’ positivist science such as experimentation under controlled conditions and separation between the researcher and the researched may produce results that are irrelevant or invalid for practitioners working to affect social change (Friedman, 2001, p. 160); on the other hand, more ‘relevant’ alternative action research methodologies may define validity by the positive social effect they engender and eschew rigorous empirical testing or attempts to develop falsifiable theory. AS attempts to bridge this “widening gap between social science theory/research and social science-based professional practice” (Friedman 2001, p. 159) by arguing that rigor and relevance can both be achieved by collapsing “theory building and theory testing” together into one systematic inquiry (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 224).

Action Science embraces dual objectives of improved social practice and the development of generalizable theories of practice through intervention, in contrast to the detached observation of traditional science. Specifically, AS intervention attempts to address “intractable conflicts and difficult dilemmas faced by social practitioners” through the act of “confrontation” (Friedman, 2001, p. 160). Confrontation requires practitioners to uncover implicit theories of action (also known as “theories in use”) and reconcile them with what they say they believe (“espoused theories”):

The goal of action science inquiry is to help practitioners discover the tacit choices they have made about their perceptions of reality, about their goals and about their strategies for achieving them. The fundamental assumption of action science is that by gaining access to these choices, people can achieve greater control over their own fate. (Friedman, 2001, p. 161):

For example, in his article on the “paradox of participation” in action research, Friedman (2009) and his co-researchers engage in a meta-analysis of a “failed” project between an Israeli university and an Arab-Palestinean NGO. Through critical reflection and analysis of meeting transcripts, the researchers confront the conflict between their espoused values of equal and full participation and an implicit theory of action that required the NGO to take on a role as fully invested co-inquirer regardless of its own perspective and goals. The inquiry helped both to mend the strained relationship between the academic team and the NGO leadership and also developed “actionable knowledge” to help others build better participative relationships (Friedman, 2001, p. 1).

In line with its emphasis on developing generalizable theories of action, AS has its own well-developed set of precepts. For example, AS delineates between Model I and Model II theories of action. A Model I theory of action is characterized by defensiveness and unilateral control, whereas Model II features “minimally defensive interpersonal and group relationships, high freedom of choice, and high risk taking” (Argyris et. al., 1985, p. 102, qtd. in Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 226). AS interventions often attempt to move a group from Model I defensiveness to Model II open inquiry. Friedman’s (2001) work with the Open House organization attempted to interrupt a cycle of conflict between two subgroups in the organization by constructing a causal map of the conflict that allowed staff members to “test their own interpretations,” “see clearly their own blindness,” and eventually “redesign their theories of action” (Friedman, 2001, p. 165).

While praising AS for its attempts to address both “scientific clarity and practical utility,” Greenwood & Levin (2007) also point out the shortcomings of the approach. In particular, they note that AS assumes that individuals’ “natural” state is Model I defensiveness. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the narrow focus on defensiveness ignores the “richness of human motivations” beoynd defensiveness (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 230). Second, the approach ignores the broader political, economic, and cultural context that may influence or determine Model I or Model II theories of action by placing the onus on individuals or organizations to create internal change. Finally, this view creates a chasm between participants (who are doomed to defensiveness) and action scientists who are presumed to have a special ability to transcend these limitations; this places the researcher in a special elite status, yet AS does not address this difference directly. Friedman’s (2009) previously referenced work on the “paradox of participation” shows that even experienced AS researchers are not immune to acting out Model I theories of action, and glossing over implicit power differentials between researchers and participants can undermine participatory relationships. Thus while AS holds significant promise as an approach to address difficult to solve and unique organizational and social problems, these criticisms point to the need for more reflective work in the vein of Friedman (2007) to develop AS theory further.

Greenwood, Davydd and Levin, Morten. 2007.  Action Science and Organizational Learning, in   Introduction to Action Research, 2^nd Edition.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage, pp  223-235.

Friedman, Victor.  Action Science:  Creating Communities of Inquiry in Communities of Practice.  Chapter 19 in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, 1st Edition, ed. by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage, 159-170.

Friedman, Victor.  2009.  The Paradox of Participation in Action Research.  Action Research. 7(2)263-290.

I sometimes wonder whether academic writing has any purpose other than to 1) exclude and create a class of “experts” that have legitimacy and power (check out this great TED talk on when experts are warranted and when they’re dangerous) and 2) to obscure fuzzy thinking in jargon so that it can’t be exposed as such.

I’ve been reading William Zinsser’s classic On Writing Well and trying to apply it to my own writing (it’s a process…. :/)  I find that I’m sometimes able to translate ideas I come across in academia and bring them to everyday conversations, but more often than I’d like (and especially when I’m still working out an idea, or still unclear) I slip into using big words to say not much of anything.

Why do I (why do we as scholars) write the way I (we) do? How might changing the way I (we) write change the way I (we) think?

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FoodLab Detroit is a network of entrepreneurs supporting one another in developing businesses with a “triple-bottom-line” (social environmental and financial). FoodLab was founded at a small informal gathering of peers in January 2011; by August, the group had grown to nearly 30, adopted a charter, and created a steering committee. As of February 2011, we have 73 entrepreneurs on our online listserve and engage in a broadening portfolio of activities including regular meetings and networking events, business planning workshops, coordination of shared use kitchen space and other resources, and advocacy through speaking events and engagement with community partners. The organization participates in Detroit’s good food movement, a meta-movement comprised of diverse sub-movements united by the recognition that “today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind.” (Pollan, 2010). The organization is also a part of a movement to “reimagine” the city of Detroit. FoodLab members grapple with questions about GHGs and energy use, how to support local growers and connect people to their food, but also how to create more living-wage jobs, use vacant space, rebuild neighborhoods, connect an otherwise largely segregated city, and build a more participatory, responsive, and democratic community.

Our vision is to build a “network of thriving, diverse locally-owned food production, processing, and retail businesses that contribute to the well-being of our communities and are collectively committed to increasing healthy, green, fair, and accessible food options in Detroit area.” In service of this vision, we support nascent entrepreneurs in order to help them develop socially and environmentally conscious businesses that can be sustained over time. One of our primary strategies is helping to build relationships between entrepreneurs themselves and entrepreneurs and relevant external stakeholders and service providers. As FoodLab grows, how can research help us design more effective activities within this broad strategy?

This essay describes how Davidsson and Honig’s (2003) study of nascent entrepreneurs legitimizes FoodLab’s focus on relationship-building and offers suggestions on how network analysis (to which the authors allude) could provide even more nuanced and useful guidance. I begin with a summary of the authors’ findings on the effects of social capital on early-stage entrepreneurs; I go on to examine how their approach, despite its focus on the importance of relationships and its informal invocation of networks, differs from network analysis; I conclude with examples of how FoodLab could use network analysis to inform what structures of relationships are most beneficial to the development of early-stage social entrepreneurs, and how different activities might foster particular types of structure.

Social capital as a predictor of entrepreneurial “success”

How do different sorts of non-financial capital affect entrepreneurial success? Specifically, Davidsson and Honig (2003) measure the extent to which an individual’s stock of human and social capital can predict three stages in the entrepreneurial process: 1) whether or not she engages in nascent activities; 2) the frequency of her “gestation” activities (e.g. writing a business plan); and 3) first sale or profitability of the business. We will focus primarily on their findings related to social capital.

Researchers collected data from 380 nascent entrepreneurs and 608 non-entrepreneur control participants via an initial phone interview, then followed up with entrepreneur-participants after 6, 12, and 18 months to gauge the life of the venture over time. The data supported the claim that individual social capital is strongly associated with reaching all three stages in the entrepreneurial process (see Figure 1). While the authors characterized certain measures as “strong” versus “weak” ties (e.g. family bonds versus business network bridges) and acknowledged the theoretical difference between the two, data did not support claims about the effect of one type of tie versus another on the entrepreneurial process. Overall though, social capital did appear to explain a greater percentage of entrepreneurial success human capital (including formal education and attendance at business classes), especially when it came to achieving a first sale or profitability. Specifically, the authors found that

• Having parents in business, being encouraged by friends or family, or having close friends or neighbors in business increased the likelihood that someone would become a nascent entrepreneur.
• Being a member of a business network, contact with an assistance agency, being a member of a startup team, being encouraged by family or friends, having close friends or neighbors in business, and being married increased the rate at which entrepreneurs engaged in gestation activities.
• Finally, only one variable reliably predicted whether or not an entrepreneur would achieve sales or profitability within the 18-month study: whether or not the entrepreneur participated in a business network.

The authors highlight that connection with an entrepreneurial assistance agency did not necessarily correlate with whether an entrepreneur made an initial sale or achieved profitability within 18 months. Based on this, they argue,

[Social] relations are more important than maintaining contact with assistance agencies, or even in taking general business classes. […] The facilitation and support of business networks and associations may provide the most consistent and effective support for emerging businesses. […] Furthering our understanding of these specific nascent networks and learning how best to facilitate them represents an important activity for future entrepreneurship research. (P. 324-325)

As a nascent network, FoodLab implicitly recognizes the value of social capital and relationship-building. If Daviddson and Honig’s (2003) findings help to justify our existence and general approach, can they also lend more specific insight into how we should design and structure our activities?

Social capital as an generalized individual attribute versus specific relationship

While this particular study suggests that various relationships, and business networks in particular, can play an important role in entrepreneurial emergence, it does not explain the process by which these networks have an effect. The business network, and the social capital it represents, is a black box. In order to understand how a business network affects an entrepreneur (and not just that it does somehow) we would need first to understand the specific kinds of social capital or ties that are created in the context of a business network, and also to re-imagine social capital as a structure of relationships rather than an endogenous characteristic of an entrepreneur (e.g. membership versus non-membership).

Neal (forthcoming) points out that describing a network as such without engaging in network analysis tells us “very little about what networks are or how they work, frequently because they do not identify exactly who or what is connected or in what ways” (p. 5). In the case of Daviddson and Honig (2003) we see that entrepreneurs who belong to a business network are more likely to achieve a sale or profitability. The authors assume that this is because participation in a business network affords entrepreneurs with more bridging (rather than bonding) capital which Granovetter (1973) and others have suggested is important for the diffusion of new ideas and innovation. This assumption may be true, but there also may be instances in which networks (or dense clusters within networks) provide entrepreneurs with the bonding or “strong” ties that might foster exchange of resources or reinforce norms of behavior (e.g. calculated risk-taking or opportunism) that increase the likelihood of success. Rather than make a priori assumptions, we could define and measure specific ties within a network in order to understand more clearly how the nature and structure of relationships surrounding an entrepreneur contribute to success. Some specific examples of the sorts of ties that might develop within a business network include advice-giving, information or opportunity sharing, business partnership or collaboration, emotional support, inspiration, motivation, or emulation.

This approach would also shift focus from the individual to relationships as the unit of interest, and imagine social capital as a structural pattern of relationships (many or few, dense or thinly spread, reciprocal or not?) rather than an individual characteristic (does someone have it, or not?) Traditional approaches that emphasize personal attributes have a number of drawbacks. For one, they “treat each social system member as an astructural independent unit” which “assume(s) random linkages,” whereas in reality, relationships are not random (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988, p. 31). Entrepreneurs may exhibit homophilic tendencies along characteristics like race, gender, and  age, as well as industry and level of experience. An emphasis on categorical attributes also creates false groups (for example, people who belong to a business network versus those that don’t) and ties these categories to certain outcomes.

These groupings do not get at the root of the matter. FoodLab entrepreneurs will not succeed because they belong to FoodLab, but because of the specific patterns of relationships they might build as a result of membership. The categorical approach may be expedient, but has less explanatory power and may lead to false conclusions. By actually measuring an entrepreneurial network, we can understand how certain types of social capital as evidenced in particular structures of relationship might facilitate diffusion of information versus actual adoption of new practices (Neal et al., 2011). By comparing more than one network, comparing the structure of an informal social network with an intentional business network, or comparing the effect of different activities in the same network over time, we might understand what types of programs and activities foster what type of social capital to what ends.

Future research: social capital and the individual, social capital and the group

In order to inform FoodLab’s strategic direction, we need to know more about:

1. How different network structures (aka types of social capital) lead to different outcomes. [IND VAR: network structure, DEP VAR: entrepreneurial outcomes]
2. How different activities lead to different network structures (aka types of social capital) [IND VAR: activities, DEP VAR: network structure)

In part one, we might ask questions like, do we prefer a more densely clustered or more loose network? Do reciprocal relationships matter? What effect do bridging versus bonding ties have on outcomes? In part two, we might ask things like: how does operation of a listserve versus in-person meetings affect the structure of relationships that form within FoodLab? How does intentional recruiting of diverse participants affect our network structure?

Borgatti (1998) gives some suggestions on using network measures to describe an individual’s social capital. He suggests looking at network size, density, heterogeneity, compositional quality, effective size, constraint, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector values. In this case, we would measure the ego-networks of various entrepreneurs and see how they correlate to various entrepreneurial outcomes. However, Borgatti (1998), in line with Coleman (1988) recognizes that social capital doesn’t only belong to an individual, but can be construed as a public good external to the individual and contained within the broader group.

[My thinking on the exact measures I might look at is still in the very very baby stages... as my prof Zach Neal pointed out, there's no point throwing all these measures around if they aren't getting at something we care about (in his words, they need theoretical grounding.. in my words, they need a grounding in measuring some value we care about)]

Entrepreneurism is seen as a uniquely individual pursuit. Why might we be interested in measuring the overall social capital within a group of entrepreneurs? For one, Coleman (1988) argues that even when social capital doesn’t accrue immediate or apparent benefits to the individual, it can benefit a community as a whole by increasing the stock of overall obligation, expectation, and trust, thus facilitating future interactions. Measuring the effect of relationships on an individual entrepreneur’s success would not account for this.

Also, in the case of FoodLab, we are interested not only in supporting the individual success of businesses in creating social, environmental and financial value, but also in fostering a set of shared norms (e.g. a commitment to social and environmental values). We recognize the advantage of fostering closure within the group to facilitate trust, but also in bridging between otherwise disparate clusters of entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurial allies) to encourage innovation and facilitate more effective collective action. Students of the food movement in the US have commented on this bridging capacity as one of the major strengths of the movement (Hassanein, 2003; Starr, 2010). This shift from considering individual outcomes to outcomes for communities or groups marks a significant difference between traditional entrepreneurship and social enterprise, or enterprise in the service of social change (Thekaekara & Thekaekara, 2006). Systematically measuring FoodLab’s network and linking structural methods to outcomes for individual entrepreneur and for the broader community will be useful in articulating and demonstrating our value to members and supporters, as well as in guiding the mix and design of programs and activities.

Works Cited

Borgatti, S.P., C. Jones, and M.G. Everett. 1998. “Network measures of social capital.” Connections 21(2):27–36.

Coleman, J.S. 1988. “Social capital in the creation of human capital.” American journal of sociology 95–120.

Davidsson, Per, and Benson Honig. 2003. “The role of social and human capital among nascent entrepreneurs.” Journal of Business Venturing 18(3):301-331. Retrieved February 12, 2012.

Granovetter, M.S. 1973. “The strength of weak ties.” American journal of sociology 1360–1380.

Hassanein, N. 2003. “Practicing food democracy: a pragmatic politics of transformation.” Journal of Rural Studies 19(1):77–86.

Neal, J.W., Z.P. Neal, M.S. Atkins, D.B. Henry, and S.L. Frazier. 2011. “Channels of Change: Contrasting Network Mechanisms in the Use of Interventions.” American Journal of Community Psychology 1–10.

Starr, Amory. 2010. “Local Food: A Social Movement?” Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 490.

Thekaekara, M.M., and S. Thekaekara. 2007. Social Justice and Social Entrepreneurship: Contradictory Or Complementary? Skoll Centre for Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School.

Wellman, B., and S.D. Berkowitz. 1988. Social structures: A network approach. Cambridge Univ Pr.

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[1] Including a control sample allowed researchers to test how human and social capital affected whether or not an individual engaged in entrepreneurship at all. The longitudinal design sidestepped the problem of “success bias.” Rather than only measure sustained or successful activity, the data also captured “efforts that fail or are abandoned at early stages,” and shed light on the effect of education and relationships at various stages of the start-up process (p. 311). These two features of the research design set this analysis apart from other research on the emergence of new enterprise, which generally employ cross-sectional data on early-stage businesses.

Some quick thoughts this morning when I came upon an interesting graphic on strategies for on-farm resilience from a project in the area where I used to farm. I love the idea of resilience versus growth as a measure of sustainable development AND personal development.

The Farm Resilience project describes resilience as “a community’s ability to anticipate, adapt to, and successfully overcome what usually amounts to unanticipated, harmful events. Every community faces threats. These threats may come from nature, rather the natural environment, from economic forces within the community, or from external social policies and programs. The most challenging threats are often a combination of all of these. Resilience is the ability to provide the necessary physical, social, cultural, and economic structure for members to live, work, and thrive in the face of chronic and emerging threats.”

I’ve been interested lately in the way that positive action emerges from crisis, but if we remain in a crisis frame, I think we tend to limit our realm of action to building systems capable of adapting to that particular crisis rather than considering that we might also think about this in the reverse… how can we build a system that’s better positioned to take advantage of natural energy (whether you think of low-entropy natural capital, or life-force/Qi, or some other kind of energy that I don’t yet know about).

A brief section from a long paper I wrote for a course I took in Field Research this semester in the Management and Organization department at the business school at UM. The class was wonderful, thanks to great group of classmates, and also in large part due to our really wonderful instructor Wayne Baker.

Each of us chose a field site for study and took detailed field notes over the course of the semester. Wayne read all our notes and gave us weekly feedback. It was so valuable to my development as an ethnographer to have someone else looking over my shoulder, especially someone who was completely “fresh” to my field.

I chose to focus on FoodLab Detroit (formerly the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs) — the group of triple-bottom-line food entrepreneurs that I’ve been working with in Detroit. In a lot of ways, it become something of an auto-ethnography… so much so that I titled the second section “Origins of this Me-search Project.”

Table of contents is below for context, then just a very very short section. Interested to hear what folks think.

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The Good Food Movements: Peeking Inside the Lumpy Tent……….. 3

Origins of this “Me”-search Project……….. 5

Journey into Detroit’s Good Food Movement……….. 5

Research and Activism……….. 7

Background on FoodLab Detroit ……….. 9

History and Founding……….. 9

Network boundaries and characteristics……….. 14

FoodLab and Race……….. 15

FoodLab as a social network……….. 18

Networking a Network……….. 18

Mapping the FoodLab network……….. 20

Understanding the periphery……….. 20

Bridging two cliques……….. 22

What’s in a Tie?……….. 26

Information & Advice…………….. 26

Shared Resources…………….. 28

Emotional Support…………….. 30

Social Pressure…………….. 30

All networks not made equal……….. 31

FoodLab as a Social Movement Guild……….. 34

More than the sum of parts……….. 34

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild……….. 36

Framing within a social movement guild……….. 39

Frame disputes and network structure…………….. 41

A Dispute about Ethics…………….. 43

FoodLab as a movement broker……….. 48

From the parts, to the whole, to the whole in context……….. 48

FoodLab bridges a divided good food field……….. 49

FoodLab and Tertius Iungens…………….. 53

Further Questions……….. 55

Implications……….. 57

For FoodLab……….. 57

For entrepreneurship in Good Food Movements……….. 58

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild

FoodLab Detroit has some of the markings of an emerging social movement organization (SMO). Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2003) define a social movements as:

Collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part. (P. 7)

Social movement organizations are generally conceived as formal organizations that work to implement the goals of a movement (Caniglia and Carmin 2005). Emerging social movement groups (ESMG) are SMOs who are “in the process of becoming and defining themselves. They are works in progress” (Blee and Currier 2005: 129) Yet FoodLab differs from typical conceptions of social movement organizations (even those in the process of forming) because it does not exist to implement the goals of a particular movement, but rather to propagate the use of a skill or process (good food entrepreneurship – or social entrepreneurship with some food component) in service of multiple goals defined and chosen by individual entrepreneurs. This structure seems to make sense given the fragmented landscape of movements related to good food (see Figure 8 below).

Figure 8: Social Movements Related to Good Food (in Flora 2009)

The  relationship between social movements, social entrepreneurship, and social change is contested. Mair & Marti (2006) suggest that social movement literature may be a useful lens through which to examine the process of social entrepreneurship because “both social movements and social entrepreneurship are concerned with social transformation.” Yet as Starr (2010) and others have pointed out, social entrepreneurship  and social movements are ultimately different models of social change (Martin and Osberg 2007; Thekaekara and Thekaekara 2006).

Critiques of entrepreneurial approaches to transformation within good food movements abound. Food systems academics have noted that purely market-based or entrepreneurial approaches to food systems change may fail to address or may even exacerbate issues such as food security for the most vulnerable and racial and cultural injustice (Allen et. al. 2003). Critics of entrepreneurship as a food movement strategy also suggest that a reliance on market and consumer-driven approaches to change may encourage “individualized, depoliticized behavior” at the expense of attempts at structural change (Donald 2008). Starr (2010) responds to this argument with a catalogue of the strength of the social entrepreneurship approach:

Responding to a political landscape that seems to offer only dead ends, energetic social entrepreneurs are making things happen with resolute utopianism. They are creating space, enabling new experiences, innovating, and providing meaningful jobs for other people who want to work their values. Social entrepreneurship as an approach to social change is personalistic, isolated, and unaccountable, but also experimental, decentralized, agile, and multi-issue. And entrepreneurs know that cultural relevance is necessary to their success, a lesson many social movements refuse to learn. (P. 486)

Notably, FoodLab members have described the network as a way to hold one another accountable to individual missions and shared values through public standards and audits, social pressure, and a shared value of “transparency.”

Rather than a social movement organization, FoodLab could be considered an emerging social movement guild (SMG). The term “guild” implies an association of craftsman organized around a common skill or craft. Guilds incorporate systems of apprenticeships to build skills and competence among members, they often enforce mutually agreed-upon standards of accountability, they may share resources and share a collective identity, yet guild members themselves are independent and may apply have different motivations and ways of applying their shared trade. An SMG, as opposed to a traditional guild, prepares members to use their craft in the service of social change rather than maintaining the status quo: specifically “challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part” (Snow, Soule, Kriesi 2003: 7).

Some quick thoughts jotted down this afternoon

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Social movements can be difficult to observe and describe because they tend to be “fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries” (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Different approaches to describing social movements may focus on the way movements mobilize resources, formal social movement organizations (SMOs), the interaction of movements with external agents, or the way that movement actors construct their identities.

Regardless of the specific approach, movements can be said to be organized to some degree and can perhaps be understood best as networks or networks of networks (Diani, 2003). One of the ways of understanding these networks is through the movement’s online identity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of new social movements (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Online identity can be understood by analyzing a variety of online media created by popular media, SMOs themselves, or individual movement actors, including websites, blog posts and articles, email archives, and online listservs.

The Good Food Movement is no exception to the slippery nature of new social movements. Despite attempts by practitioners and academics to characterize, “pin-down,” and evaluate the success of the movement with comprehensive goals and indicators (see, for example the Vivid Picture Project, Soule 2008),  the movement remains a moving target; some argue that coming to a consensus on movement goals is neither a necessary nor particularly useful exercise (Hamm 2009). As Starr (2010) writes:

Movement critics (academic and activist) tend to write like restaurant reviewers, assessing the worth of a movement’s “product” (always expected already to be running at peak performance). I have recently come to see social movements are long, stuttering conversations in which conversants do not begin with the same mother tongue but over time develop both linguistic and cultural literacy. I see social movement culture functioning as a process of recognition, query, and expansion, repetitious, slow, but growing bigger in each conversation.

Online listservs offer one glimpse into this “stuttering conversation.” Despite their obvious limitations (e.g. various “digital divides” means that low-income and rural contingents might be less represented in online conversations), listservs offer one view into the way the good food movement constructs its identity through movement “frames.”

The COMFOOD listserv was founded in 1997 by Hugh Joseph, a significant leader in the good food movement. Joseph cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), the New England Sustainable Ag Working Group (NESAWG), Boston Food and Fitness Initiative, and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts. Joseph was also instrumental in starting the Community Food Projects and Farmers Market Promotion Program, two USDA grant programs.

According to Joseph, “When Comfood started in 1997, it was envisioned as a straightforward national networking vehicle on community food security topics. Now it’s become a repository for most food-related issues” (Qtd in Starkman 2008).

As of November 6, 2011, the listserv had 5333 members, which may make it the largest online network of food activists and food movement organizations. In contrast, two of the most popular movement-related listservs after COMFOOD are ASFS (created in 2001 by the Association for the Study of Food and Society) with 1829 members and SANE-T (created in 1991 as a discussion group about sustainable agriculture) with 822 members.

Generally, the list is made up of practitioners, activists, academics, students, policy-makers and other individuals. A description of the listserv on the Community Food Security Coalition website explains that “Postings by any subscriber may include, but are not limited to:

• Broad or specific discussions on the issues and strategies relating to community food security; similarly, articles of general interest;
• Requests for information, contacts, or assistance on topics related to CFS research or programs;
• Requests for information about organizations working in specific areas (for example, which groups in a region are doing entrepreneurial gardening programs);
• Requests for technical assistance or related help in designing or implementing projects;
• Descriptions of new activities your organization is initiating;
• Announcements of CFS-related activities – workshops, training sessions, conferences;
• Job notices or internship opportunities”

The listserv is open for anyone to join and to post; it is unmoderated (anyone can post to the list and posts are not screened), and governed by a peer-policing system along a set guidelines.

I was particularly interested in using COMFOOD to begin to understand the role of entrepreneurship within the movement. I’m aware that there are limitations to using the COMFOOD list as a proxy for the “good food movement” as a whole, but I see this as a place to start.

The chart below shows the number of total posts and the number of posts that include the word “entrepreneur” on the COMFOOD listserve from January 2008 to June 2011. I tabulated posts at six month intervals from the COMFOOD archives. Over this time period, there were an average of 374 posts each month and 12.5 posts (or 3.3%) of posts included the word “entrepreneurship.” Overall posting volume has increased over the 42 month period, and the use of the word “entrepreneur” has followed this general upward trend.

The next step in analysis will be to read and code instances of the use of the term “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship” in a randomly selected sample of 50 emails over a 12-month period from Nov 1, 2011 to Oct 31, 2011.

A draft of a paper thinking through how we might apply some of the growing body of lit on social entrepreneurship to the Good Food Movement. I wrote this back in April and my thinking’s evolved quite a bit since then. I’m not sure “social entrepreneurship” is a useful category given what I’m actually trying to get at: the role of entrepreneurship (of all types) in the good food movement (and potentially in other movements).

Rather, I’m starting to rephrase  to ask: What role does entrepreneurship (whether defined as a series of processes — e.g. innovation, a stage in business development — e.g. startup, particular characteristics, etc.) have to play in food systems change? How is it conceived in the good food movement by entrepreneurs themselves? How and when is entrepreneurship discourse invoked? What are its “real” and perceived opportunities & limitations?  What does this say about the movement itself?

Check out the MindMap for some of my questions from back in September.

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Social Entrepreneurship in the Sustainable Food Movement

“The food movement […] may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.” (Walsh, 2011).

1. The Rise of Entrepreneurship as a tactic in the Sustainable Food Movement

The sustainable food movement has been characterized in the popular media as a “big, lumpy tent” that coalesces around “the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both” (Pollan, 2010). Policies and organizations that make up the movement have increasingly promoted socially and environmentally-motivated entrepreneurship as a strategy for change.

The 2008 Farm Bill created the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center to support food enterprises that aim to increase access to healthy, affordable, locally sourced foods to underserved communities (CSREES 2009). The USDA’s Community Food Projects Program which aims to “meet the food needs of low-income individuals [and] increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of communities,” gives preference to proposals that “support the development of entrepreneurial projects” (NIFA 2010). A study that interviewed 37 urban and rural alternative food initiatives in California found that entrepreneurial programs dominated their activities (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman & Warner 2003). In the past five to ten years, a growing number of consultants have emerged who specifically support sustainable food and agriculture business development[1]. At the same time, academics like Hamm and Baron (1999) have described small-scale microenterprises as “prerequisites for sustainable food systems” (p. 57). Donald & Blay-Palmer (2006) come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of a 5-year study on food enterprises in Toronto. Based on extensive content analysis and key informant interviews, they find evidence that alternative food capitalism in Toronto offers an opportunity for change towards a more “socially inclusive and sustainable urban development model” (Donald & Blay-Palmer 2006, p.1902).

Despite growing momentum on the ground, and a general golden glow around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, researchers have yet to critically examine entrepreneurship in the sustainable food systems movement. Herein lies an untapped opportunity to develop more effective theories on how and to what extent and in what forms entrepreneurship is a useful strategy to move us toward a more healthy, more sustainable food system. As Donald & Blay-Palmer point out,

The strength of the firm-centred approach is in its ability to understand better the complex multidimensional and multi-scalar interdependencies between, on the one hand, the internal innovative dynamics of firms and, on the other hand, the broader institutional – as well as social, environmental and cultural – setting within which we all operate. (Donald 2008)

Specifically, emerging theory about social entrepreneurship may provide a framework for developing useful hypotheses about the process by which individuals and organizations can produce social, environmental, cultural and economic transformation within the context of the goals of the sustainable food movement. As Peredo & McLean point out, if social entrepreneurship is a “promising instrument,” academic inquiry into its processes can produce knowledge for policy-makers and practitioners to inform effective legislative support, social policy, and best practices in development and management (2006, p. 57).

For the rest of the paper, click here to download the PDF.

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[1] Some examples of consulting firms include: http://www.cornerstone-ventures.com/, http://ediblesadvocatealliance.org, http://financeforfood.com/, http://www. karpresources.com, http://livecultureco.com/, http://www.newventadvisors.com; http://www.newseedadvisors.com/; http://nuttyfig.com/food-companies/; http://sustainablework.com/.

Amory Starr’s “17-point guide to graduate school” or “phds for radicals in the humanities and social sciences.”

Some incredibly sage and practical advice. I need to make my schedule less busy so I can put more of it into practice. (e.g. learn to be a plumber and find a non-academic partner… though maybe that’s less of an issue since I’m not convinced I’m going to be an academic at all )

I feel like a poor excuse for a “Radical” or “Activist”… I don’t know if I fit that role necessarily, but I’m pretty clear that I want my life to be about figuring out how to contribute to/participate in creating a more just and equitable world and specifically supporting people to feel useful and fulfilled … and I want to be able to do this without driving myself insane… in fact do it in a way that’s generative and full of joy…

Click here to read the rest.

“Activists experience the intellectual-political work of scholarship as part of the struggle. It’s a war. We have to fight. I’ve come to understand the academy as a place where I do some outreach and networking, and sometimes try to transform the institutions to be more liberatory, but for the most part my job is not part of THE struggle. This job is a way to support me and the work I want to do.”

Here’s another fun concept map of class today where we talked about Commodity Systems Analysis. I’m loving this Soc course on Structure and Change in the American Agrifood System. Very dedicated three-professor team with diverse backgrounds — all ask great questions and challenge students without being threatening… that plus great, clever classmates make for lively discussion.

click it to enlarge

So I’ve been struggling for the past few months with what it is that I’m actually going to study in my dissertation.

We have some pretty awesome plans in the works with the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs. I’m excited about the business plan bootcamp we’re putting on in January, February and March… and website development and the idea of developing training/resource modules around starting a good food business in Detroit, and a mentorship program, and networking together commercial kitchens, and all kinds of other good stuff. And supposedly I have IRB approval to start my research with the group and approved consent forms and all that, but my questions are still murky (or perhaps myriad is a better “m” word to describe where I’m at… myriad, multitudinous…)

So I’d tried talking it out and I’d tried writing it out in a linear fashion and neither of those things were working very well, so I decided to make a little mindmap. This is still a bit confusing. As you can see, lines cross each other every which-way, but I think it’s helping me come to some sort of peace about how different elements are connected, and what needs to be put to one side or demoted to a secondary or tertiary focus.

click it to make it bigger!