(Intra-)activity of Alternative Food: Performing a Hopeful Food Future

Abstract

This paper explores alternative food initiatives (AFIs) and their relational ontological forms. Demonstrations of pervasive and dynamic “intra-actions” in the urban foodscape can offer hope for a transformation away from disenfranchising associations of the conventional food system, despite the challenge of unequal dispositions of different actors and activities involved. This participatory ethnographic study of AFIs in Auckland, New Zealand, included following, observing and actively practicing with AFIs. The practices seen and done are read through the work of Barad to consider how a more just food system can be materialised through participants’ engagement with AFIs. Here, several case studies of AFIs disturb dominant thinking, to: highlight the abundance, prominence and dynamism of these models of alternative food; explore how doing differently is regularly and actively embodied by actors in the alternative foodscape; and, how these novel expressions of alternative food can engender hope in the urban food landscape through their intra-action.