Supermarkets and Their Alternatives: The Politics and Practices of Sustainable Food

Supermarkets and their Alternatives critically examines the relationship between the large-scale globalised conventional food system, as epitomised by supermarkets, and its small-scale localised ‘alternatives’. In particular, it interrogates the ways in which the large and the small-scale are mutually entangled and symbiotically co-exist, and aims to challenge and extend current debates about sustainable food systems, which commonly position globalised supermarkets and their localised alternatives as diametrically opposed. The book frames these discussions within the context of pressing and critical debates on the resilience of neoliberal capitalism, alternative economies and creative ‘postcapitalist’ spaces. The discussion can be read on two levels: firstly, it is a ethnographically grounded book about the symbiotic relationship and blurred lines between supermarkets and alternative food movements; and secondly, it uses these apparently divergent spaces of food production and consumption as a mechanism through which to explore the broader theme of sustainable economic systems and the ways in which they are shifting and adapting. Chapters address the key topical debates in which the relationships between supermarkets and alternative food movements, and the creative economic potential this affords, are played out.