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This chapter examines La Vía Campesina’s strategy of consolidating strategic alliances in its global struggle to build food sovereignty. After discussing some of La Vía Campesina’s initial challenges in working with nongovernmental organizations we focus on two case studies: first, La Vía Campesina’s work with Veterinarios Sin Fronteras, based in Spain, and second, the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty. In both cases we analyze some of the convergences and divergences experienced by the social actors in efforts to build strategic alliances.

Academic and popular literatures have addressed growing concerns about the ways we produce, harvest, distribute, and consume food; manage fisheries and inputs to agriculture; and deal with waste. Throughout the 20th century, a series of issue-specific frames emerged that explicitly addressed issues of social justice, the environment, and human health in the food system. During the mid-1990s that comprehensive master frames were established in attempts to bring disparate ideas and actions together into a more inclusive food movement. In this chapter, we explore the development of these collective action frames and turn to Canada as a case study to examine the key moments that have brought together diverse actors through collaborative networks to assert their place within a broader social movement. We argue that recognizing the increasing development of food networks and making these relationships visible opens new theoretical and practical possibilities for food system transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between transformational leadership (TL), autonomy support management behaviors and employees’ psychological health.

A total of 512 Canadian workers assessed their immediate supervisor’s level of TL and autonomy support management behaviors. Participants also assessed their own psychological health through measures of psychological well-being and burnout at work.

Results from structural equation modeling indicate that TL is related to employee psychological well-being and burnout. This effect is fully mediated by more specific autonomy support and psychological control management behaviors. These results suggest that autonomy support and psychological control management behaviors may have a more proximal effect on employees’ psychological health than TL does. Also, managers’ leadership and behaviors appear to better predict employees’ psychological well-being at work than employee burnout.

Managers with a TL style employ more autonomy support and fewer psychological control behaviors, which makes employees happier and less burned out. Based on these results, leadership training programs would gain to focus on the development of more specific management behaviors among leaders, such as autonomy support, to enhance employees’ psychological health, especially their well-being.

This research expands understanding of the relationship between TL and the psychological health of employees by shedding light on the mediating role of autonomy support management behaviors in this relationship.

This introduction provides an overview of the discourse on alternative agrifood movements (AAMs) to (1) ascertain the degree of convergence and divergence around a common ethos of alterity and (2) context the chapters of the book. AAMs have increased in recent years in response to the growing legitimation crisis of the conventional agrifood system. Some agrifood researchers argue that AAMs represent the vanguard movement of our time, a formidable counter movement to global capitalism. Other authors note a pattern of blunting of the transformative qualities of AAMs due to conventionalization and mainstreaming in the market. The literature on AAMs is organized following a Four Questions in Agrifood Studies (Constance, 2008) framework. The section for each Question ends with a case study to better illustrate the historical dynamics of an AAM. The literature review ends with a summary of the discourse applied to the research question of the book: Are AAMs the vanguard social movement of our time? The last section of this introduction provides a short description of each contributing chapter of the book, which is divided into five sections: Introduction; Theoretical and Conceptual Framings; Food Sovereignty Movements; Alternative Movements in the Global North; and Conclusions.

This chapter considers the place of responsibility in confronting ecological sustainability and social equity problems in the food system. We present two illustrations addressing the following question: In what ways does responsibility present a way to close the metabolic rift in line with the vision of the global food sovereignty movement? First, using the example of Metro-Vancouver in Canada, we consider the ways in which urban people claim responsibility for land protection through the concept of urban agrarianism, defined as an urban ethic of care for foodlands, with an associated responsibility to exercise solidarity with those who cultivate and harvest food. Second, we discuss how deepening relational responsibility in legal and regulatory frameworks might hold the corporate food regime accountable in the Canadian context to address their role in and responsibility for mitigating an increasingly risky world, as evidenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the responsibility of urban people to mobilise in solidarity with food movements, and against the corporate food regime in particular, will play a critical role in supporting the transition to sustainable and just food systems. This applies both to finding new ways to claim responsibility for this transition and to hold those actors that have disproportionately benefitted from the corporate food regime responsible. Such a reworking of responsibility is especially necessary as the context for food systems change becomes increasingly urbanised and risky.

Major pillar of Via Campesina in Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST) political platform combines land reform and agro-ecology, claiming for a profound change in the hegemonic agriculture model in the country, hoisting the ‘food sovereignty’ flag. However, this was not a linear trajectory. Focusing on events that took place in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the birthplace of the MST, this chapter aims to analyse the different path followed by MST there in order to consolidate the ‘conquered’ settlements. The organization approached, initially, a network of technicians and social organizations critics of the technological package of the Green Revolution in Brazil. Afterwards, choose to support the deployment of conventional agriculture in the agrarian reform settlements, prioritizing collective organization of labour through cooperatives of production, practicing an agriculture based in the intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and commercial seed varieties. Thanks to the growing international connections of the MST, that paved the way for the creation of Via Campesina, and to the proximity to ‘militant technicians’ coming mainly from the agronomy student movement, in the end of the 1990s, MST resumed its dialogue with alternative agriculture strands, particularly with agro-ecology, campaigning for an agriculture based on principles of environmental conservation and valorization of the peasant way of life.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results from a quantitative analysis comparing usage levels between an e-monograph collection that has experienced continual growth and an e-monograph collection that has not experienced any recent growth whatsoever. The aim of the study was to determine quantitatively if e-monograph collections with dynamic content experience greater levels of usage compared to e-monograph collections that are static in both size and content.

E-monograph data were separated into a Dynamic and a Static Collection. Usage for e-monographs belonging to the Dynamic Collection was compared to usage of e-monographs belonging to the Static Collection. The number of e-monographs was obtained by simple count. Additional statistics tracked include the number of viewings. A linear regression analysis was used to determine the strength of the linear relationship between collection size and usage.

Results indicate that e-monograph collections that continue to grow in both size and content also continue to experience year-to-year increases in usage, whereas e-monograph collections that remain static in size and content experience a decline in usage. A linear regression analysis indicates the existence of a very strong linear relationship that exists between Dynamic Collection size and usage. A weaker linear relationship was calculated for Static Collection size and usage.

This research is one of very few studies systematically and quantitatively comparing usage levels between e-monographs from growing collections to collections that have not had any new titles added recently.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results from a quantitative analysis comparing usage between collections of individually purchased e‐books and collections of e‐books purchased as part of large consortially negotiated bundles. The aim of this study is to determine if individually purchased e‐books have recorded a greater level of usage than e‐books purchased in large packages and, consequently, which of the two acquisition models is best suited for the library.

Usage rates of e‐books purchased individually from NetLibrary and MyiLibrary were compared to usage rates of e‐books purchased in large bundles from the same aggregators. Usage of e‐books purchased in large bundles directly from SpringerLink was compared to usage of e‐books on NetLibrary and MyiLibrary. The number of e‐books was obtained by simple count. Additional statistics tracked include the number of viewings.

Initial results indicate that individually purchased titles from both NetLibrary and MyiLibrary have consistently recorded a greater level of usage than the bundled titles on their respective platforms. A second quantitative analysis comparing two aggregated collections of individually selected titles to a very large bundled collection acquired directly from SpringerLink yielded somewhat different results. For the most part, SpringerLink bundled e‐books have recorded a greater level of usage when compared to bundled titles on NetLibrary and MyiLibrary.

This research is one of very few studies systematically and quantitatively comparing usage levels between e‐monographs individually selected and acquired as large bundles by a Canadian academic library.

This paper aims to illustrate the resource dependency theory by making ties between the different resources needed by a firm and the members of the board through their allegiances to different organizations. Many researchers have explained the formation of the board through a controlling function. Alternative explanation is proposed by the resource dependency theory.

To investigate the case of the largest company in Canada, the authors took their data in the Boardex database. Then drawing an affiliation matrix, they used the Pajek software to analyze these connections. They obtained a non-directional social network prone to illustrate the resource dependency theory.

The authors found different categories of resources being placed at firm’s disposal: political, social and economic, under different forms. Because a case study approach was used, the findings will be used to complete the theory rather than confirm or contradict it. The case firm is well-connected at every level, although having a quite conservative board: only one woman, no representative of the social or environmental worlds. Through a program for designing networks, the authors show that board member’s networks are encompassing a spectrum of resources. Comparing with a previous study, it was found that the proportions of these resources remain the same in 2013 than in 2007.

This case is a very large group. Therefore, it can be expected that it will need every kind of resources. It might be interesting to replicate the study on smaller firms. The results imply that boards may not be the best structure to control the firm’s inside activities.

Although many theoretical papers exist on this question, the board is mainly studied through the insiders/outsiders dichotomy, but there are few practical studies taking the resource dependency theory perspective.