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This paper aims to discuss stakeholders’ understanding of sustainable tourism development and their experiences regarding the contribution of these movements to sustainable tourism development. The contribution of the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements to the success of a tourism destination is evaluated by determining local stakeholders’ perceptions of the meaning of these terms and views on their benefits.

A case study approach used semi-structured interviews to collect data from 11 purposively sampled local stakeholders. The interview questions spanned knowledge, membership and perceived benefits of the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements and the contribution of these Movements to sustainable tourism development. The data were analysed using framework analysis.

Varying levels of familiarity with the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements were evident. Clear economic and personal benefits from membership were acknowledged. It was confirmed that the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements have contributed to sustainable tourism development and that public–private partnership is key to its success.

The specific research context and limited purposive sample suggest great caution in any generalisation of the results.

Close and continued involvement of stakeholders plus membership of the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements can contribute strongly to promoting sustainable tourism development in rural areas.

It is recognised that the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements make a substantial contribution to local economies and add value to sustainable practices.

Involving local stakeholders in public–private partnerships can contribute to the success of rural tourism destinations when the Slow Food and Cittaslow Movements are considered as alternative approaches to sustainable tourism development.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the consumer adoption literature on local food. This study discusses the applicability of traditional models of adoption and diffusion to understand new phenomena such as the development of local food networks.

A systematic review of the literature on the adoption and diffusion of local food systems was conducted.

A total of three main challenges within the literature on the adoption and diffusion of local food are identified: the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes local food, divergent market assumptions and divergent consumer assumptions. In addition, this study points to the need for new perspectives on consumer adoption and diffusion of local food practices.

This paper provides an overview of current local food research streams and contributes to the literature on consumer adoption and diffusion of local food consumption.

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.

In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the current discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on social justice. The example for California's localized governance of pesticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. Examining Marsden et al.'s case study of one of these localization projects in the UK, the authors argue that this strategy does not necessarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the discourse of “value” in the EU or “values” in the US. Rather than rejecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more “reflexive” localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while consciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.

The complex value chain that facilitates local food production and consumption includes purveyors positioned across a range of marketspaces who through the various ways they present and sell their products help create and convey the meaning of “local food.” Limited governance within local food systems (LFSs) and a lack of consensus on the definition of “local food” provide purveyors with notable latitude in how they frame the meaning of “local” in the food products they produce, market, and sell. Consequently, the expansion of food products that are framed as being “local” within conventional marketspaces threatens to convolute the meaning and representation of local food within specific LFSs and across the broader local food movement (LFM). Here, I use a structured photo analysis design to explore the elements that influence the visual representation of “local food” by purveyors within five farmers’ markets and five grocery stores located across the Southern Arizona LFS (SALFS). I consider the farmers’ markets to be alternative marketspaces and the grocery stores to be conventional marketspaces. The data consist of 683 original photos taken of local food framing practices within the farmers’ markets and grocery stores and extensive field notes captured throughout multiple direct observations at each market space. My exploration is guided by a theoretical framework composed of constructs specific to institutional logic, product framing, and taste regimes. The findings illustrate how local food framing practices across alternative and mainstream marketspaces foster a local food taste regime that fails to convey the fundamental principles and values of the LFM. Recommendations for both practice and research are developed from the findings.

This chapter explores the relationships between organisational type, rationales and the barriers that prevent community food projects from increasing the scale of their operations. From a broad survey of community food projects, organisations were divided according to their primary rationale (e.g. rural economic development and distribution), and then subdivided – by form – as a non-profit, private business, governmental agency or cooperative. Data from the interviews and surveys were coded using a qualitative grounded theory approach, to reveal the barriers experienced by each. Overall, access to long-term stable income is a recurrent theme across all types of projects. However, income sources dramatically change how these organisations prioritise barriers. Similarly, the organisation’s primary rationale and experiences influence the interpretation and approach to collaboration and education. Despite these differences, our results suggest a large degree of convergence that cuts across organisational forms and rationales, and offer a base for broader regional food system conversations.

Concern about the agro-industrial food system has generated movements, which reconnect producers and consumers, either through alternative distribution networks or through providing histories of each quality foodstuff. Although these movements share a romantic discourse, they have a range of objectives and a more complex relationship to the mainstream than first appears. The article analyses particularly the concept of authenticity, first in representations of food, then more widely as a value which links production and consumption. The material illustrates a wider analysis (in Graeber, Harvey) of the co-existence of monetary and non-monetary value in an economy dominated by the commodity form, and following from this sets out the different judgements, which have been made about the transformative political potential of these movements.

Food sovereignty has increasingly become a common political framework for alternative food movements seeking for radical change in the agrifood system. The transformative potential of food sovereignty is context-dependent, resulting in different approaches and strategies in different territories. In this chapter, we address the case of Catalonia (Spain), as an example of global North food sovereignty movement, in which consumers play a predominant role. Based on five discourses on food sovereignty previously identified as a political proposal for social change in Catalonia, namely “activism,” “anti-purism,” “self-management,” “pedagogy,” and “pragmatism,” we discuss internal divergences within the movement that lead to convergences with other political trends in the agrifood system. Despite the movement converges in several critical points at a conceptual level, such as what is the meaning of food sovereignty, or its understanding of the food sovereignty proposal as a vehicle for deepening democracy, it has strong divergences at the operational level, that is, on how to achieve the social and political change it seeks. A structuralist or agency-focused vision of social change and the relevance assigned to ideological affinity among actors are core elements explaining such divergences. In this chapter, the authors explore these internal divergences within the Catalan food sovereignty movement, which at the same time lead to convergences with other repoliticization concepts within the agrifood studies literature (specifically food democracy, food citizenship, and political consumerism).

This paper aims at investigating the contemporary trend toward regional consumption from the perspective of consumers’ search for brand authenticity. In particular, the paper joins literature on brand authenticity from the marketing literature and literature on the local food movement to investigate consumers’ response to authenticity claims in the competition of local and global food brands.

The paper engages in a series of three experimental studies; one of which uses a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak lottery to assess individuals’ willingness to pay for authenticity claims of (non)global brands.

Findings show that authenticity perceptions lead to higher brand value independent of brand globalness; while global brands can mitigate competitive disadvantages in localized consumer markets by actively authenticating their brand image.

This paper reveals the usefulness of authentic brand positioning for global beverage brands when competing with local beverage brands to overcome the liability of globalness. To sustainably benefit from the local food movement, local brands thus will require to build up brand images beyond associations of mere authenticity.