Abstract
Overview
What if the future of democracy were subtly forged in the way we buy our food? — Oba and Özsoy’s pioneering book, Food Politics, Activism, and Alternative Consumer Cooperatives, delves into this provocative question through the lens of Turkey’s Alternative Consumer Cooperatives (ACCs). These cooperatives transcend traditional marketplaces, embodying a radical reimagining of social and economic systems where everyday food purchases become acts of resistance and spaces for experimenting with more sustainable and democratic societal models.
Oba and Özsoy offer an in-depth exploration of ACCs as alternative organizations committed to food sovereignty. These cooperatives practice non-capitalist forms of organizing and governance, all within a broader context of social and political activism. The authors meticulously detail the political, economic, and social circumstances that prompted the emergence of ACCs, particularly in response to Turkey’s neoliberal shift in the 1980s and its intensification post-2002. While neoliberal policies have predominantly benefited large agro-food corporations, they have marginalized small rural producers and the urban middle class, exacerbating economic insecurity and devaluing labor. In this context, the first ACC was established in 2009 by activists from these marginalized groups as an alternative model for food provisioning.
The book further details how these initiatives gained momentum after the pivotal 2013 Gezi Park protests—a movement initially opposing urban development that quickly expanded to challenge Turkey’s neoliberal and authoritarian policies. The protests provided fertile ground for the proliferation of ACCs, transforming them into integral components of a larger social movement. From this perspective, the authors underscore the political nature of food, portraying ACCs as prefigurative spaces of active experimentation in direct democracy, non-hierarchical governance, and solidarity-based practices.
Unlike traditional state-driven consumer cooperatives, which operate in a top-down manner and primarily focus on distributing inexpensive food, ACCs are grassroots initiatives aiming to create social value. They reject the profit redistribution model of traditional cooperatives in favor of ecologically safe, fairly priced food, forging direct connections between consumers and small farmers who employ responsible agricultural practices. Oba and Özsoy provide extensive details on how ACCs establish open, public spaces and implement alternative governance models. They also highlight the tensions and challenges of sustaining non-capitalist practices within a predominantly capitalist environment, offering a nuanced portrayal of alternative food organizations.
In sum, Oba and Özsoy’s book positions ACCs as pivotal initiatives for food sovereignty and as vital components of broader social movements in Turkey. This makes their work a significant contribution to the scholarship on alternative organizations, including alternative food networks and cooperatives, as well as prefigurative organizing.
Labor alternatives, food democracy, and scaling up alternative food networks
The book aligns with the growing scholarly interest in the intersections of food, organizing, and alternative food networks (AFNs), as reflected by two recent special issues dedicated to these topics in Organization (Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2020) and in Organization Studies (Vol. 42, Issue 2, 2021). Oba and Özsoy’s examination of ACCs highlights how these groups respond to the industrialization and globalization of the food system. Their study reflects key AFN principles: connecting agriculture with local foodsheds, empowering farmers and consumers through democratic practices, and prioritizing social justice and environmental sustainability to counteract economic dominance (Michel, 2020).
A notable strength of the book is its focus on empowerment and labor conditions. By adopting a micro perspective, it sheds light on how alternative food organizations combat capitalist alienation and reshape labor within the food system (Watson, 2020). The authors address gender inequality in food-related activities (De Castro et al., 2020), demonstrating how Turkish ACCs counteract the devaluation of women’s labor and promote feminist principles within a patriarchal framework (e.g. ensuring direct compensation for women’s farm labor and creating spaces for women to participate in production decisions). Echoing Watson’s study of community-supported agriculture, the authors also highlight the value of volunteer work in linking labor directly to its product, thus avoiding the alienation inherent in wage-based systems (Watson, 2020). However, they also acknowledge the challenges volunteer work presents to democratic decision-making, highlighting tensions between active volunteers seeking greater influence and those less involved due to constraints like single parenthood. The book provides a nuanced view of ACCs, showcasing efforts to address inequalities and elevate the voices of women and youth while acknowledging limitations in their democratic processes.
Nevertheless, the book falls short in addressing the inclusion of disadvantaged lower-class groups. Although ACCs originated from middle-class professionals marginalized by neoliberal policies, the exclusion of the urban poor from these initiatives is not thoroughly explored. While the urban poor have accessed government assistance and traditional cooperatives, their integration into alternative sustainable food systems remains limited. A more detailed discussion of food democracy, which emphasizes the involvement of all individuals in shaping the food system (Hassanein, 2008), could enriched the analysis of ACCs’ efforts to include other marginalized groups.
Additionally, the book contributes to discussions on scaling up alternative food initiatives, which is crucial for challenging the dominant industrialized food system (Michel, 2020). Oba and Özsoy describe how Turkish ACCs scale up through vertical and horizontal strategies, such as forming bulk purchase alliances and replicating their model across districts. However, the limitations of these efforts, including reliance on a small volunteer pool and the fragility of ACCs within the capitalist system, are mentioned but not extensively explored. While ACCs are growing, a more nuanced exploration of their broader impact on the Turkish food system and the challenges posed by their neoliberal context would be beneficial. Indeed, the book could contribute to debates on the challenges faced by alternative food cooperatives within a globalized system (e.g. Ajates, 2020), as well as the broader dilemma encountered by alternative models whereby scaling up to increase impact risks diluting their original mission and becoming “regular businesses” (Colombo et al., 2023).
ACCs as “prefigurative spaces”
The book further aligns with recent scholarly interest in prefigurative organizing (e.g. Reinecke, 2018; Schiller-Merkens, 2024), with ACCs conceptualized as “prefigurative spaces” in which activists continuously experiment with new alternative models within the dominant system. These spaces support the practice of direct democracy and pursuit of societal changes that challenge authoritarianism and capitalist logics.
The authors provide detailed illustrations of ACCs’ practices that embody prefiguration (e.g. role rotation, consensus-based decision-making, and non-hierarchical structures), illuminating the three core characteristics of prefigurative organizing, depicted by Schiller-Merkens (2024): (1) the rejection of dominant organizational forms that conflict with alternative moral principles, (2) the creation of organizational forms that instantiate these principles in the present, and (3) the drive to contribute to a broader social transformation of the economy. The book’s strength lies in the third characteristic, illustrating how ACCs embody this political dimension by using everyday practices and experimentation to challenge existing power structures and build a new societal model grounded in counter-institutional values. In Turkish ACCs, such prefigurative politics is deeply rooted in participatory democracy and community values.
Another notable aspect of the book is its detailed account of the micro-practices based on trial-and-error in ACCs’ prefigurative organizing. For instance, when ACCs discovered that a women’s cooperative used industrial flour, they facilitated a connection with a farmer using local seeds and traditional methods. This focus on micro-processes highlights the importance of solidarity ethics, which are grounded in geographic proximity and the emotional commitment of volunteers—a theme that aligns with Buchter’s (2022) exploration of prefiguration and solidarity.
However, the book could benefit from a deeper exploration of the “ethics of solidarity,” as this core concept in the authors’ arguments remains somewhat underdeveloped empirically. Similarly, although the book provides detailed illustrations of prefiguration in action, it offers limited insight into the evolution of these practices over time. A deeper exploration of how ACCs’ prefigurative practices have developed and the “struggles” they encountered during the trial-and-error process (Schiller-Merkens, 2024) would enhance the insights offered by the case.
In conclusion, Food Politics, Activism and Alternative Consumer Cooperatives offers a compelling examination of Turkish ACCs as sites of radical social experimentation through an alternative food system and resistance against neoliberal capitalism. The authors successfully demonstrate how these cooperatives embody prefigurative politics, using everyday practices to challenge dominant economic and social structures. While the book excels in depicting the ACCs’ political context—given the country’s authoritarian and patriarchal systems—and in illustrating their micro-practices, it would benefit from further exploration of how ACCs have evolved over time, leveraging the authors’ rich data and extensive knowledge of the struggles involved in implementing prefigurative initiatives.
