Multi-Actor Social Networks: A Social Practice Approach to Understanding Food Hubs

Abstract

Food hubs are collaborative entities that strategically manage the assemblage, delivery, and promotion of food from a range of local food producers. They are essentially multi-actor institutions, involving horizontal collaboration between producers and vertical collaborations up and down the food chain, involving all actors required to bring food products from producers to consumers. Although food hubs offer many advantages to both producers and consumers, they remain a recognisably neglected research topic in Europe. Furthermore, the strategic networks of actors involved in these collaborative entities is often overlooked. Empirically, this study draws from a collection of ‘good practices’ gathered for the Short Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation Network (SKIN) EU-funded H2020 project. Drawing on a social practice approach and network diagrams, this article explores the good practices of three food hub typologies. This study primarily investigates the context in which food hubs practice multi-actor food provision. We apply social practice as a lens to ’zoom in’ and explore the shared materials, meanings and skills that aid such systems of provision. Social network diagrams are utilised to ‘zoom out’ to examine and facilitate the detection of key actors involved in food hubs’ strategic networks. This research addresses the lack of academic attention on European food hubs by placing practice as the central unit of focus. Our approach enables better comprehension of what constitutes a short food supply chain (SFSC) when orchestrated within three main typologies of food hubs. The findings are of interest to researchers, policy makers, agricultural development intermediaries, and actors involved in systems of food provision who are interested in understanding and supporting the functioning of SFSCs.