Tensions Between Productive and Activist Values?
This article seeks to bring nuances to a common thesis on food co-ops, which emphasizes the tensions between their activist and productive objectives. By relying both on ethnographic data collected in Paris over a period of two years, and on the theoretical framework provided by Giry and Wokuri (2020), the article shows that these tensions are far from being unanimously perceived “from the inside”. Through the example of the purchasing policy of a specific food co-op, we show that the articulation between activist and production-oriented objectives, as reported by members, is indeed contingent and segmented. The purchasing policy can be divided into three segments: the pricing policy of the food co-op, the choice of the products on sale, and the hybrid nature of the way the store operates. The first part shows that for each of these segments, members have heterogeneous viewpoints on the dynamics between activist and productive values, which may as well be described as divergent, convergent or independent. The second part shows that members’ perceptions and involvement in the food co-op are partially stabilized through various regulation activities (Le Velly, 2017). The conclusion underlines that addressing what co-op members define as “what matters” to them contributes to the ongoing debates on how sustainable are recently-created food alternatives, and on how to expand food co-ops.