Politics and territorial governance of food consumer groups in the district of Lavapiés, Madrid

Résumé 0

"The article aims to characterise the organisational model and the discourse of the food consumer groups located in Lavapiés, a district in central Madrid (Spain), in order to test whether these groups can be conceptualised as forms of political and social innovation based on the principle of coope- ration between producers and consumers. The methodology consists of an empirical study based upon semi-structured interviews with a prominent member of each of Lavapiés’ consumer groups. An inductive coding and an analysis of co-occurrences were conducted in order to process the qualitative information. We verify the hypothesis that these groups constitute an example of construction of self-organised alter- native social networks based upon the concept that food consumption can be considered to constitute a political choice, contributing to creating agro-ecological alternative models of food production and con- sumption. Territorial governance of consumer groups involves the existence of close links with a dense social network embedded in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés, and with Madrid’s agro-ecological movement."