Social innovation through short food supply chains: between networks and individualities

Chapitre 5; International audience; Even though ignored for the most part by the literature on social innovation, the food sector is illustrative of a profusion of innovative approaches aimed at responding, in new ways, to its various problems. In this chapter, we combine the contributions of the new economic sociology and of the ethic of care in order to analyse two examples of social innovations that rely on short food supply chains to facilitate access to good quality food by people in vulnerable situations. Social innovation is then understood as a relationship-based and contextualized process, built over time by singular individuals, and supported by mediation resources. In line with work on the theory of transitions, our approach allows us to determine the conditions conducive to the emergence of innovative niches as well as to explore the various mechanisms that can help scale an innovation.