Learning from Other Communities: Organising Collective Action in a Grassroots Food-sharing Initiative

dc.contributor.authorBerns, Katie
dc.contributor.authorRossitto, Chiara
dc.contributor.authorTholander, Jakob
dc.date45261
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-02T05:22:26Z
dc.date.available2024-08-02T05:22:26Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractThis paper illustrates the work of creating, infrastructuring, and organising a food-sharing community from the ground up. Drawing on Participatory Action Research (PAR) and a three-year engagement with FoodSharing Stockholm, the paper shows how the processes of starting up a grassroots initiative are shaped by participants’ direct experience and knowledge of similar initiatives. The analysis draws attention to: (1) how central activities such as recruiting volunteers, choosing digital tools, and establishing partnerships with food donors are conceived and organised, (2) the concrete challenges of sharing surplus food, such as adopting a distribution model, and negotiating fairness, and (3) how governance and decision-making models are adopted and (re)negotiated over time. The paper introduces the term Collective histories of organising to capture the impact that learning from previous experiences can have on communities’ efforts to set up and run; and re-orient design visions towards the consideration and adoption of existing sociotechnical practices, rather than always aiming at novel digital explorations. We outline three emerging dimensions that can characterise “Collective histories of organising” as a concept, (1) configuring capacities, (2) configuring sociotechnical practices, and (3) configuring participation. The paper contributes practical sensitivities to build, sustain, and infrastructure surplus food-sharing initiatives, where these three dimensions are discussed as central concerns designers and other food-sharing communities could learn from.de
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s10606-023-09468-5
dc.identifier.issn1573-7551
dc.identifier.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-023-09468-5
dc.identifier.urihttps://dl.eusset.eu/handle/20.500.12015/5142
dc.publisherSpringer
dc.relation.ispartofComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW): Vol. 32, No. 4
dc.relation.ispartofseriesComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
dc.subjectCollective action
dc.subjectFood-sharing
dc.subjectGrassroots
dc.subjectInfrastructuring
dc.subjectLearning
dc.subjectPAR
dc.titleLearning from Other Communities: Organising Collective Action in a Grassroots Food-sharing Initiativede
dc.typeText/Journal Article
mci.reference.pages951-999

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