Series Editors: Daniel King, Nottingham Trent University and Martin Parker, University of Bristol
From co-operatives to corporations, Occupy to Facebook, organizations shape our lives. They engage in politics as well as shaping the possible futures of policy making and social change. This series publishes books that explore how politics happens within and because of organizations, how activism is organized, and how activists change organizations.
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Imagining Alternatives
Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar
Bristol University Press
University of Bristol
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ISBN 978-1-5292-1623-3 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-5292-1625-7 ePub
ISBN 978-1-5292-1626-4 ePdf
The right of Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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with the hope of a socially just and ecologically sustainable world full of alternatives he cherishes
Daniel King and Martin Parker
Organizing is politics made durable. From cooperatives to corporations, Occupy to Meta, states to NGOs, organizations shape our lives. They shape the possible futures of governance, policy making and social change, and hence are central to understanding how we can deal with the challenges that face us, whether that be pandemics, populism or climate change. This book series publishes work that explores how politics happens within and because of organizations and organizing. We want to explore how activism is organized and how activists change organizations. We are also interested in the forms of resistance to activism, the ways that powerful interests contest and reframe demands for change. These are questions of huge relevance to scholars in sociology, politics, geography, management and beyond, and are becoming ever more important as demands for impact and engagement change the way that academics imagine their work. They are also important to anyone who wants to understand more about the theory and practice of organizing, not just the abstracted ideologies of capitalism taught in business schools.
Our books offer critical examinations of organizations as sites of or targets for activism, and we also assume that our authors, and hopefully our readers, are themselves agents of change. Titles may focus on specific industries or fields, or they may be arranged around particular themes or challenges. Our topics might include the alternative economy; surveillance, whistleblowing and human rights; digital politics; religious groups; social movements; NGOs; feminism and anarchist organization; action research and coproduction; activism and the neoliberal university – or any other subjects that are relevant and topical.
Organizations and Activism is also a multidisciplinary series. Contributions from all and any relevant academic fields will be welcomed. The series is international in outlook, and proposals from outside the English-speaking Global North are particularly welcome.
This book, the seventh in our series, examines some of the most vital aspects of our lives – food, faith and freedom. In this personal and informative
Central to this book is food. More specifically, how organizations like the Free Food Store challenge an essential contraction which lies at the heart of capitalism. On the one hand we have food waste. Millions of tonnes of perfectly edible food is either dumped in landfill or, as Alakavuklar describes, becomes a feast for pigs. This is a clear sign of the profligacy of the capitalist system, not only costing money but also causing unnecessary rises in carbon emissions and doing significant harm to the planet. On the other hand we have people going hungry, unable to afford some of the basic essentials to survive. This, as Alakavuklar stresses, is seriously wrong – and it is what the Free Food Store tries to fix.
The store does this by taking food that would otherwise go to waste and giving it away for free. Their joint mission is to ensure that no one faces hunger and to minimize food wastage. While, on the surface, this might seem like a food bank, the Free Food Store is different. Customers are not means-tested as they are in food banks; there is no need to prove poverty through a voucher or referral. The Free Food Store is open to anyone. Importantly, they not only provide nonperishable food – tins, packets, and so on, donated by people trying to help out – but also offer perishable food that would otherwise become waste. Therefore, they are about connecting surplus food, which they call ‘rescued food’, with people who need it, to challenge the normal economic model of food production and consumption. The Free Food Store can be considered a form of social and solidarity economy organized around the community’s needs.
This book is more than just an ethnography of the Free Food Store; it is an activist tale. Ozan is highly engaged in the shop, getting his hands literally dirty by sorting potatoes and other perishable food items. This opens a divide and an unending set of questions and tensions between his activist self and academic self as he wrestles to navigate between these two ways of being. Bringing this tension to the foreground, Organizing Food, Faith and Freedom is also an attempt at writing differently, a dialogue between the activist self and the academic self.
We hope you enjoy this book. And if you want to discuss your own proposal, then email the series editors. We look forward to hearing from you.
Figures
- 1.1The Free Food Store as an alternative food distribution channel 19
- 2.1Me carrying fresh produce 25
- 2.2Picking edible potatoes 26
- 2.3Dozens of loaves and other bread products 27
- 2.4More bread 28
- 2.5Fruit and vegetables 31
- 2.6Sweet stuff 33
- 2.7Notices displayed in the Free Food Store 34
- 4.1Noncapitalist value relations through the journey of surplus food at the Free Food Store 65
- 5.1The dispositive of the Free Food Store 83
Like many other published monographs, this book has been a product of many years of dedication and collaboration. Since my fieldwork at the Free Food Store, which took place between January and September 2015, I have devoted myself to reading, thinking, talking and writing about alternatives and organizing. Many colleagues and friends have witnessed and contributed to the development of my ideas, providing invaluable input. I extend my heartfelt thanks to Craig Prichard, Andrew Dickson, Fahreen Alamgir, Suze Wilson, Ralph Bathurst, Damian Ruth, Patrizia Zanoni, Raza Mir, Nicholas Roelants and Aykut Dağkıran for their collegiality, support, guidance and wisdom. I also would like to thank my colleagues at Utrecht University School of Governance for their feedback on various chapters of the book. As Organizations and Activism series co-editors, Daniel King and Martin Parker provided very helpful guidance when I was developing my ideas in the early stages of preparing the book – sincere thanks to them for their support.
I am profoundly grateful to the Free Food Store’s founder/director, manager and volunteers for welcoming me and endorsing my research. Their support has given me the opportunity to explore who I want to be and what I want to achieve as a scholar.
I also want to express my gratitude to Paul Stevens from Bristol University Press, who initially approached me and encouraged me to turn my dream of writing a book into a reality. His colleagues, Ellen Pearce, Isobel Green and Rich Kemp, have played a crucial editorial role in bringing this book to life. Furthermore, I would like to thank production editor Sophia Unger from Newgen for her support and meticulous work.
I extend my sincere thanks to my parents, Mehmet and Esen, and my brother, Onur, for their unwavering encouragement and belief in me. Finally, I want to offer my deepest appreciation to my wife, Deniz – none of this would have been possible without your love and support.
Chapters 2, 4 and 6 are revised versions of the previously published work:
Chapter 2: Alakavuklar, O.N. (2020) ‘(Re)imagining the activist academy’, in A. Pullen, J. Helin and N. Harding (eds) Writing Differently: Dialogues in Critical Management Studies, Vol 4, Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, pp 193–207. doi:
10.1108/S2046-607220200000004012 .Chapter 4: Alakavuklar, O.N. (2023) ‘Untangling alternative organising within and beyond capitalist relations: the case of a free food store’, Human Relations, online first. doi:
10.1177/00187267231203096 .Chapter 6: Alakavuklar, O.N. (2023) ‘An attempt to become an-Other critical scholar: bridging as “activist performativity”’, Management Learning, online first. doi:
10.1177/13505076231167265 .