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

Abstract

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 cooperation 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 alternative 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 consumption. 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.

Keywords: consumer groups, agro-ecology, politics, territorial governance, Lavapiés.