ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how diverse economies are enacted or are emerging within each of the community-based food programs. Each of the community-based food programs engage in a set of practices that consistent with the ideals of alternative economies: they make decisions in light of ethical considerations and their program design and operation, ontologically reframe subjectivities, and challenge traditional neoliberal economic concepts. At each food program the chapter describes their overall mission and food project and explores how their organizational focus and the changes that they have made over time reflect their commitment to an ethical ideology. It focuses on the provisioning strategies of program participants and explores how these 'clients' can be theorized as 'agents' engaged with diverse economies through reliance on friends and families and their engagement in non-traditional food gathering practices. The chapter explains the ways that program participants would like to see the organizations that they are involved in grow and expand into other aspects of service.