ABSTRACT
This chapter is about community building in sustainable food initiatives. As a key aspect of their visions, strategies and practices, transformative enterprises and initiatives, such as community-supported agriculture, urban gardening projects and food cooperatives, focusing on sustainable food production and consumption, have a strong interest in changing the anonymous role of the consumer into participatory involvement. This contribution underlines the importance of community building as a driving force in the transformation of the food system. To analyze the significance of community in local food enterprises, theoretical concepts such as the approach of post-traditional communities, the strategies-as-practice approach of strategic management and approaches of solidarity economics are used. Empirical data was collected (semi-structured interviews, participant observation, action research) and workshops conducted in collaboration with 27 practitioners from local food enterprises and initiatives in Germany. The interviews were subject to computer-aided qualitative text analysis while quantitative data was gathered from surveys of the members and customers of the enterprises. The findings point out how participation in transformative enterprises is based on new forms of creative doing and collaboration and which barriers and opportunities lay within them.
