Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) in the US and Europe. While social scientists classify heterogenous practices as AFNs, their participants share the desire to work against the existing food system, and efforts to access food from outside this system. Many analysts have captured these features of AFNs by using concepts from Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. Yet while Polanyi's framework has been productive, it has also contributed to binary representations of alternative food movements as either advancing non-market values or in service to commodification and hegemony. We scrutinize San Francisco-based independent contractors who sell food alternatives and health supplements produced by a multi-level marketing company we call NatureRise. The marketers of NatureRise products are committed to working against an industrial food system that they consider corrupt. They promote food alternatives that they regard as more natural than food in the conventional system, and embed sales in face-to-face relations in which a family-like concern for human wellbeing is expressed. Yet, they also engage in sales for what Polanyi calls “the motive of gain.” Our case highlights a shortcoming in Polanyi's thought, one that characterizes many social analyses, while supporting the continued relevance of his work.

中文翻译：

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Polanyi 和其他替代食品网络：旧金山“健康”食品的多层次营销人员告诉我们市场社会的价值观

近几十年来，美国和欧洲的替代食品网络 (AFN) 激增。虽然社会科学家将异质实践归类为 AFN，但其参与者都渴望反对现有的粮食系统，并努力从该系统之外获取食物。许多分析师通过使用 Karl Polanyi 的《大转型》中的概念来捕捉 AFN 的这些特征。然而，虽然波兰尼的框架富有成效，但它也促成了替代食品运动的二元表述：要么推进非市场价值，要么服务于商品化和霸权。我们审查了位于旧金山的独立承包商，他们销售由我们称为 NatureRise 的多层次营销公司生产的食品替代品和保健品。NatureRise 产品的营销人员致力于对抗他们认为腐败的工业食品系统。他们推广他们认为比传统系统中的食品更天然的食品替代品，并将销售融入面对面的关系中，表达对人类福祉的家庭般的关注。然而，他们也出于波兰尼所说的“获利动机”而从事销售。我们的案例凸显了波兰尼思想中的一个缺陷，这一缺陷是许多社会分析的特征，同时支持了他的工作的持续相关性。