5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The contested recognition of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch does not negate the reality that some social movements have long recognized the limits of the modernist and capitalist models embedded in current agrifood systems. A number of ‘new peasant’ movements around the world have been working with agroecological and fair-trading principles to transform how food is produced and consumed. New organizational forms and the mobilization of alternative knowledges have given way to what a group of scholars have begun to refer to as “territorial markets”. These are forms of exchange that are embedded in geographically anchored socio-ecosystems that offer spaces of ‘valued’ exchange. A number of scholars have referred to similar phenomena as alternative agri-food networks, circuit court, values-based supply chains, prosumption or nested markets – each of these term carries with it theoretical and empirical baggage that frames this phenomenon slightly differently. This session includes papers that explore these relationships, the values that are created and the ways of knowing that are valued in existing and emerging territorial markets from around the world. They contribute to the diversity of knowledges that are starting to be recognized across economic and environmental sociology and the sociology of agriculture and food.

The session will be conducted in three parts: 1) Introduction in English to 'territorial markets' (10'); 2) Three language-specific roundtable discussions of four papers each (15' per paper, 60'); 3) Restitution of the main topics discussed in an English language Plenary and Closing (20')