Movement and Market: The Case of SF Bay Area Farmers' Markets

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 12. Making Markets

Abstract

Organizational ecology points to the importance of market structure in the emergence of new organizational forms and identities. In answering how organizational entrepreneurs construct these organizational identities, the modern turn in organizational ecology has convincingly argued that social movements can be an importance source of cultural innovation. Yet some questions remain: Why do new organizational forms emerge as successful alternative models when they do? That is, in a competitive market, how are new organizational identities selected for?

This paper analyzes the rise of farmers’ markets in the San Francisco Bay Area in relation to emergent discursive frames regarding food and the environment in the news media. I find that a rise in such discursive frames, a proxy measure for social movement, sets the stage for the rise of farmers’ markets as an organizational form. Theoretically then, social movements not only provide the “toolkit” to construct new identities and organizational forms, but, insofar as they are successful, they also legitimate these new identities and organizational forms.

Author

• Parijat Chakrabarti, Princeton University