This book identifies recognition-based systems of engagement and exchange within current alternative food networks, and demonstrates how these fluid micro-structures are fundamental to the development of alternative farming in an Irish context. The author confronts current prevailing discourse by proposing that internal structures of mutual recognition, rather than the market logic of productivist hybrids, underpin successful alternative farms. By adopting a Vygotskian developmental approach, necessarily grounded in communities of practice, the author recognises the expansion of alternative...