Abstract
Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in material configuration and form influence how these artefacts are perceived, handled, and embedded in users’ routines. By examining the relations between materiality and network actors, the research contributes to a broader understanding of design agency as distributed, relational, and not limited to human intention.
Keywords
More-than-Human Design, Material Agency, Alternative Food Networks, Infrastructuring
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2467
Citation
Varli, C.G., and Maffei, S. (2026) Material agents at work in alternative food networks, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2467
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Material agents at work in alternative food networks
Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in material configuration and form influence how these artefacts are perceived, handled, and embedded in users’ routines. By examining the relations between materiality and network actors, the research contributes to a broader understanding of design agency as distributed, relational, and not limited to human intention.