Soutenance de thèse au LISIS – Francisco Garrido Garza

Nadine ARNOLD, Professeure en sociologie, Université de Lucerne (rapportrice)

Nicolas BEFORT, Professeur en économie, NEOMA Business School – Reims (examinateur)

Wouter BOON, Professeur en innovations et transitions, Utrecht University (rapporteur)

Mantiaba COULIBALY-BALLET, maître de conférence en sciences de gestion, Université Côte d’Azur, GRM (examinatrice)

Allison Marie LOCONTO, Directrice de recherche en sociologie, INRAE (directrice de thèse)

The current global food system is characterised by industrialised production, environmental degradation, and social inequality. In response and resistance to this panorama, agroecology has emerged as a concept for rethinking food systems along ecological, social and cultural dimensions. It is broadly understood as a scientific discipline, an agronomic practice, and a social movement, centred on the idea of the ecologisation of agriculture and the transformation of food production and provisioning systems into more sustainable and socially just. A persisting challenge for agroecology lies in its multiplicity of visions and aims, which are contested among different actors and audiences across scientific literature, policy dialogues, and social cultures and movements. Attention is increasingly turned to the role of markets, as empirical studies have highlighted their potential to contribute to food systems transformations through multiple and diverse market innovations. Drawing on the literature on sustainability and socio-technical transitions, this doctoral thesis focuses on directionality, which questions how market-driven agroecological transitions acquire orientation and momentum. Through this lens, it examines how markets can act as arenas of food systems transformation, exploring on how structures, agency, and ideologies interact to guide sustainability transitions in the agri-food sector. In this regard, I introduce the concept of market infrastructures to understand how actors co-construct markets that both enable and constrain transitions. Complementarily, I advance the idea of agroecological entrepreneurship by emphasising how actors’ creative, value-driven practices shape new market forms. Finally, I explore values and meanings as forces that determine how agroecology is interpreted and legitimised in market contexts. These three conceptual approaches are integrated within a multi-case study design covering the European Union (EU), the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), to analyse diverse market-driven agroecological initiatives through qualitative comparative and discourse-analytical methods. Within this framework, across four chapters, I examine how these initiatives reconfigure governance, innovation, and meaning in markets for agroecology, to support the argument that market-based agroecological transitions depend on the interplay between enabling infrastructures, entrepreneurial agency, and legitimising values that direct the course of food systems transformation, rather than being spontaneous and purely grassroots.

Mots-clés: agroecology, agroecological transitions, sustainability transitions, market infrastructures, entrepreneurship, values.