Modes of food production–consumption defined as ‘alternative’ have received considerable academic attention, with studies exploring both their potential for contributing to rural development strategies and the opportunities they provide for countering established power relations in food supply systems. However, the use of the term ‘alternative’ as part of a persistent dualism in which it is opposed to the ‘conventional’ is problematic as it loses sight of the specificity of different examples food production–consumption. Based on extensive field research with a series of very different food projects, this article develops a methodological framework which structures a description of how specific examples of food production–consumption are organised with reference to a series of analytical fields. This framework retains a sense of the diversity and particularity of particular cases of production–consumption, and directs attention to the particular locations of resistance to prevalent power relations in food systems that are made possible through different food projects.

Considerable academic interest now revolves around the recomposition of specific (or ‘alternative’) food chains based on notions of quality, territory and social embeddedness.A key to such recomposition is the marketing of ‘difference’ through a range of accreditation and labelling schemes. Using examples from Europe and North America, this paper examines how ‘difference’ is constructed by producers and other actors in the food supply chain by combining the attributes of ‘product, process and place’ (PPP) in a range of marketing and labelling schemes. Results indicate that it is possible to identify ‘critical’ and ‘territorial development’ rationales that influence the ways in which the three Ps are combined. An examination of the rationales and practices sustaining such labelling schemes provides insights into some of the opportunities and threats shaping the emergence of new geographies of food production and consumption in Europe and North America.

Set within the context of recent rural restructuring in developed market economies, the authors examine the potential of niche markets for speciality food products (SFPs) to contribute towards rural development in peripheral (lagging) regions. Drawing on elements of regulation theory, actor-network approaches, and consumption studies, niche markets for SFPs are conceptualised as the outcomes of the intersecting activities of networks of producers, consumers, and institutions. On the basis of this conceptualisation and preliminary empirical evidence from a European research project, it is suggested that unique configurations of networks at local and regional levels, and their relationships to cxtralocal networks, will contribute to the success or failure of regional SFPs in promoting endogenous development. It is also argued that a focus on particular products, markets, and regions is required to gain a holistic understanding of the complex and contested network relationships through which niche markets for SFPs are constructed.