This paper explores the role of collective action on food within broader civil society networks in British and South African cities. It does so by taking two broad, complementary perspectives. (a) A perspective of issue networks: The paper posits that the meaning of specific issues is best captured if they are explored in the light of their connections to other public issues, i.e., as part of broader agendas. In principle, food may represent an element of a number of different agendas: it may be part of an environmentalist approach, aimed at transforming the behaviour of both individual citizens and institutions in a more sustainable direction; of a strategy fighting social exclusion, emphasizing dispossessed citizens’ rights to higher standards of living; of the search for alternative lifestyles and/or radical alternatives to neoliberal forms of organizing social life; etc.(b) A perspective of organizational networks: The paper explores to what extent actors interested in food differ from the rest of civil society in their traits as well as in their relational patterns, i.e., in their position within civic networks. First, does the profile of organizations working on food differ in significant ways from that of other civic organizations in their formal structures, repertoires of action, broad agendas, relation to local institutions and public agencies, basic ideological orientations? Second, and most important, do food-related organizations represent a distinctive component of local civic networks because of their centrality, or their representing specific clusters, or their occupying specific positions? And does an interest in food issues affects chances of interaction in a similar way to what has been found for environmental issues.
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