The Jazziness of Local Food Practice Work: Organization‐Level Ingenuity and the Entrepreneurial Formation and Evolution of Local Food Systems

Local food systems (LFSs) are complex and diverse social structures. The processes that influence the formation and evolution of LFSs are obscure, relatively uncoordinated, and somewhat mysterious. This study develops a stronger understanding of such processes through a qualitative exploration of the influence of routine practice work at the organization level on the entrepreneurial development of two distinct LFSs in the Southwest region of the United States: southeastern Arizona and Albuquerque?Santa Fe. We gathered data between August 2014 and September 2017 through semistructured interviews with and direct observations of 53 local food practitioners operating in one of the two LFSs. Theoretical principles of institutional entrepreneurship, embedded agency, and practice work guided the study. The findings reveal three forms of ingenuity (technological, organizational, policy) that regularly emerge through the day‐to‐day organization‐level work of local food practitioners. We argue that the system‐level influence of these forms, whether intentional or not, are indicators of the embedded agency of the practitioners and their capacities to serve as institutional entrepreneurs. We discuss implications for both practice and future research.     

On mitigating collinearity through mixtures

In linear models having near collinear columns of X, ridge and surrogate estimators often are used to mitigate collinearity. A new class of estimators is based on mixtures, either of X and a design minimal in an ordered class or of the Fisher information and a scalar matrix. Comparisons are drawn among choices for the mixing parameter, and the estimators are found to be admissible relative to ordinary least squares. Case studies demonstrate that selected mixture designs are perturbed from the original design to a lesser extent than are those of the surrogate method, while retaining reasonable efficiency characteristics.     

Contexts of Reception Seen and Constituted from Below: The Production of Refugee Status Apathy

Qualitative Sociology - Refugee status is often imagined as a holy grail. Yet it can have radically different meanings for refugees, even under inclusive policy regimes replete with legal and...     

Estimation of mixing proportions via distance between characteristic functions

The weighted and integrated squared error between the sample characteristic function and the assumed characteristic function is shown to be an effective procedure for estimation of mixing proportions. For a particular form of the weighting, this procedure is equivalent to that of minimization with respect to the mixing proportions of the integrated squared error between a density and its kernel estimate. The efficiency, mean squared error, and ease of computation properties of this procedure are compared against those of several competitors.     

Entrepreneurs in the rural environment

Change in rural activities is frequently seen as: (1) reaction to changes in other areas and sectors, and (2) negative. This downplays the role and importance of entrepreneurs, both farm and non-farm, in sustaining the vitality of rural areas. The notion of entrepreneur can be extended to entrepreneurial activity by other people, e.g. local government activity, which is an integral part of rural community economic development. Both the entrepreneur and the quasi-entrepreneur in local government are critical leaders in urban fringes and other rural areas alike. Their activity in an area is partly dependent upon the broader political, social and economic environment which influences: (1) the need to change and (2) whether any “benefit” can be derived from entrepreneurial activity. A framework is presented in this paper to place entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activity into the context first, of decision-taking generally in the rural environment, and second, of the broader “enabling” environment. It is argued that constraints originating in this broader environment are often necessary, but they may have unforeseen side-effects in discouraging innovation. Changes in such constraints or in the manner in which they are implemented may be a necessary ingredient to maintain rural vitality through encouraging entrepreneurial activity.