Creating alternative economic spaces. The socially innovative practices of solidarity purchasing groups

Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) are emblematic of social innovation in agriculture. Scholars coined the term to refer to groups of individuals who organize themselves to collectively buy primary goods, avoiding mass retailers' intermediation and putting in question the actual economic relations behind the system of food distribution. Their main declared aim is to foster the economic and social conditions of the producers they collaborate with. A closer look at their inner functioning, however, gives a more nuanced panorama, in which the altruistic dimensions of SPG activities do not exclude paternalistic practices. Drawing from forty interviews conducted in Italy in 2015, the chapter highlights how and to what extent their socially innovative practices have reduced the economic marginalization of producers.