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Agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa continue to face mounting pressures from food insecurity, climate variability, and the erosion of agro-biodiversity. In Benin, neglected and underutilized species (NUS)—including fonio, Bambara groundnut, sesame, and sweet potato—offer significant nutritional, cultural, and ecological benefits, yet they remain largely absent from national agricultural policy priorities. This study examines how actors in the Atacora region engage with this policy gap by analyzing the diversity of NUS cultivated, the institutional treatment of these species, and the ways producers and organizations perceive and adapt to weak policy support. Using an actor-oriented approach and a mixed-methods design, the research combines a review of major agricultural policy instruments with empirical data from 60 semi-structured interviews involving farmers, cooperatives, NGOs, development projects, research institutions, and public agencies. Results show that NUS are sustained primarily through grassroots and NGO-led initiatives, while state institutions contribute little beyond broad diversification rhetoric. Producers’ perceptions of agricultural policies are predominantly uninformed or negative, and organizational actors highlight significant gaps in institutional visibility, program design, and extension support. In response, actors mobilize a combination of endogenous strategies—such as seed exchange networks, collective labor, and local processing—and exogenous measures including training, equipment provision, and certification. The study demonstrates that NUS valorization in Benin emerges from hybrid governance arrangements shaped by policy neglect and strong local agency. It further shows the value of an actor-oriented lens for understanding how agricultural policies are interpreted and transformed within local food systems.

This paper has evolved out of a growing dissatisfaction with the relatively uncritical acceptance in contemporary debates that agriculture in advanced societies has moved from 'productivism' to 'post-productivism'. A brief review of current conceptualizations of productivist and post-productivist agricultural regimes reveals inconsistencies in current understandings these dualistic terms. The problem has partly been that the conceptual literature on post-productivism has largely failed to take into account the wealth of actor-oriented and behaviourally grounded research. Productivist and post-productivist agricultural regimes have also been conceptualized from a UK-centric perspective that has largely failed to discuss whether the concept has wider applicability within Europe and beyond. The paper discusses the time-lag and spatial inconsistencies in the adoption of post-productivist action and thought, and emphasizes that different localities are positioned at different points in a temporal, spatial and conceptual transition from 'pre-productivist' to 'post-productivist' agricultural regimes. The notion of the 'territorialization' of productivist and post-productivist actor spaces highlights the wide-ranging diversity that exists within the productivist/post-productivist spectrum, and that productivist and post-productivist action and thought occurs in multidimensional coexistence leads one to question the implied directionality of the traditional productivist/post-productivist debate. It is suggested that the notion of a 'multifunctional agricultural regime' better encapsulates the diversity, non-linearity and spatial heterogeneity that can currently be observed in modern agriculture and rural society.

Despite the introduction of social innovation in the 1996 White Paper on Science and Technology, the concept of social innovation has not been actively implemented or even diffused outside of the policy arena in South Africa. Perceptions about what the concept of social innovation should encompass are contested and range from ideas of social welfare outcomes, public goods and a primary focus on the poor. More recently, the emphasis has been on inclusive development that embraces and supports the poor as innovators and which incorporates elements of social and economic development. While contestation in terminology persists, evidence from South Africa's rural areas suggests that although there may be limited state intervention, hampered by structural constraints, and limited understanding of contemporary ideas about innovation and social innovation, local actors practise a variety of forms of social innovation. In most instances, the purpose is to improve social and economic well-being of the poor. Such innovation activities occur almost as widely and as often as strictly commercially oriented innovation activities. However, it is unclear from observed social innovation practices who should benefit from these practices (the poor or everyone), how (directly or indirectly) and when (immediately or gradually). It is suggested that extensive use of the actor-oriented sociological approach to understanding social dynamics in both science and development can provide a means of understanding the subtleties involved in innovation practices and its use should be adopted to address structural challenges within the National System of Innovation that mediate against the contribution of innovations to the poor for inclusive development.

Ethnic minority households in upland northern Vietnam are shaping culturally appropriate rural livelihoods in highly pragmatic ways, as they negotiate the everyday realities of economic liberalization, intertwined with centralized and authoritarian socialist political structures. Notions of \"social interface\" from actor-oriented analyses, everyday politics, and covert forms of everyday resistance provide a heuristic device to understand the nuanced decision-making processes underlying such livelihoods. Ethnographic data reveal how Hmong ethnic minority individuals and households augment agricultural livelihoods by navigating new economic opportunities, while also resisting unwanted reliance on the market. Based in Sa Pa district, Lào Cai province, the research in this article identifies three particular diversification strategies-cardamom cultivation, textile trade, and tourism trekking-that currently form the foremost cash component of Hmong livelihoods that are otherwise largely subsistence based. Livelihood decision-making processes among these upland rural dwellers are mediated by a complex and multifaceted social interface involving state policy, the actions of local officials, and ethnically embedded social relations, negotiations, and struggles that, in turn, are shaped by everyday politics. The case points to the value of incorporating such findings into alternative discourses of upland development to support the design of more appropriate livelihood and development policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically challenged urban food systems, has hurt the resilience and fundamental function of urban food systems and also accelerated the trends of digitization and changing preferences of consumers in cities. This research conducted a qualitative analysis of the discourses, actions and interactions of different actors in the urban food systems in China during COVID-19 using an actor-oriented approach and discourse analysis. This research finds that stricter regulations and policies have been implemented by governments to regulate the food supply chain and ensure human health. Local community service personnel, volunteers, stakeholders along the food supply chain and consumers formulated collective actions during the pandemic yet chaos and discourse distortions also emerged at different stages. The pandemic is a preamble to changes in consumers’ preferences and food supply chains in urban communities. There were significant structural changes and a dual structure of urban and rural food systems, where unbalanced supply and demand existed. Collective actions with community governance and an innovative food business model to digitize flows and easily adapt to shocks in food systems are required.

The current framework of agroecosystem (AES) knowledge focuses on a systemic approach or static structures rather than on dynamic processes that are defined historically. The hypothesis is that agroecosystems are the product of the interdependence of a diversity of actors (present and absent) and, therefore, constitute complex social interfaces, which, in order to address them, require a new understanding of the centrality of the actors and their capacity for agency. Then, regarding this complexity, some aspects are not clearly defined in the systemic approach which need to be more explicit such as: (a) the implicit psychosocial aspects and (b) the relationships with their social environment, how these affect them and are affected by them. The purpose of this document is to suggest a theoretical and conceptual approach to correct these unclear areas. First, the centrality of actors (including their agency capacity) in the AES is recognized. Besides, their interdependence with the diversity of actors (present and absent) and therefore the need to analyze the AES complex social interfaces.

En este artículo se analiza el proceso de resistencia del pueblo otomí-mexica al despojo de su territorio, ocasionado por el proyecto carretero Toluca-Naucalpan desde 2007 hasta 2020. La investigación siguió un enfoque orientado al actor como marco interpretativo; durante el trabajo de campo se realizaron entrevistas en profundidad, así como recorridos y diálogos con la comunidad. Para el análisis y la interpretación se utilizaron los conceptos mundos de vida, interfaz y despojo. Se muestra cómo la construcción de la carretera se llevó a cabo sin consulta previa y en contra de los derechos e intereses de la comunidad. The article analyses the resistance process of the Otomi-Mexica people to the dispossession of their territory, due to the Toluca-Naucalpan highway project from 2007 to 2020. The research followed the actor-oriented approach as an interpretive framework; during the fieldwork, techniques such as in-depth interviews, collective tours, and dialogues with the community were implemented. For both the analysis and interpretation, the concepts of life worlds, interface and dispossession were used. The work shows how the road construction was performed without any prior consultation and against the community’s rights and interests.

Despite the introduction of social innovation in the 1996 White Paper on Science and Technology, the concept of social innovation has not been actively implemented or even diffused outside of the policy arena in South Africa. Perceptions about what the concept of social innovation should encompass are contested and range from ideas of social welfare outcomes, public goods and a primary focus on the poor. More recently, the emphasis has been on inclusive development that embraces and supports the poor as innovators and which incorporates elements of social and economic development. While contestation in terminology persists, evidence from South Africa's rural areas suggests that although there may be limited state intervention, hampered by structural constraints, and limited understanding of contemporary ideas about innovation and social innovation, local actors practise a variety of forms of social innovation. In most instances, the purpose is to improve social and economic well-being of the poor. Such innovation activities occur almost as widely and as often as strictly commercially oriented innovation activities. However, it is unclear from observed social innovation practices who should benefit from these practices (the poor or everyone), how (directly or indirectly) and when (immediately or gradually). It is suggested that extensive use of the actor-oriented sociological approach to understanding social dynamics in both science and development can provide a means of understanding the subtleties involved in innovation practices and its use should be adopted to address structural challenges within the National System of Innovation that mediate against the contribution of innovations to the poor for inclusive development.

Many processes related to rural development have a strong psychosocial component. Yet, there exists nospecific psychosocial theoretical framework for addressing them. In this paper, then, we present a set oftheoretical guidelines for analysing rural development processes and interventions from the perspective ofpsychology. In doing so, we draw upon an Actor-Oriented Approach and address concepts commonly usedin rural development studies, such as human agency, social interfaces, worldviews, rationales and strategies,and explore their psychosocial dimensions. This enables us to advance a psychosocial understanding of thecomplexity and multi-determination that characterises processes of rural development, and thus in this wayto add a new perspective to rural development studies.

Within a few years following its ambitious promotion in 2006, the development of jatropha in Indonesia came to a halt. Claimed as a potential solution to problems in energy and poverty, the introduction of jatropha in Indonesia’s energy policy had been triggered by the high oil prices in 2005. While studies by biofuel scholars have generally focused on what brought the end of the “miracle crop” hype by underlining various technical problems and the absence of market structure as the cause of its failure, few have examined jatropha as part of a policy-making trajectory, which began with, and was influenced by, the development narratives disseminated by individual actors. This article sheds light on the role of elite actors in the making of biofuel energy policy in Indonesia. Taking the case of the promotion of jatropha in 2005–2007, the article illustrates the role of the director of Indonesia’s leading sugar state-owned enterprise (SOE), Rajawali Nusantara Indonesia (RNI), whose decision in promoting jatropha became influential in forwarding its narratives into the national energy and development policy in 2006. In order to discover why a specific elite actor decided to promote jatropha, the article relies on data, including the SOE’s documents and interviews with key actor(s). The analysis is conducted using an actor-oriented approach, which underlines the discrepancy between the ideals and the operational practice of developmental goals.