Toward a Processual Approach to Futurity in Meso-Critical Spaces: Framing Alternative Food Practices in Lyon[Pour une approche processuelle de la futurité dans les espaces méso-critiques – analyse du cadrage de l’alimentaire alternatif lyonnais]

This paper analyzes the structuring of alternative food systems, which emerged in response to the shortcomings of industrial agriculture and are driven by citizen-led and entrepreneurial initiatives. Initially marginal, these initiatives are now organized into networks that can be understood as meso-critical spaces. Drawing particularly on the concepts of frame and framing, the article examines how actors collectively construct the futurity. Through a longitudinal study (2008–2024) focused on the Lyon case, it shows that these framings, sometimes coherent, sometimes ambivalent, influence the meso-critical space's capacity to structure itself and transform practices. The central challenge lies in maintaining their alternativity, constantly threatened by processes of hybridization or isomorphism with the conventional model.