Civil society as networks of issues and associations: The case of food

In this chapter, we provide an empirical illustration of how to apply a relational approach to the study of civil society. By this we mean an approach with which one can combine attention to the traits of civil society actors and to the relations between them, and use network data to explain and understand civil society, its collective processes, and its role in wider society. Building on our previous work, we rely on social network analysis (henceforth, SNA) to explore civil society as a set of (a) multiple networks connecting a multiplicity of collective agents and (b) ideational elements that assign a specific meaning to collective action.