This article adopts the concept of prosumption in order to better understand the array of contemporary food sustainability transition initiatives that often come under the umbrella term of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). AFNs have developed in parallel to prosumption, which is significant because AFNs are oriented towards localized and direct relationships between producers and consumers, while prosumption explains the hybridization of the consumer into a more complex and productive actor. Scholars argue that producer-consumer reconnections enable greater transparency and information exchange between the two types of actors. In addition, digitalization has recently brought new perspectives for both prosumption and AFN research. We explain the digital food prosumption phenomenon by drawing upon several years of research on an alternative food network with strong digital focus – As a decentralized network of local food operations that converge around a digital platform, it provides innovative virtual-material mediations between producers and consumers. This suggests that increasingly, consumers may be getting more deeply engaged in the (co-)production of commodities across different sectors and activities. Thus, while the prosumption and AFN literatures have mostly existed in parallel, future efforts should be made to intersect these two areas of sociological research. This is particularly pertinent today, as both prosumption and AFN phenomena are now increasingly mediated by powerful digital technologies. In the digital age, the alternative food prosumer phenomenon may well contribute to reconfiguring global food flows and industrial cultures towards sustainability.

中文翻译：

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数字食品、无现金市场和中间第三地的重新连接：消费时代大都市食品供应的概念化

本文采用生产消费的概念，以便更好地理解一系列当代食品可持续性转型举措，这些举措通常属于替代食品网络 (AFN) 的范畴。AFN 与产销并行发展，这一点很重要，因为 AFN 面向生产者和消费者之间的本地化和直接关系，而产销则解释了消费者与更复杂和更具生产力的参与者的混合。学者们认为，生产者与消费者的重新联系可以提高两类参与者之间的透明度和信息交换。此外，数字化最近为生产和 AFN 研究带来了新的视角。我们通过多年来对具有强烈数字重点的替代食品网络的研究来解释数字食品消费现象——作为围绕数字平台汇聚的当地食品运营的去中心化网络，它在生产者和消费者之间提供创新的虚拟物质中介。这表明，消费者可能越来越深入地参与不同部门和活动的商品（联合）生产。因此，虽然产销和AFN文献大多并行存在，但未来应该努力将这两个社会学研究领域交叉起来。这在今天尤其重要，因为生产消费和 AFN 现象现在越来越多地由强大的数字技术来调节。在数字时代，替代食品产消者现象很可能有助于重新配置全球食品流动和工业文化，以实现可持续发展。