Urban agriculture in São Paulo: an analysis from the sociology of public action

How can one analyze the public actions of organizations and actors from different sectors? Studies using a policy analysis perspective have shed light on the role of the state in making and implementing urban agriculture (UA) policy. However, this perspective has limitations when it comes to explaining the interactions between the state, civil society, and the business organizations that support it. This article provides an analytical framework derived from the sociology of public action (SPA) to understand how multiple organizations support UA. We have applied the SPA framework to the city of São Paulo and our analysis indicates that civil society has mobilized significant meanings, ideas, and networks to reinforce the importance of UA. As a result, there has been a paradigm shift in terms of UA: it has gone from a state of invisibility within an institutional void to an improved state of policy planning. However, civil society organizations still lead the delivery of services for farmers with intermittent state support, which indicates that there has been a paradigm shift in UA policy planning, but not in policy implementation.