Food System Through the Lens of a Circular Society: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Integrating Literature and Practice

ABSTRACT Circular society (CS) conceptualises circularity as a multi‐level governance transformation involving the redistribution of authority, responsibility and coordination across socio‐institutional systems. Yet the concept remains insufficiently operationalised in empirical research. This study advances the empirical operationalisation of CS as a governance‐diagnostic framework within food systems. Through a transdisciplinary design, it combines a scoping review of 238 studies and stakeholder workshops involving 68 participants to map actor‐role distributions and identify transition leverage domains. The literature mapping shows that circular actions are concentrated at meso and micro levels, with limited engagement at macro and exo governance levels. In contrast, stakeholders located transformative leverage at macro and exo levels, prioritising procurement mandates, fiscal instruments and regulatory redesign while identifying cross‐level coordination deficits as key constraints. The divergence between literature emphasis and stakeholder prioritisation exposes institutional asymmetries in circular transition pathways. By integrating literature‐based actor mapping with stakeholder‐based prioritisation, the study operationalises circular society as a governance‐diagnostic framework for identifying leverage domains in circular food system transitions.