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Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances, Perpetuations … Contestations?
Abstract
Academics and activists highlight the potential for alternative agrifood movements to contribute to the evolving coalescence of justice and sustainability. This potential, however, is constrained by what scholars have identified as the prevalent whiteness of such movements. This paper uses ethnographic research at two northern California farmers markets to investigate how whiteness is performed and perpetuated through the movements’ discourses and practices. We found that many managers, vendors and customers hold notions of what farmers and community members should be that both reflect and inform an affluent, liberal habitus of whiteness. Although whiteness pervades these spaces, we have also witnessed individual discourses and acts of solidarity and anti-racism, as well as fledgling institutional efforts to contest white cultural dominance. We conclude by discussing the potential of farmers markets to create an anti-racist politics of food.
... As low-income consumers struggle to meet daily nutrition demands, elites spend freely on niche and artisan food (Slocum 2007), which leads to the perception that farmers markets exist for privileged consumers. The divide between high-income, white consumers and low-income and minority consumers drives what Alkon and McCullen (2011) describe as the "white community imaginary", whereby the former does not even associate the latter with the food system. ...
... Because farmers markets are promoted as an inclusive community event, the overwhelmingly white patrons believe the markets represent the broader community, assuming that the few lowincome and minority consumers they see reflect community dynamics (Alkon and McCullen 2011). Alternatively, low-income and minority consumers are often hyper-aware of the white, upper-class majority in these spaces. ...
... Alternatively, low-income and minority consumers are often hyper-aware of the white, upper-class majority in these spaces. They may be uncomfortable around the "bourgeoisie crowd" (Ritter et al. 2019) or feel otherised by the process of waiting in line at the market manager booth to trade their food assistance benefits for market tokens, which prevents them from blending in with cash or credit card shoppers (Alkon and McCullen 2011). Some lowincome shoppers have also described feeling disrespected by vendors who were inconvenienced by their use of tokens, which adds a step in the purchase process (Freedman et al. 2016), further re-entrenching the perception of an us/them divide. ...
Farmers markets and public health organisations aim to improve access to fresh produce for low-income consumers. While recent efforts to expand the use of food assistance benefits at farmers markets support this goal, persistent barriers related to transportation, convenience, price, exclusivity, and administrative burden still limit low-income participation at these venues. Mobile farmers markets, which bring produce directly to the customer, aim to address these barriers. But research on the effectiveness of mobile markets, especially from the customer perspective, is limited. Our project, a partnership with a local non-profit, explores if and how a mobile farmers market in the Rust Belt Midwest reduces barriers to farmers market access for low-income and minority consumers. Our data demonstrates a strong tie between market activities and customer wellbeing. Staff and customer interviews and participant observation show that the mobile market effectively alleviates many entrenched barriers to farmers market access for low-income and minority customers. Like many venues, though, this market also still struggles with the logistics of administering food assistance benefits. Our findings illuminate strategies for improving fresh food access for low-income and minority consumers that are relevant for other programmes and contexts. ARTICLE HISTORY
... However, these types of previously "alternative" sustainable food activities now supported by urban food policies in the Global North have been critiqued on the part that they "often normalize and promote dominant food practices, creating hegemonic "white food spaces" (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Huang 2020;Matacena 2016;Minkoff-Zern 2014, p. 1192Slocum 2007). These dynamics call into question who is considered or able to become a food citizen. ...
... Many critical food scholars have highlighted alternative food as a concept that both symbolically and materially excludes racialized, low-income, and immigrant communities (Alkon 2013;Alkon and McCullen 2011;Guthman 2008a, b;Slocum 2007Slocum , 2011. While alternative food activities are set as the "standard for good food practices" (Goodman et al. 2010;Joassart-Marcelli 2021, p. 12) and people who engage in such behaviours are regarded as "food citizens" (Gómez-Benito and Lozano 2014; O'Kane 2016), participation is frequently coded as white. ...
... The recent "foodie" turn towards valorizing engagement with immigrant foodscapes as a form of cultural capital reflects "a moment characterized by a seemingly growing openness to cultural diversity often described as cosmopolitanism" -a phenomenon rife with dynamics of displacement, appropriation, and erasure (hooks 2014;Joassart-Marcelli 2021, p. 4). Scholars have highlighted how alternative food spaces that cater to white, affluent consumers largely exclude immigrants, particularly racialized ones; when immigrants do engage with the dominant norms of food sustainability, their efforts go unrecognized (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Fitting et al. 2023;Gibb and Wittman 2013;Huang 2020;Minkoff-Zern 2014;Slocum 2007). As a result, the existing and potential contributions of immigrant foodways and foodscapes to sustainable food systems are rendered invisible -or even framed as problematic (Minkoff-Zern 2014). ...
Multicultural cities in the Global North are rapidly developing and releasing urban food policies that outline municipal visions of sustainable food systems. In turn, these policies shape conceptions of food citizenship in the city. While these policies largely absorb activities previously associated with “alternative” food systems, little is known about how they respond to critical food and race scholars who have noted that these food practices and spaces have historically marginalized immigrants. A critical discourse analysis of 22 urban food policies from Global North cities reveals that most policies do not meaningfully consider immigrant foodscapes, foodways, and food-related labour. Many promote hegemonic and/or ethno-nationalistic understandings of “healthy” and “sustainable” food without recognizing immigrants’ food-related knowledge and skills. Policies largely fail to connect the topic of immigrant labour with goals like shortening supply chains, subject immigrant neighbourhoods to stigmatizing health discourses, and lack acknowledgement of the barriers immigrants may face to participating in sustainable food systems. Relatedly, policy discourses articulate forms of food citizenship that emphasize individual obligations over rights related to food. This jeopardizes the potential for immigrants to be seen as belonging to dominant political urban food communities and benefitting from the symbolic and material rewards associated with them.
... Additionally, white-led urban farms and gardens tend to adopt a public-facing orientation to their practice, attempting to create an inclusive atmosphere by broadcasting their vision and mission widely, both within the immediate community and beyond (Alkon et al., 2019;Glennie, 2020). Additional studies have shown that overtime the impact of this narrow vision can produce urban agriculture spaces dominated by privileged participants wherein the intent to improve urban space through the performance of sustainability overshadows existing efforts among racialized residents to express ownership and cultivate a sense of belonging (Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Mares and Peña, 2010). In the Vancouver, Canada context, Gibb and Wittman (2013) found that Chinese-Canadian farmers were both hesitant to engage in and excluded from farmers' markets and related local food practices. ...
... We applied the dimensional framework of green gentrification to a case study of the Pearson Dogwood redevelopment, specifically focusing on the intention to integrate a one-acre urban farm into its site design. We noted a limited orientation to sustainability mediated through hegemonic conceptions of urban agriculture and advancing a vision of food activism supportive of a neoliberal development vision (Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Guthman, 2011). We assert that this image of sustainability is leveraged to distinguish Cambie Gardens, the final manifestation of the redevelopment, as an elite urban community attractive to privileged audiences. ...
... Above, we reviewed the vision and motivations guiding the implementation of the Cambie Gardens farm, finding that VCH, Onni, and CoV are promoting a limited conceptualization of urban agriculture aligned with narrow notions of food activism (Alkon and McCullen, 2011). As such, we argued that the farm serves to establish a sustainability aesthetic for Cambie Gardens with the goal of appealing to a privileged clientele despite its stated vision of community engagement and education. ...
There is substantial evidence detailing the ecological and social benefits provided through urban greening. However, research in the field of urban green equity has revealed that these benefits are not enjoyed equitably by all residents; existing disparities in the distribution, accessibility, and experience of urban greening disproportionately affect historically marginalized communities and residents. Furthermore, green gentrification scholarship has indicated that instances of urban greening intended to rectify inequities, can contribute to or elicit shifts in property values, encouraging speculative commercial and retail investment, disrupting existing socio-spatial relationships, and threatening the housing security of residents. Although there is consensus on this general characterization of green gentrification, many questions remain concerning the relationships between urban residents engaged in small-scale urban greening and the perpetuation of green gentrification outcomes. Contributing to this line of inquiry, we present a case study of an urban farm operating in Vancouver, Canada, facing displacement due to the redevelopment of its current site. Our results from the study illuminate the contradictory position in which urban residents practicing urban greening are sometimes placed—both implicated in and impacted by green gentrification processes. We present a review of our case study to highlight the power dynamics that farm members must navigate in the effort to preserve their access to land and continue their farming practice. Then, we discuss the farm's role as a consultant for the redevelopment process, exploring how its vision, mission, and identity have been co-opted by development agents and used as a branding tool to promote and support the public perception of the redevelopment. Our findings offer insight into novel relationships between urban agriculture, large-scale redevelopment, and green gentrification. What's more, they contribute to existing discourse concerning the limitations of development processes to account for the risks of green gentrification.
... A major focus of critical studies on CFS is on the extent and efficacy of realizing diversity, equity, and inclusion ideals (Green et al. 2011;Penniman 2018;Raja 2020;Jackson 2021) and the social justice potential of CFS to reorient food systems more broadly (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Lambert-Pennington and Hicks 2016). Where 95% of US farmers identify as white (USDA NASS 2019) and very few food retail owners or managers identify as Black even in majority-Black cities (Perkins 2018), recent food justice and agricultural extension work seeks to more explicitly include growers of color. ...
... Where 95% of US farmers identify as white (USDA NASS 2019) and very few food retail owners or managers identify as Black even in majority-Black cities (Perkins 2018), recent food justice and agricultural extension work seeks to more explicitly include growers of color. In addition, multiple studies highlight the whiteness of CFS market spaces (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Lambert-Pennington and Hicks 2016;Figueroa-Rodríguez 2019) from market organizers to shoppers at farmers markets, CFS participants tend to be white, well-educated, and affluent (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Alkon and Cadji 2020;Warsaw et al 2021), even when the market occupies space in a marginalized geography (Rice 2015). While many BIPOCmanaged farms and markets may be new or new to CFS spaces, we demonstrate how a network approach can make equitable access to markets more explicit. ...
... Where 95% of US farmers identify as white (USDA NASS 2019) and very few food retail owners or managers identify as Black even in majority-Black cities (Perkins 2018), recent food justice and agricultural extension work seeks to more explicitly include growers of color. In addition, multiple studies highlight the whiteness of CFS market spaces (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Lambert-Pennington and Hicks 2016;Figueroa-Rodríguez 2019) from market organizers to shoppers at farmers markets, CFS participants tend to be white, well-educated, and affluent (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Alkon and Cadji 2020;Warsaw et al 2021), even when the market occupies space in a marginalized geography (Rice 2015). While many BIPOCmanaged farms and markets may be new or new to CFS spaces, we demonstrate how a network approach can make equitable access to markets more explicit. ...
Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census.
... Markets are seen as local events, which allow meaningful encounters between inhabitants (Watson, 2009). Similarly, fresh food markets and farmers' markets are often presented as places where local consumers buy directly from farmers (Alkon & McCullen, 2011). This chapter explores how the local character of markets is produced by different market participants, such as customers, farmers/vendors and local authorities. ...
... assumed natural locality of markets allows us to unpack interesting aspects regarding the ways in which market actors produce proximity. Relational proximity is often presented as having particular qualities (Alkon & McCullen, 2011), which ideally embody mutual, long-established familiarity and trust. As studies on local food systems have argued, such a face-to-face interaction between consumers and growers is opposed to large-scale, industrialised systems of food production and distribution (Eriksen, 2013;Hinrichts, 2003), and this is an important facet upon which outdoor markets capitalise. ...
... While customers on the market usually come into contact with Swiss farmers or their Swiss student employees, they rarely meet all those who have also worked to plant and harvest the produce. Analysing farmers' markets in the United States, Alkon and McCullen (2011) observe that the Latino/a farmworkers, who are instrumental to producing the food, seldom sell at farmers' markets. "Indeed, despite consumers' assumptions to the contrary, many market farms rely heavily on non-family labour" (Alkon & McCullen, 2011: 946). ...
... Studies have emphasized regional specificities and parsed out the advantages and disadvantages of certain spaces, practices, or forms of producer-consumer engagement over others, limitations for farmers and barriers for consumers in continuous and active participation in these spaces and networks. With respect to the FMs in the US for example, scholars have identified race and class to constitute major barriers to, (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Guthman, 2008;Slocum, 2007;Slocum, 2008;Alkon, 2008;Colasanti, Conner, & Smalley, 2010;Hamilton et. al., 2020;Hulbrock et. ...
... Through the bazaars, such concerns can even become foundational to the neighborhood community. On the other hand, as noted in the literature, the locavore movement already has a significant class problem, where lower-class people, in tandem with their race and/or ethnicity, are excluded from the movement (Alkon & McCullen, 2011). No doubt, the FMs, as the movement's flagship organizations, reproduce and reinforce these dynamics (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Colasanti, Conner, & Smalley, 2010;Guthman, 2008;Slocum, 2007). ...
... On the other hand, as noted in the literature, the locavore movement already has a significant class problem, where lower-class people, in tandem with their race and/or ethnicity, are excluded from the movement (Alkon & McCullen, 2011). No doubt, the FMs, as the movement's flagship organizations, reproduce and reinforce these dynamics (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Colasanti, Conner, & Smalley, 2010;Guthman, 2008;Slocum, 2007). As such, to expect that the movement will in fact be able to articulate its major concerns to speak to a wider public through the bazaars is somewhat unrealistic. ...
Bu makale, İstanbul’daki haftalık pazarları ve üretici pazarlarını, gıdanın sosyal, mekânsal ve ekolojik gömülülüğü bağlamında değerlendirmektedir. Makale, öncelikle, gömülülük yazınının ağırlıklı olarak Küresel Kuzey'deki vakalara odaklandığını ve farklı gıda aktörlerinin (toptancılar, satıcılar, çiftçiler, çiftçi-satıcılar) ve üretim uygulamalarının (yerel vs. alternatif (sertifikalı organik vs. sertifikasız organik vs. topluluk destekli sertifikalı vs. 'doğal') vs. konvansiyonel) sıklıkla bir arada bulunabileceği Küresel Güney örneklerini nispeten görmezden geldiğini savunmaktadır. Ardından, İstanbul'un pazarlarında ve yerellik hareketiyle ilişkili üretici pazarlarında yapılan katılımcı gözlem ve görüşme verilerini kullanarak, her iki alanda da gıdanın yeniden sosyalleştirildiğini ve yeniden mekânsallaştırıldığını ortaya koymaktadır. Bununla birlikte, iki alandaki sosyalleştirme ve mekânsallaştırma arasında yapısal olarak farklılıklar vardır: Üretici pazarlarında tüketiciler ve üreticiler arasında önemli sosyo-ekonomik farklılıklar olsa bile, üretici pazarları, ekoloji bilinci yüksek gıda vatandaşlarından oluşan bir topluluk oluşturmayı amaçlarken, pazarlarda mahalle cemaatinin korunması vurgulanmaktadır. Ancak kimlerin bu mahalle cemaatine dahil olduğu mahalleye ve pazara özgüdür. Mesela, şehrin çeperlerindeki pazarlarda satıcılar, çiftçi-satıcılar ve tüketiciler bu cemaatin bir parçası olabilirken; merkezi konumdaki pazarlarda, pazarcılar dışlanır ve pazar dışında var olan mahalle cemaati yeniden üretilir. Kısacası, pazarlar ve üretici pazarları arasında gıdanın sosyal, mekânsal ve ekolojik gömülülüğü açısından farklılıklar olduğu gibi, pazarların ve üretici pazarlarının içinde de bulundukları yerlerden mütevellit farklılıklar mevcuttur. Makale, bu farklılıkların özellikle yerellik odaklı gıda hareketi için ne gibi fırsatlar ve sıkıntılar doğurabileceği tartışılarak sonuçlanmaktadır.
... Historically, the alternative agrifood movement has been associated with white-led organizations and projects (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Guthman 2008Guthman , 2011. Whereas the food justice movement-focusing on racism-has been led by communities of color (Leslie and White 2018). ...
... This movement's failure to view racism as a key issue of injustice in the food system has often led to alternative agrifood projects and solutions that fail to address economic and racial disparities (Leslie and White 2018). Farmers' Markets, for example, address many of the concerns of the alternative food movement, such as the viability of small-scale farms, but have been criticized for their inaccessibility (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Guthman 2008Guthman , 2011. Leslie and White (2018) further argue that the alternative agrifood movement reproduces inequalities through a lack of roots in and connection with communities of color. ...
Farmers, especially those within historically underserved populations, utilize networks to access educational training, community support, and market opportunities. Through a case study of the Pennsylvania Women's Agriculture Network's three-year Women's Rural–Urban Network (WRUN) initiative, this research analyzes the process of developing solidarity across geographic and racial lines while building a statewide farmers' network. Applying White's (2018) Collective Agency Community Resilience (CACR) theoretical framework to this initiative offers a way to evaluate how socially marginalized groups in agriculture build farmers’ networks to resist oppression within the white heteropatriarchal agricultural system. This research draws on interviews with 12 steering committee members and three years of participant observation to understand how participants assessed the initiative. Findings suggest that changes to existing programming were influential in creating a place for diverse women farmers and growers to meet, thus contributing to prefigurative politics; however, the inability to form commons as praxis and economic autonomy due to divergent needs, varying roles in the agrifood system, and different levels of engagement with racial justice deterred network-building efforts. This initiative examines food justice theory through praxis. Findings offer insights for predominately white non-profits, research institutions, and activists in future anti-racism and food justice efforts in the agrifood system.
... What is striking is that less affluent individuals also indicate a concern over nutrition and health, but often do not associate local food as being part of that nutrition-health nexus (see Kato, 2013). Further, DTC establishments (particularly CSAs and farmers markets) are significantly marked as white and upper-middle class spaces (see Alkon and Mares, 2012;Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Allen, 2008;Cone and Myhre, 2000;Farmer et al., 2014;Guthman, 2008aGuthman, , 2008bHinrichs, 2003;Johnston and Baumann, 2010;Macias, 2008;O'Hara and Stagl, 2001;Slocum, 2006). ...
... In this section, we consider the implications of such findings and conjecture a possible explanation. Prior research has consistently found that localized SFSC outlets (particularly CSAs) are predominately White spaces and has indicated the challenges associated with further including people of color (Allen, 2008;Guthman, 2008b;Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Galt et al., 2017;McGuirt et al., 2018;Joyner et al., 2022). Our findings largely support this when we look at farmstands and PYOs. ...
This paper examines three types of locally oriented Short Food Supply Chains in southern New England and their spatial alignment with a variety of demographic factors. We find that pay-as-you-go operations are particularly likely in predominantly White areas, and to some extent in higher income areas, but box share arrangements (i.e., community-supported agricultures) show stronger associations with educational attainment. Building on these empirical findings, we argue that local food availability is a systematically uneven phenomenon. Through the role of proximity we demonstrate how the dynamics of that availability vary with both outlet type and social characteristics.
... Their nostalgia for the past 'glory days' of the market and their romanticized imaginary of the 'local community' were based on exclusionary visions that glossed over past racial tensions and divisions. Similarly, Alkon and McCullen (2011) have warned about the romantization of locality and bounded community associated with marketplaces, as these notions risk reproducing privilege and whiteness. We agree with these diverse authors that marginalization and discrimination in the marketplace often reflect the dynamics of wider society, including marginalization along the lines of race and gender. ...
... As Roger Waldinger pointed out several decades ago, 'the same social relations that … enhance the ease and efficiency of economic exchanges among community members implicitly restrict outsiders' (Waldinger, 1995: 557; see also Portes, 1998). The literature on social boundaries and discrimination in European (and North American) marketplaces has largely focused on exclusion and marginalization occurring along lines of race and class, for example, in gentrified farmers' markets or antique dealers' markets (Watson and Wells, 2005;Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Tchoukaleyska, 2016). The example of Omar suggests, however, that exclusion is not only exercised by traders who have a privileged social status and are reproducing the social hierarchies and forms of marginalization found in wider society, for example, along lines of gender, class, age and race; the market also establishes its own internal hierarchies and forms of inclusion and exclusion based on internal norms and values such as longevity in the marketplace and perceived professionalism and work ethic. ...
Studies of marketplaces in the global North have often conceptualized markets as important public spaces of social encounter and conviviality where visitors, regardless of race, age, class or gender, feel they have an equal right to be. Yet comparatively little has been written about how inclusive European marketplaces are for the traders who (want to) work there. In this article we argue that the common conception of marketplaces as accessible to everyone, and as vehicles of socioeconomic mobility, is oversimplistic and romanticized. We draw on empirical data from marketplaces in four European countries to focus on the more or less informal ways in which markets are regulated by managers and traders themselves, and on the exclusionary and inclusionary effects of this process that may ultimately determine traders' access to and success in these markets. This article not only challenges dominant conceptions of marketplaces as accessible and inclusive, but also addresses prevalent stereotypes about economic practices in the global North and assumptions about the ways in which these differ from practices in the global South.
... Noting the diversity of practices, scholars have treated 'alternative networks' as an umbrella term to describe what they are not: Provisioning practices, mechanisms, networks that are different than, outside of, and in some cases, counter to the dominant, mainstream conventional agri-food systems (Barbera and Dagnes 2016;Alkon and McCullen 2011;Murdoch, Marsden, and Banks 2000;Sharp, Friesen, and Lewis 2015;Lamine 2015). There are, however, on-going discussions as to what this negation means, what it includes and excludes, and how it works in terms of practices. ...
... These exclusions surely are not unique to Istanbul. As studies show, alternative networks may (and in many cases, do) have exclusionary tendencies based on race and class (see, for example, (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Anguelovski 2015aAnguelovski , 2015bBradley and Herrera 2016). Yet, unlike in other cases, the exclusions in this case (re)present and (re)produce a more fundamental division, with regards to which adverse effects of the contemporary agri-food system get to be highlighted and which get to be ignored: While the increasing grip of conventional provisioning agents on the agricultural sector is problematized, for example, urban food insecurity is not. ...
Outside of the Global North, where agri-food systems have not yet consolidated into a ‘funnel shape,’ what makes an urban provisioning actor ‘alternative’ is not always clear. In this paper, I use members’ own definitions, emphases, and arguments to differentiate ‘alternative’ networks from other provisioning actors. Using data from semi-structured interviews, I show that while community-building and an affiliation with the food movement (broadly defined) are the most critical features identified by people who participate in these networks, more informal, ad hoc, familial or village networks that are utilized as a response to urban food insecurity are excluded. While such exclusions may not be unique, in this case, they reflect more fundamental divisions regarding what ‘alternative’ implies and how to challenge the throttling hold of conventional provisioning agents on the contemporary agri-food system.
... Like these studies, we find evidence that "precariousness has become a feature of hired work not only in so-called 'industrial' agriculture, but also amidst efforts to realize more socially just and ecologically sound alternatives" (Weiler et al. 2016, p.19). Our research thus contributes to an area of critical food studies that challenges unreflexive celebrations of localism, imagined as conflict-free, environmentally sustainable, socially just alternatives to industrial agriculture, and which tend to ignore labour, local politics, and are prone to corporate branding and cooptation (Alkon and McCullen 2011;Allen et al. 2003;Besky and Brown, 2015;DuPuis and Goodman 2005;Feagan 2007;Gray 2014;Guthman 2004;Hinrichs 2000Hinrichs , 2003. Drawing on this critical approach, we argue that the celebration of local foods by government and industry is a form of "local washing" which obscures their lack of financial and policy commitment to farmers and ignores systemic inequalities. ...
... This, coupled with the additional time and effort it might take when compared to the one-stop shopping of supermarkets, make farmers' markets unattractive or inaccessible to some consumers. Additionally, as spaces, farmers' markets can express a community imaginary of predominantly affluent white consumerism, "ethical posturing" (Guthman 2007b) and a "defensive localism" that discourages lowerincome and racialized people from participating (Alkon & McCullen 2011;Feagan et al. 2004, p. 240;Guthman 2008a and2008b). ...
This article explores the labour behind local food in the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers, migrant farmworkers, and farmers’ market consumers in the province, we suggest that the celebration of local food by government and industry is a form of “local washing.” Local washing hides key aspects of the social relations of production: in this case, it hides insufficient financial and policy supports for Nova Scotian farms and the increased reliance on migrant farmworkers via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our research found that a growing reliance on migrant farmworkers was not just the case for larger, industrial farms, but also for smaller farms participating in local and alternative food initiatives, like farmers’ markets and fresh produce subscription boxes. Additionally, our surveys show that while farmers’ market shoppers expressed an interest in supporting local foods, they reported knowing little about farm workers or working conditions. Our paper contributes to the literature on local and alternative food initiatives by connecting the relations of production to consumption. Rather than focusing solely on the nature of the relationships between farmers and consumers and the values embodied in direct agricultural markets, this research explores the central role of permanently temporary migrant workers in local agriculture.
... Socially, research finds that customers and vendors have meaningful interactions at farmers' markets (Alkon and McCullen, 2010;Aucoin and Fry, 2015;Carson et al., 2016;Morales, 2021). Farmers' markets can even be a place where people celebrate their culture (Alkon, 2007;Meyers, 2015). ...
... For farmers' markets with boards of directors, ensuring the board is composed of members inclusive of the market and the community's stakeholder groups may be one way to achieve this. Some research has found that markets can be exclusionary spaces (Alkon and McCullen, 2010;Rice, 2015), so offering opportunities for community-member and vendor input and leadership is important. For example, Carter (2021) described how the South Memphis Farmers Market was formed with a significant amount of resident input and successfully serves the primarily Black community in which it is located. ...
Purpose
This work aimed to show how farmers’ markets can act as communication infrastructure, and by doing so, facilitate civic engagement. We used communication infrastructure theory (CIT) as a guide.
Design/methodology/approach
We integrated findings from two surveys that took place in the US state of Wisconsin. In a survey of Wisconsin farmers’ market leaders, we considered what features farmers’ markets have that may help them act as communication infrastructure. Using data from a survey of Wisconsin residents, we ran a regression model to demonstrate the relationship between farmers’ market attendance and micro-level storytelling about local food.
Findings
We found that farmers’ markets can act as meso-level storytellers and provide a communication action context supportive of civic engagement. Through the farmers’ market leader survey, we found that over half of the markets noted existing partnerships with media outlets. Furthermore, farmers’ markets may connect residents to important organizations in the community. Many farmers’ markets had features to make them more physically and financially accessible, such as accepting food assistance benefits. With the Wisconsin resident survey, we found that farmers’ market attendance predicted storytelling about local food better than overall local food purchasing, further suggesting that markets can facilitate social interactions.
Originality/value
We document an important benefit that farmers’ markets can offer communities: they have the potential to act as communication infrastructure. As stronger communication infrastructure can facilitate civic engagement, this work provides a mechanism by which to connect civic agriculture activities and increased levels of civic engagement.
... A variety of initiatives have relied on using local food systems to increase access to healthy and affordable foods for low-income consumers (Evans et al., 2012;McCormack, Laska, Larson, & Story, 2010;Pitts et al., 2016). However, critics suggest that these initiatives should pay more attention to diverse populations' interactions with the food environment, including cultural, social, structural and religious barriers and assets to obtaining food (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Kato, 2013). In particular, research has shown that farmers' markets can be inconvenient for lower-income consumers to access and that they are often perceived to be spaces of affluence where lower-income consumers may feel less comfortable shopping (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Guthman, Morris, & Allen, 2006;Hinrichs & Allen, 2008;Kato, 2013;Wetherill & Gray, 2015). ...
... However, critics suggest that these initiatives should pay more attention to diverse populations' interactions with the food environment, including cultural, social, structural and religious barriers and assets to obtaining food (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Kato, 2013). In particular, research has shown that farmers' markets can be inconvenient for lower-income consumers to access and that they are often perceived to be spaces of affluence where lower-income consumers may feel less comfortable shopping (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Guthman, Morris, & Allen, 2006;Hinrichs & Allen, 2008;Kato, 2013;Wetherill & Gray, 2015). ...
Research indicates that low-income consumers are less likely to shop at farmers’ markets and that these individuals are often those with the lowest intake of fresh fruits and vegetables. This project aimed to improve familiarity with farmers’ markets among low-income consumers through guided tours of farmers’ markets, implemented as part of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). EFNEP Program Assistants (PAs) in five counties in North Carolina received training and partnered with a local Cooperative Extension agent to deliver a farmers’ market tour at the mid-point of a nine-lesson series on healthy eating. Forty-eight participants completed the series, completing a pre-and post-class series behavior change assessment and dietary recall. At entry, 54% of participants said they ate food that came from a local farm, compared to 94% at exit. Interviews with all PAs found that participants: plan to visit the farmers’ market again in the future, tried new recipes with foods purchased at the market, and learned how to talk with and ask questions of farmers’ market vendors. We argue that farmers’ market tours are a promising strategy for increasing familiarity with local foods, when carried out as part of a series of nutrition education classes.
... A second characteristic of critical bioregionalism should be a careful analysis of the subjects who are presumed to constitute a specific bioregion. Here, I am building upon previous critiques of the ways in which class and race-based privilege create the D. Meek 'local' as an exclusive site of food privilege in the mold of neoliberalism (Guthman 2008a, b;Alkon and McCullen 2011;Mares and Alkon 2012). I argue that questions of justice and the long-term viability of bioregional projects can be substantially improved, by taking an intersectional approach, analyzing how overlapping axes of identity inflect with particular arguments for localism. ...
... While millets' proponents may construe the grain as a symbolic key, capable of reconnecting urbanites with a lost agrarian identity, the reality is that in both rural and urban Karnataka, ragi mudde and other millet dishes are not seen as palatable, and there remains a strong symbolic attachment to rice, which is desired in part because it is exotic, tied to modernity, and not place. My analysis here offers a critique of how class, race, and caste-based privilege reconfigure the marginal into the miracle in similar ways to the politics of exclusivity in alternative food movements in the Global North (Guthman 2008a;Alkon and McCullen 2011;Mares and Alkon 2012). Third, I've argued that a critical bioregional framework should involve a close analysis of both macro and micro politics at various interconnected scales from the global to the local. ...
Historically marginalized foods, which occupy the social periphery, and often function as a bulwark in times of hunger, are increasingly being rediscovered and revalued as niche commodities. From açaí to quinoa, the move from marginal to miracle is often tied to larger narratives surrounding sustainable development, resilience to climate change, and traditional foodways. This article analyses the recent move towards millet production and consumption in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Focusing upon one of the grain’s chief proponents, I explore how narratives surrounding millets are grounded in conceptions of cultural authenticity and bioregionalism. Drawing upon human geographer’s analyses of the turn towards the ‘local’ in food activism, I contribute to the development of critical bioregionalism, an emerging theoretical framework that explores how questions of value, identity, political economy, and histories of land use intersect to structure our understandings of marginal foods and their resurgence.
... Moreover, settler colonial food systems are characterized by a logic of othering that positions whiteness and cisgendered males as the normative standard (Hislop, 2015). This logic is evident in the ways that food policies and practices often prioritize the needs and preferences of cisgendered, male, white settler populations while neglecting the cultural and nutritional needs of racialized peoples and those of varying genders; for example, by levering public resources to create municipal farmers' markets that sell local food commodities to wealthy, White residents (Alkon & McCullen, 2011) and positioning women as responsible for largely unpaid labour involving food preparation in the household (Bowen et al., 2019). The result is a food landscape that reinforces existing racial and gendered hierarchies and perpetuates food insecurity among marginalized communities (Bowen et al., 2019). ...
In this paper, we invite readers to engage with different possibilities for relating to the world and to food by imagining and enacting future food systems rooted in relational ontologies and interrupting the ontological dominance of settler-colonial food systems. We outline a framework that supports individuals, communities, and organizations to unlearn and disinvest from a Eurocentric agrifood paradigm that requires violence and oppression, and employs neoliberal, racist, patriarchal, capitalist logics. The framework is intended to provide language and concepts that may support food system actors to engage with critiques of colonialism, and their own complicities in maintaining contemporary food systems and structures. We advance promising pathways to creating relational communities of respect, care, accountability, and reciprocity These pathways are vital to healing intergenerational trauma, embodying reciprocal forms of mutual aid, unlearning dominant ontological and epistemological foundations, and imagining and enacting alternative food system configurations and relationships to food, nature, and other-than human beings in pursuit of just food futures and food sovereignties.
... Farmers markets offer communities other kinds of benefits, too. Farmers markets can be a place for meaningful social interactions (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Aucoin & Fry, 2015;Carson et al., 2016;Morales, 2021) and for civic engagement (Witzling & Shaw, 2022), as well as to access resources and information (Dollahite et al., 2005;Morales, 2021;Witzling & Shaw, 2022) and to celebrate cultures (Alkon, 2007;Meyers, 2015). Economically, farmers markets can benefit communities as they support the circulation of money locally (Sadler et al., 2013). ...
To provide farmers market leaders and researchers with new insights about farmers market attendees, given shifting consumer preferences and demographics, we conducted a nearly nationally representative survey in the United States. Among the 5,141 respondents, 38.51% reported attending farmers markets infrequently (i.e., five or fewer times per year), and 41.78% reported attending with more regularity (i.e., six or greater times per year). In combination, this equated to 80.30% of the entire sample having at least some experience with farmers markets (i.e., attending once per year or more). Of note, farmers markets were defined as places to buy local food directly from more than one vendor. Top motivations for attending included getting fresh food, supporting local farmers, getting high-quality food, and doing something fun, suggesting that promoting farmers markets with those themes should resonate with audiences. The top challenge to attendance was forgetting about farmers markets, indicating that campaigns or strategies to remind individuals about markets could be beneficial. Additionally, the majority of attendees reported that they ate healthier because of farmers markets and that they did nonconsumer activities at farmers markets, such as socializing and learning, underscoring that farmers markets can be a shared community experience that goes beyond consumption. We recommend that future work build on our results to further investigate how to expand the customer base for farmers markets and help people access the many benefits they provide.
... Local artisans often participate in the market, enhancing the diversity of offerings, increasing foot traffic, and strengthening cross-cultural connections within the community. In recent years, researchers have suggested that emphasizing the social, economic, and environmental dynamics underlying agricultural production can inspire consumer-driven movements to build a more sustainable and equitable food system (Alkon & McCullen, 2011). Farmers' markets rely on strong relationships among community members, organizations, and local stakeholders. ...
The study examined the socioeconomic aspects of farmers’ markets, focusing on vendors from The Baltimore Farmers’ Market and the Camden Avenue Farmers’ Market in Maryland. The study's objectives were to analyze the socio-economic aspects of farmers’ markets and identify the challenges faced by the vendors. A total of 19 responses were collected from these two locations through in-person interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire. The results indicated that the farmers’ market provided farmers with a direct channel for selling their produce to consumers, contributing to profitability and food production at the local level. Despite the realized socioeconomic benefits, the vendors encountered challenges, including high competition, lower profit margins, market risks, and market regulations. The study highlighted the vital role of farmers’ markets in promoting sustainable local food production systems and supporting the local economy.
... The third stage began after the global world economic crisis and FMs received more and more attention in the published literature. The motivations and characteristics of consumer purchases at FMs [21,[114][115][116], the effects of the opening of FMs in food deserts [117,118,119], the impact and participation of SNAP [100,120], and alternative agrifood movements [121] received increasing emphasis during this period. In the final stage (2014-2019), the number of publications grew exponentially (150 per year), but fewer key themes were on the research agenda: the facilitators of and barriers to FM use and food access [22,105,[122][123][124][125] were popular topics, particularly with regard to low-income consumers. ...
... This invisibility may be due to several factors. Wakefield et al. (2015) note that US based academics have described an enduring romanticized image of the white rural farmer; an image that ignores the displacement of Indigenous nations from their lands, the enslavement of African Americans, and the historical and continuing reliance on underpaid migrant workers (Guthman, 2008;Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Hall, 2015). Canadians' perceptions of a rural farming history have also been distorted and romanticized in similar ways. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare many of societies’ existing social and economic inequalities, one of which is illustrated in the challenges facing food and farm workers across the food chain. Despite this upsurge in public recognition, the circumstances facing food and farm workers remain unchanged, and this lack of action is reflected within the work of food systems-focused civil society organizations (CSO) in Canada. Several authors have noted the lack of recognition of labor issues within food systems work. This paper further explores the nature of this disengagement, particularly in food systems governance work, and identifies barriers to more meaningful engagement and possible avenues to overcome these challenges. Findings draw from a set of 57 interviews conducted from 2020 to 2023 with a range of food system CSO representatives across Canada, examining their understanding of, and engagement in, food systems governance work and their involvement in labor issues (or lack thereof). The paper concludes that though there exists widespread awareness of the challenges facing food and farm workers, and a desire to engage in a more sustained fashion, many food system CSOs have not yet found the tools or pathways to do so on an organizational level. Several discursive openings are identified that offer an opportunity to leverage the heightened awareness of food and farm workers during the pandemic into concrete collective action.
... The differentiation and stereotyping carried by European settlers established a system of racialised and hierarchical relations that remains to this day. This process of racial 'othering' involves white people labelling others as 'not us' (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;McClintock, 2018a;Ramírez, 2015). Thus, white people define and secure an identity (whiteness) as positive, by stigmatising 'others' who are seen as less than them (Guthman, 2008). ...
Research on urban agriculture (UA) has revealed that alongside the opportunities these spaces open for community building, UA can also (re)produce exclusionary practices, especially towards minority groups. Engaging with critical debates, we conducted a collective autoethnography project to explore the nuances of joining UA as Latin American migrant women of colour in Wellington, Aotearoa. We discuss how weaving critical race theory and collective autoethnography helped us reflect and amplify our counter‐stories of racial oppression. By pushing academic thinking, we also aim to inspire others to recognise, resist and rework racist (and sexist) structures, building solidarity towards decolonial and antiracist spaces.
... How people relate to, and communicate about, their foodways, is informed by intersecting relations of coloniality, race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, ability, and more. Whiteness still operates in food movements through discourses of universalism and colorblindness ( Alkon & McCullen, 2011 ;de Souza, 2019 ;Guthman, 2008 ;Slocum, 2006Slocum, , 2007 and often requires negotiation with(in) neoliberal capitalism ( Alkon & Guthman, 2017 ;Broad, 2016). In gentrifying cities specifi cally, food projects can be avenues to challenge racial capitalism and enact intersectional food justice, or they can function as a "double edge sword" that contributes to gentrifi cation ( Polk, 2019 , p. 55;McClintock, 2014 ). ...
... For instance, within the context of food insecurity, mothers' acute priorities can lie in ensuring children have enough food to eat, with less concern about that food's nutritional content (Daniel, 2016;Fielding-Singh, 2021); children in food insecure households may also play a large role in supporting their mothers' feeding efforts (Cairns, 2018). In contrast, middle-class mothers disproportionally possess the social and cultural capital that allows them to define and enact a highly valued food habitus (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Bourdieu, 1984;Johnston & Baumann, 2015), as well as the resources to participate in pricey and time-intensive foodwork, including buying and preparing organic meals (Kennedy et al., 2019). The finding that middle-class mothers may see the daily act of packing a lunchbox as a symbolic display of their commitment to "good" mothering and children's health (Harman & Cappellini, 2015) illuminates how food's class-inflected meanings can simultaneously reflect and reproduce classed hierarchies. ...
Widespread inequities in diet and nutrition present a pressing public health problem. Sociologists working to illuminate the causes and contours of these inequities often center the role of family foodwork, or the multifaceted domestic labor that supports eating, including planning and preparing meals. Mounting sociological scholarship on foodwork considers how food's meanings are socially patterned to reflect broader social structures, ideologies and institutions that influence their manifestation and families' resources to enact them. Here, we present three core contributions from the sociology of foodwork that can advance essential transdisciplinary conversations around nutrition disparities as well as efforts to tackle these disparities. We lay out how (1) family foodwork is historically rooted in broader structures of capitalist exploitation and women's subordination, and today remains gendered through normative discourses equating “good” feeding with “good” mothering; (2) the moralization of foodwork is buttressed by an ideological context idealizing homecooked meals and lamenting foodwork's decline, and; (3) foodwork—and societal evaluations of it—are shaped and stratified by intersecting gendered, classed, and racial inequalities. After reviewing each contribution and its importance for addressing nutrition inequities, we conclude by advocating for a closer conversation across disciplines and highlighting important future directions for sociologists.
... Nourishing crops include nutrient-dense foods and foods that enhance community or connections to spirituality. Definitions of, and access to, healthful crops are racialized (Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Alkon et al., 2013;Kolavalli, 2020), so culturally relevant concepts of nourishment should be centered. • Reducing exposure to agrochemicals for farmworkers (Arcury et al., 2014;Quandt et al., 2004) and those who live in proximity to agricultural or agrochemical production (Hill et al., 2019;Tessum et al., 2021) by breeding for reduced agrochemical reliance. ...
Plant breeding is central to agriculture and shifts in plant breeding practices (e.g., hybrid development) and selection goals (e.g., response to synthetic fertilizer) have catalyzed monumental and persistent changes in agricultural production systems of all scales with social, political, economic, and environmental repercussions. Although plant breeders are largely trained in the sciences of biology, genetics, and statistics, we posit an ethical imperative to examine the degree of equity with which the benefits of new research and plant cultivars are distributed. In the United States, the history of plant breeding parallels the colonial history of agriculture, which compels reflection by current plant breeders about their role in shaping our agricultural system. In this perspective essay, we examine longstanding ideas about equitable food systems through the lens of public plant breeding in the United States. We propose a framework for equitable plant breeding with respect to both its process and outcomes, and we intend for the ideas presented herein to catalyze reflection, discussions, and actions as the plant breeding community seeks greater equity in the food and seed systems our work supports.
... These authors have noted that such approaches to encourage de-commodification through 'ethical consumerism' have merely tried to convince concerned consumers that they can buy a commodity and somehow the problems linked with capitalism will diminish. The same reasoning suggests that simply providing more accurate website information allows companies and consumers to ignore the more structurally rooted problems that capitalist relations create in agrarian settings and global commodity chains (see Fridell, 2007;Alkon and McCullen, 2011). ...
... These authors have noted that such approaches to encourage de-commodification through 'ethical consumerism' have merely tried to convince concerned consumers that they can buy a commodity and somehow the problems linked with capitalism will diminish. The same reasoning suggests that simply providing more accurate website information allows companies and consumers to ignore the more structurally rooted problems that capitalist relations create in agrarian settings and global commodity chains (see Fridell, 2007;Alkon and McCullen, 2011). ...
... As vendors align with the values and tastes of consumers, farmers markets are often dominated by specialized and costly niche products that further diversify the consumption of a relatively healthy and wealthy target group, thus excluding members from lower income brackets [54,77]. When farmers markets cater predominantly to privilege and conspicuous consumption, they become sites of social exclusion because agro-leisure rarely aligns with the tastes and incomes of less affluent groups [54,75,78,79]. The attractiveness of established agro-leisure-based farmers markets also spurs urban gentrification by increasing property values in surrounding areas, thus often displacing low-income households [77,80,81]. ...
Community development tends to focus on large-scale, government-funded transformations or on small-scale, grassroot initiatives. In the US, the financial resources, available infrastructure, and broad-based civic support to implement large-scale community transformations are frequently lacking. In contrast, niche interventions, while often locally successful, tend to be unscalable. Accordingly, many community development programs either do not go beyond an ideational stage, or they are unscalable or unsustainable in the long run. In this qualitative case study, we analyze the Eastern Market in Detroit, Michigan, a local institution that contributes considerably and in several ways to the sustainability of multiple communities. Using Content Configuration Analysis (CCA), we conduct a bottom-up exploratory analysis of fieldwork notes, nonparticipant observations, as well as audio, visual, and written materials including policy and strategy documents from the City of Detroit, Wayne County, and the State of Michigan, academic publications, strategy and annual reports, websites, blogs, vlogs, social media outlets, newspapers, podcasts, and interviews along two lines of inquiry: first, to examine how the market contributes to sustainable community development and, second, to explore the systemic underpinnings that facilitate such development. Specifically, we focus on the Eastern Market to identify system-relevant actors, interests, relations, interventions, and outcomes that illustrate an institution which operates well beyond the ideational confines of a conventional farmers market. In the process of exploring the adaptive nature of the Eastern Market within its financial and infrastructural constraints, we also exemplify with this case that a well-established institution, a farmers market, can reinvent itself to serve multiple needs of larger, heterogeneous communities, and that the successful adaptations associated with this reinvention reimagine the community in which it is embedded.
... Nourishing crops include nutrient-dense foods and foods that enhance community or connections to spirituality. Definitions of, and access to, healthful crops are racialized (Alkon and McCullen, 2011;Alkon et al., 2013;Kolavalli, 2020), so culturally relevant concepts of nourishment should be centered. ...
Plant breeding is central to agriculture, and shifts in plant breeding practices (e.g., hybrid development) and selection goals (e.g., response to synthetic fertilizer) have catalyzed monumental and persistent changes in agricultural production systems of all scales with social, political, economic, and environmental repercussions. While plant breeders are largely trained in the sciences of biology, genetics, and statistics, we posit an ethical imperative to examine the degree of equity with which the benefits of new research and plant varieties are distributed. In the United States, the history of plant breeding parallels the colonial history of agriculture, which compels reflection by current plant breeders about their role in shaping our agricultural system. In this perspective essay, we examine longstanding ideas about equitable food systems through the lens of public plant breeding in the United States. We propose a framework for equitable public plant breeding with respect to both its process and outcomes, and we intend for the ideas presented herein to catalyze reflection, discussions, and actions as the plant breeding community seeks greater equity in the food and seed systems our work supports.
... Yet Connelly puts it this way: "[t]he key challenge facing local food initiatives is how to scale up to the point of transforming (rather than merely "informing") the much larger conventional food system" (2010: 1, emphasis ours; also Mount 2012: 108). Food scholars and activists alike examine how local food projects can be used to challenge an unsustainable industrial, unjust economic system (e.g., Alkon and Grace McCullen, 2011;McClintock 2014). The benefits of small-scale projects can transcend geographic locales; a growing number of equity-seeking communities have leveraged alternative food projects to reclaim working-class power, Indigenous sovereignty over land and water, and self-determination (e.g. ...
Because of concerns about human health, the environment, and animal welfare, meat is a highly contentious food. Accordingly, a broad range of alternative, small-scale practices for raising livestock and producing non-industrial meat are in the spotlight. While scholars have examined consumer perspectives on “ethical” meat, less is known about producers' perceptions of how small-scale meat production fits into the broader food system, and how their perceptions relate to broader sustainability debates surrounding meat. We explore producer perspectives on small-scale “ethical” meat production and its role in a sustainable food system. We do so through interviews and site visits with 74 people working within alternative meat production in four Canadian provinces, a sample that includes farmers, ranchers, butchers, and meat-focussed chefs. We find that, in the face of practical challenges linked to small-scale production, producers are passionately committed to the project of small-scale animal rearing that they regard as humane and sustainable. Despite these similarities, producers have radically different ideas about the purpose and potential of ethical meat. We observed major differences among producers' cultural imagination of meat, exemplifying varied ideas for fitting meat into a sustainable food system. Our findings underscore the importance of charting not only producers’ practices, but also their cultural orientations.
... 3 Elena, one of the founders, has emphatically stated that having the ability to eat chemical-free, nutrient dense food is one mechanism by which people can reduce their exposure to toxins (personal communication). 4 Although prior research has demonstrated that an emphasis on the consumption of organic food can problematically reflect an exclusionary White, middle-class ethos embedded in the neoliberal values of individuality, choice, and consumption (e.g., Alkon & McCullen, 2011;Guthman, 2008;Pahk, 2021), the PCFA's framing is distinct from this literature (e.g., Lloro & González, in progress). Not only do activists harshly critique neoliberal capitalism, but the organization's goals explicitly recognize how food access, health, and wellbeing are intersectionally shaped by ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality, taking concrete actions to address systemic oppressions and unsustainable farming practices while also working to uplift culturally specific foods and traditions (Pomona Community Farmer Alliance, 2019). ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare global structural inequalities, including those involving food. Although feminist frameworks have been applied to the study of food, we have much to learn about activism and environmental education (EE). In this article, I thus develop a nascent intersectional feminist food studies praxis for the field to animate important conversations about “new” ways of thinking and doing EE research for a post-pandemic future. To begin, I describe the places where I work in eastern Los Angeles County, California. Then, I provide a brief overview of intersectionality, highlighting key components informing my work. Drawing on two and a half years of feminist participatory research focused on the activist-scholar nexus, I elucidate an intersectional feminist food studies praxis that elevates the politics of knowledge, is attuned to the affective domain, and supports transformation. To conclude, I specifically highlight how these insights can influence EE research and practice.
Generational renewal problems in the farming sector highlight the urgent need to attract new farmers and address misconceptions about agricultural careers. This can be achieved by strengthening the connection between the farming community and society. Emphasizing the alternative food movement’s role in attracting new-generation farmers, we focus on the urban agriculture movement and its communication efforts to better understand the changing relationship between agriculture and society. This study examines how urban agriculture communicates about farming by analyzing the use of social media messages related to awareness, responsibility, and pride. Analyses are based on the professionals’ perspectives (28 in-depth key informant interviews) and social media data (four selected Instagram accounts) in Pennsylvania and Illinois. We utilized qualitative thematic coding, guided by Polymedia theory and the Norm Activation Model. The results indicate that dialogues around urban agriculture encourage individuals to engage in discussions about healthy eating and to critically assess their understanding of industrial agriculture. Our study reveals that Instagram messages often emphasize responsibility and pride, which play a significant role in storytelling. These pride messages, linked to personal, relational, or professional achievements, are prevalent in the communication. However, very few messages address the economic aspects of farming, suggesting that financial issues and access to resources are not prioritized in these discussions. The study confirms that the online representation of urban farmers enhances their personal recognition by showcasing the diversity of farmers in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, and farm size, which differ from how traditional farmers are depicted in conventional media.
Centered on the Achille Mbembe postcolonial theoretical framework of necropolitics, this article will focus on how the coronavirus (COVID-19) has added an additional layer of trauma to already traumatized Black New Orleanians and assert how racism within itself is indeed a pandemic. In short, through challenging the concept of ‘Environmental Justice,’ the pandemic and sickness of racism at its root will affect African diasporic communities due to unresolved actions of racial-hierarchy, health-disparities, and power-dynamics which maintain Black New Orleanian communities within a marginalized state of continued trauma. Thus, this comparative research can be applied to global conversations of how the pandemics of racism, poverty, and the environment are occurrences that affect people of African descent. In short, these pandemics within the machine of the biopower take a direct toll on the African diasporic communities’ health and life-chances. The primary puzzle with environmental justice depends on perspective and lived experience. Within mainstream society, stakeholders involved in environmental issues focus primarily on climate change, pollution, toxins within water supply, and housing affecting predominantly White middle-class and affluent communities. However, policy changes implemented to eradicate those concerns are usually at the expense of racially-marginalized neighborhoods. This article will also discuss my qualitative research method approach and findings to support my argument that due to necropolitics, the coronavirus pandemic contributes to further trauma among already traumatized groups of people.
In 2019, an organic produce vendor in a Bloomington, Indiana, farmers’ market was exposed as an active member of the violent white supremacist organization Identity Evropa, sparking national conversation about the whiteness of local food and local controversy over the vendor’s continued inclusion in the market. Activist groups and community members argued for the vendor’s removal from the market at public meetings and protested the vendor’s stand throughout the remainder of the season. Remarkably, official policy and much of public sentiment resolved on the side of the white supremacist vendor, while activists were arrested and silenced. Drawing on discourse analysis and participant observation, this article addresses three related dynamics. First, we highlight the resonances between the nostalgic rhetoric of local food and aspects of white nationalist ideology to explain why white supremacists in general might see farmers’ markets as an appropriate site to further their racial project. Second, we illustrate how overlapping themes including motherhood, community membership, and organic links between people and land operated to shield the white supremacist vendor from public scrutiny. Finally, we show how parallel rhetoric was deployed against activists who objected to the presence of white supremacists in the market, so the activists became the identified source of disruption and exclusionary violence.
This paper examines the resilience of farmers markets in Michigan to the system shock of the global COVID-19 pandemic, questioning how the response fits into market goals of food sovereignty. Adapting to shifting public health recommendations and uncertainty, managers implemented new policies to create a safe shopping experience and expand food access. As consumers directed their shopping to farmers markets looking for safer outdoor shopping, local products, and foods in short supply at grocery stores, market sales skyrocketed with vendors reporting selling more than ever before, but the longevity of this change remains unclear. Our data collected via semi-structured interviews with market managers and vendors, and survey data from customers from 2020 to 21, suggest that despite the widespread impact of COVID-19, there is not sufficient evidence consumers will continue to shop at farmers markets at the rates they did in 2020-21. Furthermore, reasons consumers flocked to farmers markets do not align with market priorities for increased food sovereignty, as increased sales alone are not a sufficient driver for this goal. We question how markets can contribute to broader sustainability goals or serve as alternatives to capitalist and industrial modes of agricultural production, problematizing the role of markets in the food sovereignty movement.
Despite aspirations toward more equitable and sustainable food systems, alternative food movements have been critiqued for reproducing the inequalities of the agrifood system they contest. This article examines the challenges a group of justice‐oriented food hubs face in integrating racial justice into their work. We ask whether the financial pressures of enacting alternative approaches to food hub work within market logics can squeeze out racial justice goals. We find that dominant framings of alternative food movements diminish Black activism. We argue that justice‐oriented food hubs can get caught in a “justice trap” similar to the “local trap”—the tendency to assume that the local scale is inherently desirable and leads to a socially just food system. The notion of a justice trap signals the assumption that what constitutes justice in the food system is self‐evident and that different forms of justice are automatically subsumed within the general concept of “food justice.” Our analysis indicates that the justice trap arises from an inability to articulate the racial justice implications of the everyday realities of running organizations within the market logics that dominate even alternative food movements.
We use Marya Schechtman’s Narrative Self-Constitution View to support the widespread idea that food can contribute to the construction and expression of our identities and be used to understand others. What foods we consume can be one such way to construct our identities as food itself can have different values: ethically sourced, healthy, culturally significant, etc. However, the ability to constitute one’s own identity in this way depends on the ability to autonomously choose what we consume. We argue that most consumers have much less control over their own consumption habits than is typically assumed (indeed, much of the literature on food and identity relies on the assumption) and thus consumers have diminished autonomy with respect to identity-constitution. We focus on the effects of three such autonomy compromising practices: food impositions, which are social pressures on food choice; manipulative marketing; and impediments to access. Together these practices diminish second-order endorsement of food-related values, generate false beliefs about what one is eating, and create social, economic, or physical barriers which limit access to desired foods. There are, however, spaces where consumers are fighting back against cultural norms and agribusiness and changing their own relationship(s) with consumption, thereby exercising increased autonomy over their food and their identity.
Chapter 1 describes the motivations, diversity and growth of food resistance movements. Food resistance movements resist capitalist processes that perpetuate social and environmental injustices. This chapter contextualises food resistance movements within alternative food network literature. It recognises four key trajectories: alternative food networks from Europe, North America, the Global South, and social welfare approaches. Food resistance movements seek to establish alternatives that prioritise social justice and environmental sustainability values that go beyond elitist, individualist, racist and capitalist approaches. This book focuses on urban-based food resistance movements, representing potentially powerful sites for social mobilisation, experimentation and impactful solutions. After introducing the book’s case studies, this chapter situates the research approach in cultural anthropology to give a holistic and direct voice to participants from these diverse practices.
Although farmers markets are often described in relatively homogenizing terms, there is nonetheless significant diversity in their form and function, and that diversity remains underexamined within the academic literature. Drawing on document analysis of a novel dataset of Oregon farmers market organization's vendor rules and regulations, this paper challenges commonly-held assumptions about the values often assumed to be inherent to alternative food networks and embedded forms of exchange. In examining the stated mission, values, and goals of farmers market organizations, this study found that geographic proximity, economic, and community-oriented values and goals predominated. Farmers market organizations showed comparatively less focus on values such as equity, health, and sustainability. These findings are surprising, given how frequently farmers markets are equated with ethical and sustainable consumption. Additionally, this paper presents empirically-driven findings related to how farmers market organizations define and codify the parameters of local vendors, local food, and direct-to-consumer sales, and how markets use standards and regulations to advance a vision of ‘good food’ that centers on quality, authenticity, scale of production, health, sustainability, and ethics.
Background
Obesity and associated metabolic conditions are endemic. Finding new strategies to mitigate the impact on wellbeing and healthcare systems is critical. Food prescription programs (FPPs) have been promoted as one route to address this problem in a way that simultaneously addresses the socio-cultural context of obesity. Yet, little is known about the standard practices and logistics of using food prescription programs as an effective intervention.
Objectives
To 1) identify the context in which food prescription programs are used; 2) identify implementation logistics of food prescription program; and 3) understand the scope of food prescription program outcomes.
Methods
A scoping review was conducted from October 2019 to May 2020 using Google Scholar, EBSCOhost, and AcademicOne Search to identify research articles focused on the implementation of prescription food programs in the US. Updates to articles were made in May of 2021 and May of 2022 to ensure the most up-to-date sample for analysis. There was no publication date restriction for article inclusion.
Results
A total of 213 articles were identified for abstract review via the search strategy, and 30 articles were included for analysis following article exclusion. Overall, there was little consistency among included articles regarding the target population, participant recruitment, delivery, and evaluation of the food prescription programs implemented. Most food prescription programs studied were associated with farmers markets, lasted less than 6 months, and utilized produce consumption and biometric data as primary outcomes measures.
Conclusion
Significant gaps in the literature concerning the long-term effectiveness, impact on health behaviors, screening of eligible participants, and logistics for implementation were identified. Future research should focus on addressing these shortcomings in the current literature to improve the implementation, sustainability, and scaling of food prescription programs.
African American foodways have historically shared many of the same imperatives prized by writers, experts, and pundits concerned with making food systems more sustainable—namely, encouraging farm-to-table food distribution networks, using “natural” or low-impact agricultural methods, and inspiring scratch cooking with local, fresh ingredients. Contemporary writing about sustainable food and agriculture in the United States locates the origins of this movement in Europe and northern California. In this article, we challenge this conceptualization by presenting what we call the “food imaginaries” of three key historical figures: George Washington Carver, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Edna Lewis. These imaginaries not only reflect the knowledge constructions of a social group and map future possibilities through foodways but also challenge damaging narratives about African American food histories, particularly across the south. We find that these imaginaries envision food as a pathway to freedom, autonomy, pleasure, and joy, and tell greater stories of how “organic” and “natural” falters when imagined outside of Blackness. These imaginaries, we argue, are central to American agricultural and political histories, and have important implications for sustainability and food justice movements in the United States.
In nations where colonialism persists such as Australia, scholars have identified the hegemony of a morally infused white farming imaginary. While this construction has traditionally been invested in heteropatriarchal ideologies our aim in this paper is to demonstrate how, in recent years, white middle-class farming women have been woven into this narrative through settler colonial logics. We take up this contention in the Australian context examining 100 posts to two major institutional Instagram accounts that feature farming women: @invisfarmer and @agrifuturesau. Using the lens of settler colonialism, and a visual and textual analysis, we identify how the “white middle-class woman farmer” is framed by discourses of white feminism and invisibility/visibility. We reveal the emergence of a narrow farming woman aesthetic which is bolstered by narratives which celebrate the “successful female farmer” and the “successful female farm leader”. In concluding the paper, we discuss the implications of the gendering of the white farming imaginary, and make a call for gender and rural studies scholars to de-centre and disaggregate the “white middle-class settler farming woman” subject position, through attending to settler colonialism and Indigenous scholarship in understandings of Australian rurality.
Farming women have rarely been the focus of scholarly work on drought and/or distress. This article focuses on farming women's lived experience of drought and distress, drawing on a participatory film making project created by a small group of farming women from Southern Australia. Feminist materialism and Barad's (2003) concept of ‘intra‐action’ provides a useful lens to examine both the film as an artefact as well as the discussions among the women during its creation. Intra‐action enables an exploration of how farming women's bodies come into being as distressed in moments of time through and with drought as a complex constellation of multiple ‘matter’. The film and narratives show distressed bodies emerging with dust, wind, objects and the suffering of non‐human animals. For these women, distress emerges from hearing, sensing, seeing and feeling the irritation of dirt splattered against window panes, the emotional pain and economic consequences of top soil blowing across paddocks and as feed becomes hard to source, the recognition of the suffering of sheep. The power of these animate and inanimate ‘things’ – windmills, windows, troughs, work boots, animals and soil – were sensorily entangled with women's bodies. For farming women, distress materialises within their bodies through processes of intra‐action in their more‐than‐human worlds This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
It is now a shameful truism that COVID-19 functioned as a big reveal, exposing, and amplifying the structural inequalities Canadian society is built upon. We are now a year and a half into the global pandemic. I am writing from Toronto, where “hot spots” (neighbourhoods with high infection rates) is code for racial and economic inequality (Wallace 2021) and public health guidelines have rendered low income “essential workers” disposable, amidst ballooning food insecurity rates, especially in low-income racialized communities (Toronto Foundation 2020; CBC News 2020). We are all in the same storm but in very different boats, as the new saying goes. I want to suggest that this moment, as Canadians are poised to step out of lockdown and return to ‘normal’, is a particularly useful one for Food Studies to consider what we could learn from Disability Justice movements in order to address a glaring hole in our collective scholarship and analysis.
Through community-engaged research, we investigate how political and economic practices have created food apartheid and the ways in which this legacy complicates efforts toward equitable urban agriculture in Salt Lake City (SLC). The study takes place in SLC’s Westside, where an ample number of farms and gardens exist, yet food insecurity is a persistent issue. We partner with a small urban CSA farm operating in a USDA-designated food desert in SLC’s Westside to explore the farmers’ own questions about whom their farm is serving and the farms’ potential to contribute to food justice in their community. Specifically, we examine (1) the member distribution of this urban CSA farm and (2) the underlying socio-political, economic, and geographic factors, such as inequitable access to land, housing, urban agriculture, food, and transportation, that contribute to this distribution. GIS analyses, developed with community partners, reveal spatial patterns between contemporary food insecurity and ongoing socioeconomic disparities matching 1930s residential redlining maps. These data resonate with a critical geographic approach to food apartheid and inform a need for deeper and more holistic strategies for food sovereignty through urban agriculture in SLC. While resource constraints may prevent some small farmers from attending to these issues, partnerships in praxis can build capacity and engender opportunities to investigate and disrupt the racial hierarchies enmeshed in federal agricultural policy, municipal zoning, and residential homeownership programs that perpetuate food apartheid.
The contemporary global spice trade is a multi-million dollar industry that frequently relies on Global North consumers’ romantic visions of spices and their cultivators in the Global South. From fieldwork with ethnic minority farmers in upland northern Vietnam growing star anise, Cinnamomum cassia (often marketed as cinnamon), and black cardamom, and from a content analysis of digital marketing websites, it becomes clear that astute practices of commodification and de-commodification are invoked at different nodes along these spice global commodity chains. In this paper we investigate the strategies deployed by Vietnamese state officials, Vietnam-based exporting companies, and overseas importing and retail companies to promote and market these three spices. We find major disjunctures between the “geographical indications” approach advanced by the Vietnamese state to link products to particular places and peoples, and the “placeless” strategies mobilized by private Vietnamese and Chinese exporters. Global North importers further complicate the story, often attempting to de-commodify or de-fetishize the spices on digital-marketing platforms. By focusing on the final nodes along these commodity chains – yet to be studied or critiqued – our findings raise important questions regarding the implications of such divergent marketing strategies for farmers at the initial nodes of these spice chains.
If race is an arbitrary sign used to divide up the human population, why do social constructionists continue to deploy the term at the same time as they refute its existence? If race is an empty category that holds no value what does it mean to be writing, researching and conducting ethnography in the name of race? This article considers the problematic of race enquiry in the light of an anti-foundationalist impulse evident in recent writing on cultural identity by scholars such as Bhabha, Butler, Derrida, Fanon and Gilroy. This generative cluster of philosophical ideas, theories and practices are tentatively identified here as decipherable of an emergent post-race paradigm. Though offering a critical interrogation of the dominant paradigm in race thinking – social constructionism – the article calls for an appreciation of the highly productive tensions evident in the broader genealogy of race theory and politics. In encouraging critical dialogues within and across essentialist, constructionist and post-race frameworks this essay addresses how we can do, undo, or do differently the question of race in ethnography.
“Coming home to eat” [Nabhan, 2002. Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Norton, New York] has become a clarion call among alternative food movement activists. Most food activist discourse makes a strong connection between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. Much of the US academic literature on food systems echoes food activist rhetoric about alternative food systems as built on alternative social norms. New ways of thinking, the ethic of care, desire, realization, and vision become the explanatory factors in the creation of alternative food systems. In these norm-based explanations, the “Local” becomes the context in which this type of action works. In the European food system literature about local “value chains” and alternative food networks, localism becomes a way to maintain rural livelihoods. In both the US and European literatures on localism, the global becomes the universal logic of capitalism and the local the point of resistance to this global logic, a place where “embeddedness” can and does happen. Nevertheless, as other literatures outside of food studies show, the local is often a site of inequality and hegemonic domination. However, rather than declaim the “radical particularism” of localism, it is more productive to question an “unreflexive localism” and to forge localist alliances that pay attention to equality and social justice. The paper explores what that kind of localist politics might look like.
Bioregionalists have championed the utility of the concept of the watershed as an organizing framework for thought and action directed to understanding and implementing appropriate and respectful human interaction with particular pieces of land. In a creative analogue to the watershed, permaculturist Arthur Getz has recently introduced the term “foodshed” to facilitate critical thought about where our food is coming from and how it is getting to us. We find the “foodshed” to be a particularly rich and evocative metaphor; but it is much more than metaphor. Like its analogue the watershed, the foodshed can serve us as a conceptual and methodological unit of analysis that provides a frame for action as well as thought. Food comes to most of us now through a global food system that is destructive of both natural and social communities. In this article we explore a variety of routes for the conceptual and practical elaboration of the foodshed. While corporations that are the principal beneficiaries of a global food system now dominate the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food, alternatives are emerging that together could form the basis for foodshed development. Just as many farmers are recognizing the social and environmental advantages to sustainable agriculture, so are many consumers coming to appreciate the benefits of fresh and sustainably produced food. Such producers and consumers are being linked through such innovative arrangements as community supported agriculture and farmers markets. Alternative producers, alternative consumers, and alternative small entrepreneurs are rediscovering community and finding common ground in municipal and community food councils. Recognition of one's residence within a foodshed can confer a sense of connection and responsibility to a particular locality. The foodshed can provide a place for us to ground ourselves in the biological and social realities of living on the land and from the land in a place that we can call home, a place to which we are or can become native.
This article uses social movement theory to analyze environmental justice rhetoric. It argues that the environmental justice frame is a master frame that uses discourses about injustice as an effective mobilizing tool. The article identifies an environmental justice paradigm and compares it with the new environmental paradigm. In addition, the article discusses why the environmental justice movement grew so fast and why its adherents find the environmental justice frame so appealing. During the past decade, environmental justice thought has emerged as a major part of the environmental discourse. Though much has been written on the envi- ronmental justice movement (EJM), attention is focused on case studies, analyz- ing the spatial distribution of environmental hazards, and examining policy for- mulation. Despite the fact that the EJM has had profound effects on environmental research, policy making, and the environmental movement, little attention has been paid to the ideological foundations of the EJM. In essence, Why did this discourse and movement arise now? What are its antecedents? What are its underlying principles, and how are these related to the dominant environmental discourse? This article argues that environmental justice thought represents a new paradigm—the environmental justice paradigm (EJP). The article analyzes the rise of the EJP. First, it examines the social construction of environmental problems, and then it traces the development of the major envi- ronmental paradigms, showing how the EJP evolved out of these and other bod- ies of thought. The article also examines the new dimensions of environmental thought that the EJP introduces and how the paradigm is changing the environ- mental discourse. This article will help us understand how and why the EJP arose, and why it has had such a significant impact on the environmental move- ment in such a short time. The article views paradigms as social constructions; that is, they are ideological packages expressing bodies of thought that change over time and according to the actors developing the paradigms.
This paper begins to explore the changing political geographies of alternative development as practiced and envisioned in the global South. Looking specifically at the growing movement and market for fair trade foods, this form of alternative development has become the moral business of latte drinkers and other reflexive consumers in Europe and the US. Fair trade attempts to re-connect producers and consumers economically, politically, and psychologically through the creation of a transnational moral economy. This re-connection is accomplished through material and semiotic commoditization processes that produce fair trade commodities. The semiotic production of these commodities and their traffic in particular ‘political ecological imaginaries’ is essential to the formation of ethical production-consumption links, acting to also politicize consumption and fair trade eaters. Fair trade's moral economy rides the tension between the ethical relationships it fosters and the need for the wily characteristics of enterprise in the construction of transnational trade networks. Bringing recent work on moral geography to bear, constructing this moral economy is an attempt to facilitate a sense of ‘solidarity in difference’ in the experiences of global economic inequalities between North and South and growers and eaters. At the same time, fair trade networks look to produce an expansive ‘spatial dynamics of concern’ in the fashioning of ethical places of production and consumption. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the continuing dilemmas critical for fair trade and suggestions for further empirical study of fair trade provisioning and alternative development networks.
The paper demonstrates how whiteness is produced in progressive non-profit efforts to promote sustainable farming and food security in the US. I explore whiteness by addressing the spatial dimensions of this food politics. I draw on feminist and materialist theories of nature, space and difference as well as research conducted between 2003 and the present. Whiteness emerges spatially in efforts to increase food access, support farmers and provide organic food to consumers. It clusters and expands through resource allocation to particular organizations and programs and through participation in non-profit conferences. Community food’s discourse builds on a late-modern and, in practice, ‘white’ combination of science and ideology concerning healthful food and healthy bodies. Whiteness in alternative food efforts rests, as well, on inequalities of wealth that serve both to enable different food economies and to separate people by their ability to consume. It is latent in the support of romanticized notions of community, but also in the more active support for coalition-building across social differences. These well-intentioned food practices reveal both the transformative potential of progressive whiteness and its capacity to become exclusionary in spite of itself. Whiteness coheres precisely, therefore, in the act of ‘doing good’.
Race is, in part, made and remade through the practices of growing, selling, purchasing and eating food. Consequently, some food practices are also ‘racial practices’. Drawing on a study in progress of the Minneapolis Farmers' Market, the paper covers two sub-themes of embodiment: racial division and intimacy. The corporeal feminist theory of Elizabeth Grosz offers the view that the body has explanatory power. This framework enables a discussion of the materiality of race rather than its representation or performance. Race emerges through the movement, clustering and encounter of phenotypically differentiated bodies. Through small segregations in which bodies move toward some vegetables and not others and through attractions that propel bodies to touch bitter melon and talk with growers, bodies shape the Market's meaning. This reflection on tendencies connecting phenotype, space and leaves is meant as a step toward a politics of bodily practice.
Whiteness enables the coherence of an alliance organized to promote community food security and sustainable farming. This unnamed presence shapes a discourse identifying the focus of struggle as well as resource allocation, conference form and content, list serv discussions, staffing and programming. Unacknowledged white privilege gives the lie to the movement's rhetoric of justice, good intentions and sustainability. And yet it is clear that racism is an organizing process in the food system: people of color disproportionately experience food insecurity, lose their farms and face the dangerous work of food processing and agricultural labor. Critical analyses of social movements argue that a failure to confront difference undermines progressive change efforts. The paper provides evidence of how the community food movement reproduces white privilege and proposes ways it might engage with anti-racism.
Low-income households may face higher food prices for three reasons: (1) on average, low-income households may spend less in supermarkets--which typically offer the lowest prices and greatest range of brands, package sizes, and quality choices; (2) low-income households are less likely to live in suburban locations where food prices are typically lower; and (3) supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods may charge higher prices than those in nearby higher income neighborhoods. Despite the prevailing higher prices, surveys of household food expenditures show that low-income households typically spend less than other households, on a per unit basis, for the foods they buy. Low-income households may realize lower costs by selecting more economical foods and lower quality items. In areas where food choices are limited due to the kinds and locations of foodstores, households may have sharply higher food costs.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
Examines the culture, politics, and history of the movement for environmental justice in New York City, tracking activism in four neighborhoods on issues of public health, garbage, and energy systems in the context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization.
Racial minority and low-income communities often suffer disproportionate effects of urban environmental problems. Environmental justice advocates argue that these communities are on the front lines of environmental and health risks. In Noxious New York, Julie Sze analyzes the culture, politics, and history of environmental justice activism in New York City within the larger context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization. She tracks urban planning and environmental health activism in four gritty New York neighborhoods: Brooklyn's Sunset Park and Williamsburg sections, West Harlem, and the South Bronx. In these communities, activism flourished in the 1980s and 1990s in response to economic decay and a concentration of noxious incinerators, solid waste transfer stations, and power plants. Sze describes the emergence of local campaigns organized around issues of asthma, garbage, and energy systems, and how, in each neighborhood, activists framed their arguments in the vocabulary of environmental justice. Sze shows that the linkage of planning and public health in New York City goes back to the nineteenth century's sanitation movement, and she looks at the city's history of garbage, sewage, and sludge management. She analyzes the influence of race, family, and gender politics on asthma activism and examines community activists' responses to garbage privatization and energy deregulation. Finally, she looks at how activist groups have begun to shift from fighting particular siting and land use decisions to engaging in a larger process of community planning and community-based research projects. Drawing extensively on fieldwork and interviews with community members and activists, Sze illuminates the complex mix of local and global issues that fuels environmental justice activism.
Relations between organized labor and environmental groups are typically characterized as adversarial, most often because of the specter of job loss invoked by industries facing environmental regulation. But, as Brian Obach shows, the two largest and most powerful social movements in the United States actually share a great deal of common ground. Unions and environmentalists have worked together on a number of issues, including workplace health and safety, environmental restoration, and globalization (as in the surprising solidarity of "Teamsters and Turtles" in the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle).
Labor and the Environmental Movement examines why, when, and how labor unions and environmental organizations either cooperate or come into conflict. By exploring the interorganizational dynamics that are crucial to cooperative efforts and presenting detailed studies of labor-environmental group coalition building from around the country (examining in detail examples from Maine, New Jersey, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin), it provides insight into how these movements can be brought together to promote a just and sustainable society.
Obach gives a brief history of relations between organized labor and environmental groups in the United States, explores how organizational learning can increase organizations' ability to work with others, and examines the crucial role played by "coalition brokers" who maintain links to both movements. He challenges research that attempts to explain inter-movement conflict on the basis of cultural distinctions between blue-collar workers and middle-class environmentalists, providing evidence of legal and structural constraints that better explain the organizational differences class-culture and new-social-movement theorists identify. The final chapter includes a model of the crucial determinants of cooperation and conflict that can serve as the basis for further study of inter-movement relations.
Frankenberg explores the unique intersection of race and sex as she examines the way that white women relate to racism. She writes from the assumption that whiteness is socially constructed rather than naturally pre-existing. She theorizes "from experience" to offer a unique perspective that retains the strength of a theoretical foundation as well as the relatability of personal narratives. She interviews thirty white women to get their perspectives on various racial topics and gain a critical standpoint for thinking about individual and social forces that construct and maintain whiteness in contemporary society. She begins with the question, "What is white women's relationship to racism?" The women discuss various aspects of interracial courtship, the role of power in acknowledging racial differences, and the function of language in facing and overcoming the negative effects of this difference.
What should we have for dinner? When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from a national eating disorder. As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at stake becomes not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollan follows each of the food chains--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to the final meal, always emphasizing our coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.--From publisher description.
Under the banner of food justice, the last few years has seen a profusion of projects focused on selling, donating, bringing or growing fresh fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods inhabited by African Americans — often at below market prices — or educating them to the quality of locally grown, seasonal, and organic food. The focus of this article is the subjects of such projects — those who enroll in such projects `to bring good food to others,' in this case undergraduate majors in Community Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz who do six-month field studies with such organizations. Drawing on formal and informal communications with me, I show that they are hailed by a set of discourses that reflect whitened cultural histories, such as the value of putting one's hands in the soil. I show their disappointments when they find these projects lack resonance in the communities in which they are located. I then show how many come to see that current activism reflects white desires more than those of the communities they putatively serve. In this way, the article provides insight into the production and reproduction of whiteness in the alternative food movement, and how it might be disrupted. I conclude that more attention to the cultural politics of alternative food might enable whites to be more effective allies in anti-racist struggles.
This article is a theoretical overview that introduces a special issue on neoliberalism and agro-food activism in California. Its primary purpose is to theorize how projects in opposition to neoliberalizations of the food and agricultural sectors seem to produce and reproduce neoliberal forms, spaces of governance, and mentalities. The recently deployed analytics of neoliberalization and neoliberal governmentality have yet to be deployed in agro-food scholarship, owing to tendencies to see neoliberalism as a set of impacts, to use the commodity chain/network as an analytical framework, and to romanticize the local as resistance. Yet, the increased salience of food politics in contemporary life may itself reflect the neoliberal turn, particularly insofar as much of what passes as politics these days is done through highly individualized purchasing decisions. The paper thus argues that agro-food politics as well as the scholarship that supports it have contributed to neoliberal subject formation, as demonstrated by four recurring themes in contemporary food activism as they intersect with neoliberal rationalities: consumer choice, localism, entrepreneurialism, and self-improvement. Through a review of aspects of California’s history particularly relevant to the case studies presented in this special issue it proposes in addition that the character of agro-food politics in California reflects an articulation of California’ economic and political history, agrarian development, enduring and evolving food culture, and the neoliberal project. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the politics of the possible in light of trends in agro-food activism, calling for closer attention to the micro-politics that shape various initiatives.
Urban aspects of local food systems, such as farmers' markets, provide an opportunity for city residents to “do” environmentalism within their own home places. What environmentalism is and how to do it, however, vary greatly with the social location of the population involved. This paper investigates the social construction of the environment through participant-observation research at two urban farmers' markets in the San Francisco Bay Area. In one farmers' market, located in a largely affluent and white neighbourhood, locally grown organic food becomes a symbol through which urban eaters can connect to wild nature. This framing provides an urban corollary to the wilderness narrative that dominates the US environmental movement. In another case, located in a low-income area, the farmers' market's largely African-American managers and vendors liken the farmers' market to environmental justice efforts. By constructing the environment as the places where the customers it targets “live, work and play”, this farmers' market emphasises race and inequality, rather than traditional environmental concerns. Both farmers' markets, however, do to some degree engage both ecology and equity in their discourses and actions. Given the importance of meaning-centred tensions to conflicts between the environmental justice and reform environmental movements, my analysis has important implications for the development of a paradigm that attends to both ecological sustainability and social justice.
This article takes on the cultural politics of “if they only knew” as it relates to alternative food practice. It draws on surveys and interviews of managers of two kinds of alternative food institutions—farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture—to illustrate the color-blind mentalities and universalizing impulses of alternative food discourse. The ways in which these discourses instantiate whiteness may have a chilling effect on people of color who tend not to participate in these markets proportionate to whites. Minor exclusionary practices may have profound implications for shaping projects of agro-food transformation.
This article explores how members of Slow Food perform identity, establish community, and participate in a politics of consumption through the use of new local imaginaries. Building on Arjun Appadurai's (1996) notion of “the imaginary,” new local imaginaries are contemporary sites, or culturescapes, where notions of the local are re-inscribed through discourses of the global. Through the use of new local imaginaries, members of Slow Food manage multiple identities in an attempt to resist and mobilize against the negative consequences of industrialization. Further, members of Slow Food reconfigure linear notions of time and space in their attempt to rediscover cultural moments that they perceive to be absent from traditions within the United States. Despite the creation of an innovative site of resistance, Slow Food members construct a limited notion of the local that excludes working-class and urban cultural expressions.
In contradistinction to the treatment of race as a problem of epistomology-how is phenotype represented in racial discourse-the author seeks to defend a materialist ontology of race. The creative materiality of race is asserted following the 'material turn' in feminism, anthropology, complexity theory, and Deleuze. Race is shown to be an embodied and material event, a,machine assemblage' with a different spatiality than the self/other scheme of Hegel. Taking issue with the calls for the transcendence of race amongst cultural studies scholars such as Paul Gilroy, the author ends the paper by suggesting that the political battle against racial subordination includes a serious engagement with its biological dimensions. Race should not be eliminated, but its energies harnessed through a cosmopolitan ethics which is sensitive to its heterogeneous and dynamic nature.
This article develops the concept of food justice, which places access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food in the contexts of institutional racism, racial formation, and racialized geographies. Through comparative ethnographic case studies, we analyze the demands for food justice articulated by the Karuk Tribe of California and the West Oakland Food Collaborative. Activists in these communities use an environmental justice frame to address access to healthy food, advocating for a local food system in West Oakland, and for the demolition of Klamath River dams that prevent subsistence fishing. Food justice serves as a theoretical and political bridge between scholarship and activism on sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and environmental justice. This concept brings the environmental justice emphasis on racially stratified access to environmental benefits to bear on the sustainable agriculture movement's attention to the processes of food production and consumption. Furthermore, we argue that the concept of food justice can help the environmental justice movement move beyond several limitations of their frequent place-based approach and the sustainable agriculture movement to more meaningfully incorporate issues of equity and social justice. Additionally, food justice may help activists and policymakers working on food security to understand the institutionalized nature of denied access to healthy food.
Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of ‘just sustainability’ provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.
Direct agricultural markets, predicated on face-to-face ties between producers and consumers, are often seen as central components of local food systems. Activists and academic analysts often assume that trust and social connection characterize direct agricultural markets, distinguishing local food systems from the “global food system”. This article examines that premise about direct agricultural markets, using the concept of social embeddedness from economic sociology to analyze the interplay of the economic and the social. Specifically, it draws on Block's (1990) elaboration of the concepts of marketness and instrumentalism to qualify the concept of social embeddedness. Taken together, and augmented by consideration of how they relate to power and privilege, these concepts provide an analytical framework that more accurately describes the social relations of two types of direct agricultural markets — the farmers’ market and community supported agriculture. In providing an alternative market, farmers’ markets create a context for closer social ties between farmers and consumers, but remain fundamentally rooted in commodity relations. In attempting to construct an alternative to the market, as reflected in an explicit emphasis on community and in the distinctive “share” relationship, community supported agriculture moves closer towards the decommodification of food. Nonetheless, in both types of direct markets, tensions between embeddedness, on the one hand, and marketness and instrumentalism, on the other, suggest how power and privilege may sometimes rest more with educated, middle-class consumers than with farmers or less-advantaged consumers. Recognizing how marketness and instrumentalism complicate social embeddedness is critical for understanding the viability, development and prospects of local food systems.
A hard-hitting look at the story behind California's famous scenery. The beauty of the California landscape is integral to its place in the imagination of generations of people around the world. In The Lie of the Land, geographer Don Mitchell looks at the human costs associated with this famous scenery. Through an account of the labor history of the state, Mitchell examines the material and ideological struggles over living and working conditions that played a large part in the construction of the contemporary California landscape. The Lie of the Land examines the way the California landscape was built on the backs of migrant workers, focusing on migratory labor and agribusiness before World War II. The book relates the historical geography of California to the processes of labor that made it, discussing not only significant strikes but also on the everyday existence of migrant workers in the labor camps, fields, and "Hoovervilles" where they lived. Mitchell places class struggle at the heart of social development, demonstrating concretely how farm workers affected their social and material environment, as well as exploring how farm owners responded to their workers' efforts to improve their living and working conditions. Mitchell also places "reformers" in context, revealing the actual nature of their role in relation to migrant workers' efforts-that of undermining the struggle for genuine social change. In addition, this volume captures the significance of the changing composition of the agricultural workforce, particularly in racial terms, as the class struggle evolved over a period of decades. Mitchell has written a narrative history that describes the intimate connection between landscape representations and the material form of geography. The Lie of the Land places people squarely in the middle of the landscapes they inhabit, shedding light on the complex and seemingly contradictory interactions between progressive state agents, radical workers, and California growers as they seek to remake the land in their own image. "It is important that the story of the migrant workers is told and Mitchell tells it well." Transactions/Area "The Lie of the Land opens up new and rich possibilities to help prod our thinking about the processes involved in understanding the changing morphology of landscape. This is an important book. Mitchell's lucid examination of the role of migrant workers in shaping and reshaping California's agricultural landscapes brings new meaning to the creation of the sometimes sublime, yet always complex, rural landscapes in places like the Salinas Valley, the Central Valley, and the Imperial Valley. For many historical geographers and others fortunate enough to read this book, the vision and study of landscape evolution will never be the same." Historical Geography "For anyone wishing to go beyond such movies and novels that do address Californian labour history before the Second World War, this is an excellent integration of all too often disparate approaches and materials. It should be required reading far beyond the confines of labour history." Labour History Review "The Lie of the Land is an important contribution to the study of landscape, to cultural geography, and more generally to critical geography. The book should be held up as a model for students and researchers in the field." Environment & Planning A "In The Lie of the Land, Don Mitchell represents a new, interdisciplinary, cultural geography, using such disparate fields as art history and labor history. He looks at migrant workers in California from the Wheatland riot of 1913 to the Bracero Program of 1942." Western Historical Quarterly "What he discovers is that the image of California as an agricultural Eden, as initially witnessed by John Steinbeck's Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, never matches the reality of a land that is tightly controlled by corporate growers, a land that exploits the labor of waves of migratory workers from the late 19th century on. Mitchell looks behind the pastoral charm of fertile fields and neatly tended farmhouses to reveal the brutal working conditions and squalid living conditions of the migratory camps. Along the way, he acquaints the reader with a century of labor history and the fact that Anglos, Filipinos, Japanese and Chicanos have all taken their turn at working--and fighting against--the California agricultural landscape." Journal of the West "Mitchell, who teaches geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, describes the labor struggles of the migrants with clarity and grace. The Lie of the Land is, in many ways, a valuable contribution to the study of California labor relations." Los Angeles Reader "Amidst the array of studies about California agriculture, geographer Don Mitchell offers a singular analysis. His study is a carefully researched and closely reasoned interpretation of the interaction between the place, the people, and the agricultural plenitude which together, he contends, have contributed to the evolving morphology of the California landscape." Agricultural History Don Mitchell is assistant professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The City, first published in 1925 and reprinted here in its entirety, is a cross-section of concerns of the Chicago urban school during the period of its most intense activity. Park and Burgess realized that ecological and economic factors were converted into a social organization by the traditions and aspirations of city dwellers. In their efforts to achieve objectivity, these sociologists never lost sight of the values that propel human beings. "It is a classic which remains relevant largely because it poses questions still unresolved."âChoice
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1988. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-276).
The author argues that radical geography needs a political revival. Of many avenues that might be followed, the areas of consumption and commodity chains are taken up for consideration. Revival involves a critique of certain trendy, theoretical approaches prevalent particularly in the study of the commodity -- as with postmodern notions of the sign and image space, the new retail geography with its stress on identity, and actor-network theory diverting into nonhuman actants. Although not without potential, these approaches lack critical, political edge, especially in the sense of connecting consumption with production. Liberation at one end is divorced from exploitation at the other. Nets are noticed but not workers. As an alternative, a materialist - semiotic analysis is proposed using the concept of commodity chains. This analysis has greater potential for theorizing connections between consumers and producers in a way that stimulates political praxis as well. Nine strategies for political engagement are proposed, from deconstructing advertisements to direct actions such as boycotts, anticorporate campaigns, and guerilla shopping tactics. The intention is to involve radical geography in a new politics of consumption.
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