A great read, Growing Culture team. As I moved the piece, I felt a lot of resonance with an article my colleagues at Real Food Real Stories' and I recently published in the Nonprofit Quarterly on why its essential to move beyond the narrative of "fixing the food system," and instead work to transform food culture to transform our world and honor the lineage of this narrative-shifting work:(https://nonprofitquarterly.org/rethinking-food-culture-might-save-us/).
The typically white-dominated food nonprofit space as been so systems-centric in our language, it's essential for food and ag orgs begin to embrace intentional cultural strategies to disrupt the narrow narratives that shape our world. Specifically, when you name how "it’s worth investigating the stories we tell about systems change, especially in agriculture." I was reminded of this quote from our piece: "Systems and practices do not exist in a vacuum; they are an expression of the culture that underpins them. As many Black, Indigenous, and diasporic people of color food leaders have long asserted, dominant food narratives—from bootstrapping to “you are what you eat” diet shaming—often explicitly affirm logics of individualism, ignoring structural inequities and oppression and perpetuating support for massive globalized, profit-driven food industries that kill people and destroy ecologies."
It's so powerful to name play and joyful imagination as one of the most powerful tools we have to transform our food system, address our legacies of harm, and interrupt our reckless relationship to ecosystems. To advance narratives that celebrate interdependency and care, we need to get creative about reweaving life-affirming relationships with land, water, food, and community––beginning with ourselves.
I am excited to see the ever-growing momentum around this orientation to transformational food and ag work. AND, I think it is always essential––especially given the power dynamics embedded in the nonprofit world––to cite the too often uncredited lineage of this food culture work. Black, Indigenous, and diasporic people of color have been championing radical narrative work in food and ag for generations. Why cite David Graeber and David ––and only them––in framing up this exploration when you have the work of decades of food culture-bearers, scholars, and creatives like Psyche Williams-Forson and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor (just to name two out of *countless* leaders in this work)? I hope to see more of these leaders and their foundational contributions to this conversation cited in your ongoing exploration of this juicy topic.
Very exciting to read! I've also been reading Graeber and Wengrow, which I talk about in the episode I'll link below. I'm planning another one called Kandioronk: Muskrat Love, a joke you'll get ;-) It's a fascinating book.
I've also written a book based on Graeber's Debt, called How to Dismantle an Empire. It goes through anthropology, history, foreign policy and system change, then presents a way that we could reclaim community economies using the analogy of regenerative agriculture. I'll link that too in case you're interested.
I've followed you for a while on FB but only recently discovered your substack. Really thoughtful inspiring stuff. Thank you. And thank you for the important work you are doing. ❤
A great read, Growing Culture team. As I moved the piece, I felt a lot of resonance with an article my colleagues at Real Food Real Stories' and I recently published in the Nonprofit Quarterly on why its essential to move beyond the narrative of "fixing the food system," and instead work to transform food culture to transform our world and honor the lineage of this narrative-shifting work:(https://nonprofitquarterly.org/rethinking-food-culture-might-save-us/).
The typically white-dominated food nonprofit space as been so systems-centric in our language, it's essential for food and ag orgs begin to embrace intentional cultural strategies to disrupt the narrow narratives that shape our world. Specifically, when you name how "it’s worth investigating the stories we tell about systems change, especially in agriculture." I was reminded of this quote from our piece: "Systems and practices do not exist in a vacuum; they are an expression of the culture that underpins them. As many Black, Indigenous, and diasporic people of color food leaders have long asserted, dominant food narratives—from bootstrapping to “you are what you eat” diet shaming—often explicitly affirm logics of individualism, ignoring structural inequities and oppression and perpetuating support for massive globalized, profit-driven food industries that kill people and destroy ecologies."
It's so powerful to name play and joyful imagination as one of the most powerful tools we have to transform our food system, address our legacies of harm, and interrupt our reckless relationship to ecosystems. To advance narratives that celebrate interdependency and care, we need to get creative about reweaving life-affirming relationships with land, water, food, and community––beginning with ourselves.
I am excited to see the ever-growing momentum around this orientation to transformational food and ag work. AND, I think it is always essential––especially given the power dynamics embedded in the nonprofit world––to cite the too often uncredited lineage of this food culture work. Black, Indigenous, and diasporic people of color have been championing radical narrative work in food and ag for generations. Why cite David Graeber and David ––and only them––in framing up this exploration when you have the work of decades of food culture-bearers, scholars, and creatives like Psyche Williams-Forson and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor (just to name two out of *countless* leaders in this work)? I hope to see more of these leaders and their foundational contributions to this conversation cited in your ongoing exploration of this juicy topic.
Very exciting to read! I've also been reading Graeber and Wengrow, which I talk about in the episode I'll link below. I'm planning another one called Kandioronk: Muskrat Love, a joke you'll get ;-) It's a fascinating book.
I've also written a book based on Graeber's Debt, called How to Dismantle an Empire. It goes through anthropology, history, foreign policy and system change, then presents a way that we could reclaim community economies using the analogy of regenerative agriculture. I'll link that too in case you're interested.
https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/sex-and-power-battle-of-the-daves
https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607/
I've followed you for a while on FB but only recently discovered your substack. Really thoughtful inspiring stuff. Thank you. And thank you for the important work you are doing. ❤