Heide Bruckner | Karl-Franzens-University of Graz (original) (raw)
Papers by Heide Bruckner
play a critical role in food systems, they face constraints and limitations related to resource r... more play a critical role in food systems, they face constraints and limitations related to resource rights and decisionmaking, gender-based violence, and increased vulnerability to food insecurity, as well as unequal burdens providing food for the family (FAO and University of Wollongong 2023). Research shows that gender inequalities are both a cause and outcome of unjust food systems, and improving gender equality should be a key goal towards sustainable food systems (Njuki et al. 2022). At the same time, policy and scholarship on the role of traditional food systems for Pacific food system change exhibits gender-blindness and gender bias (FAO and University of Wollongong 2023), particularly related to small-scale and low-value fisheries (Mangubhai and Lawless 2021). This is evident both in how women's roles within food provisioning on land and sea are under-examined, as well as the bias in food system research which sidelines indigenous subsistence practices in the global South (Belton and Bush 2014; Barclay et al. 2021; Lemke and Delormier 2017; Turner et al. 2022).
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Sep 9, 2023
In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to pu... more In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to put into practice anti-racist pedagogies. Less well-developed is scholarship on the approaches which expand students’ understanding of race and the socio-spatial and material processes of their own racialization. Within the context of food geographies, visceral pedagogies have been useful for advancing student knowledge on the multi-scalar, dynamic and complex systems of power that influence what we eat. Bringing together insight from critical pedagogy, food geographies, and corporeal feminist understandings of race, in this paper I point to the effectiveness of experimental and embodied pedagogies which expand students’ emotional and cognitive learning about the relationship between race and everyday food practices. Drawing from narrative and interview data with primarily white undergraduate students in Colorado, USA, I argue that embodied, critical pedagogies contribute to anti-racist goals by destabilizing whiteness, linking students’ theoretical understandings of race to everyday practice, and building empathy for/with others. Furthermore, I point to the effectiveness of a variety of student reflection formats, from narrative writing, to sharing a meal, to empathetic listening, to argue for greater attention to not only what we teach in anti-racist pedagogy, but how we teach.
Area, Aug 30, 2017
This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alt... more This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alternative food networks. While research on alternative food networks is prolific, it has paid little attention to the bodily intimacies of eating-as-relational, particularly regarding meat. As recent scholarship on visceral geographies of food claims the body as central, meat and accompanying human-animal relations remain in the shadows. How do conscientious meat eaters relate rationally, affectively and metabolically to animals in consumption practices? Building on current work in geographies of food and feeling, I argue that body mapping serves as a device to probe the visceral realm of practices and feelings in meat consumption. Drawing on focus group fieldwork in Austria, I illustrate how body mapping brings attention to the intertwined material-affective dimensions of food by eliciting data on both representational and material (dis)engagement with animal life. Furthermore, it facilitates individual and group reflexivity of uncomfortable practices. As a performative method, body mapping opens space for new considerations of the 'animal' in relation to food practice. For geographers of food and feeling, body mapping addresses the call for critical methods that illuminate the complexity and contradictions of how bodies respond toand care for-others within the food system.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Geoforum, Jul 1, 2021
Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency f... more Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency food assistance in struggles for food justice, dismissing food assistance as addressing symptoms rather than root causes of food insecurity. Yet, the vast network of food pantries and other free food programs are more than a stop-gap measure for millions of Americans — and thus warrant a closer look at how their practices, policies and spaces feel in practice and with what implications towards food justice goals. In this paper, we argue that barriers to emotionally-accessible food, in the form of neoliberal stigma around “free” food, play a prominent role in shaping peoples’ experiences with food assistance. Based on participatory research with a food redistribution non-profit in Boulder, Colorado, we discuss how the emotional burdens of food insecurity manifest in individual experiences with emergency food assistance programs and staff, leading to isolation and disconnection which actively inhibit more inclusive food systems. This research responds to scholarship in geographies of food and emotion, contributing analysis into how discomforts of (lacking/receiving) food are experienced viscerally. Furthermore, we discuss implications of the emotional (dis)comforts of food assistance when examining the role of emergency food assistance in broader struggles for food justice. To this end, we point to alternative practices in food assistance programs which might actively counteract narratives of neoliberal subjectivities, while simultaneously broadening the food justice community in terms of who feels comfortable participating in, and shaping, more equitable food systems.
Policy Futures in Education, May 22, 2018
This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography ed... more This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography education within the remit of education for sustainable development (ESD). We argue that current approaches perpetuate normative food discourse by: (a) framing participation in the food system solely in terms of consumption; (b) simplifying and moralizing food systems as 'good' or 'bad'; and (c) largely omitting animals from a discussion of meat and agriculture. As a result, students learn that their role is to consume 'good' not 'bad' meat, but are ill-equipped to analyse the politicaleconomic, cultural and affective dimensions of food. Meat and consumption topics, although rarely addressed, fall under the broader pedagogy of ESD. Although emancipatory approaches to ESD explore contradictions inherent in and personal aspects of sustainability, ESD in practice often leads to binary schemata of 'right' and 'wrong'. Based on our qualitative review of geography curricula in Austria and Germany (Lower Saxony and Bremen), we find that they neglect meat production and consumption, but that these subjects can be addressed within broader topics about sustainability and agricultural land use. Interviews with secondary school teachers and students indicate that ESD ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of food systems. However, we show that students still rank animal welfare as an important component of sustainability. This indicates that they are influenced by education beyond institutional settings and, furthermore, highlights opportunities for making students aware of the visceral (dis)connections they make between taste and political economy. Finally, we suggest future directions for ESD in order that these links can be explored, probing students to develop their own ethics of the gut.
Agriculture and Human Values, Jun 14, 2016
Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarshi... more Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarship on the socio-ecological implications of the meat industry could not be timelier. Jody Emel and Harvey Neo's edited volume makes an important academic and activist contribution, pulling together diverse articles in an expansive work. Drawing on political ecology and animal geography, the chapters investigate the intimate entanglements between political economy, knowledge regimes, and governance within the global meat complex. Contributing authors take on issues as varied as the 'livestock revolution,' the meat industry's impact on climate change, the framing and fixing of animal welfare standards, and the bioeconomy of animal breeding. Chapters describing global trends are interspersed with local case studies, with geographic analyses spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The range of topics covered and their theoretical accessibility make the work suitable both for an engaged public, as well as for undergraduate study within Environment and Sustainability, Geography, and Human-Animal Studies. The lens of political ecology interrogates the relationships among nature, society, and capital, with special attention placed on the differential power relations that produce exploitation. Given the meat industry's clear linkages to core political ecological themes, it is surprising that this is the first edition to specifically address meat. As aptly noted by Emel and Neo, while political ecology's longstanding preoccupation with human-environment relations has produced fruitful research on agriculture generally, the
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2023
In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to pu... more In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to put into practice anti-racist pedagogies. Less well-developed is scholarship on the approaches which expand students’ understanding of race and the socio-spatial and material processes of their own racialization. Within the context of food geographies, visceral pedagogies have been useful for advancing student knowledge on the multi-scalar, dynamic and complex systems of power that influence what we eat. Bringing together insight from critical pedagogy, food geographies, and corporeal feminist understandings of race, in this paper I point to the effectiveness of experimental and embodied pedagogies which expand students’ emotional and cognitive learning about the relationship between race and everyday food practices. Drawing from narrative and interview data with primarily white undergraduate students in Colorado, USA, I argue that embodied, critical pedagogies contribute to anti-racist goals by destabilizing whiteness, linking students’ theoretical understandings of race to everyday practice, and building empathy for/with others. Furthermore, I point to the effectiveness of a variety of student reflection formats, from narrative writing, to sharing a meal, to empathetic listening, to argue for greater attention to not only what we teach in anti-racist pedagogy, but how we teach.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses in our emergenc... more The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses in our emergency food distribution programs and also highlighted the importance of the adaptive capacity that is actively fostered within such programs. Community-based food distribution programs have faced an increased reliance on their services due to record-breaking food insecurity since March 2020. Concurrently, these emergency food distribution programs have had to deal with the logistical challenges of operating their programs during a pandemic. How are they adapting, and which existing organizational assets have they been able to draw from and/or strengthen? Based on in-depth qualitative research with emergency food distribution programs in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, this paper analyzes how their operational responses to the COVID-19 crisis both demonstrate and reinforce adaptive capacities. By drawing from collective resources, leveraging the efficiency of their flexible and decentraliz...
Geoforum, 2021
Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency f... more Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency food assistance in struggles for food justice, dismissing food assistance as addressing symptoms rather than root causes of food insecurity. Yet, the vast network of food pantries and other free food programs are more than a stop-gap measure for millions of Americans — and thus warrant a closer look at how their practices, policies and spaces feel in practice and with what implications towards food justice goals. In this paper, we argue that barriers to emotionally-accessible food, in the form of neoliberal stigma around “free” food, play a prominent role in shaping peoples’ experiences with food assistance. Based on participatory research with a food redistribution non-profit in Boulder, Colorado, we discuss how the emotional burdens of food insecurity manifest in individual experiences with emergency food assistance programs and staff, leading to isolation and disconnection which actively inhibit more inclusive food systems. This research responds to scholarship in geographies of food and emotion, contributing analysis into how discomforts of (lacking/receiving) food are experienced viscerally. Furthermore, we discuss implications of the emotional (dis)comforts of food assistance when examining the role of emergency food assistance in broader struggles for food justice. To this end, we point to alternative practices in food assistance programs which might actively counteract narratives of neoliberal subjectivities, while simultaneously broadening the food justice community in terms of who feels comfortable participating in, and shaping, more equitable food systems.
Policy Futures in Education, 2018
This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography ed... more This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography education within the remit of education for sustainable development (ESD). We argue that current approaches perpetuate normative food discourse by: (a) framing participation in the food system solely in terms of consumption; (b) simplifying and moralizing food systems as 'good' or 'bad'; and (c) largely omitting animals from a discussion of meat and agriculture. As a result, students learn that their role is to consume 'good' not 'bad' meat, but are ill-equipped to analyse the politicaleconomic, cultural and affective dimensions of food. Meat and consumption topics, although rarely addressed, fall under the broader pedagogy of ESD. Although emancipatory approaches to ESD explore contradictions inherent in and personal aspects of sustainability, ESD in practice often leads to binary schemata of 'right' and 'wrong'. Based on our qualitative review of geography curricula in Austria and Germany (Lower Saxony and Bremen), we find that they neglect meat production and consumption, but that these subjects can be addressed within broader topics about sustainability and agricultural land use. Interviews with secondary school teachers and students indicate that ESD ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of food systems. However, we show that students still rank animal welfare as an important component of sustainability. This indicates that they are influenced by education beyond institutional settings and, furthermore, highlights opportunities for making students aware of the visceral (dis)connections they make between taste and political economy. Finally, we suggest future directions for ESD in order that these links can be explored, probing students to develop their own ethics of the gut.
Area, 2017
This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alt... more This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alternative food networks. While research on alternative food networks is prolific, it has paid little attention to the bodily intimacies of eating-as-relational, particularly regarding meat. As recent scholarship on visceral geographies of food claims the body as central, meat and accompanying human-animal relations remain in the shadows. How do conscientious meat eaters relate rationally, affectively and metabolically to animals in consumption practices? Building on current work in geographies of food and feeling, I argue that body mapping serves as a device to probe the visceral realm of practices and feelings in meat consumption. Drawing on focus group fieldwork in Austria, I illustrate how body mapping brings attention to the intertwined material-affective dimensions of food by eliciting data on both representational and material (dis)engagement with animal life. Furthermore, it facilitates individual and group reflexivity of uncomfortable practices. As a performative method, body mapping opens space for new considerations of the 'animal' in relation to food practice. For geographers of food and feeling, body mapping addresses the call for critical methods that illuminate the complexity and contradictions of how bodies respond toand care for-others within the food system.
Agriculture and Human Values, 2016
Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarshi... more Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarship on the socio-ecological implications of the meat industry could not be timelier. Jody Emel and Harvey Neo's edited volume makes an important academic and activist contribution, pulling together diverse articles in an expansive work. Drawing on political ecology and animal geography, the chapters investigate the intimate entanglements between political economy, knowledge regimes, and governance within the global meat complex. Contributing authors take on issues as varied as the 'livestock revolution,' the meat industry's impact on climate change, the framing and fixing of animal welfare standards, and the bioeconomy of animal breeding. Chapters describing global trends are interspersed with local case studies, with geographic analyses spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The range of topics covered and their theoretical accessibility make the work suitable both for an engaged public, as well as for undergraduate study within Environment and Sustainability, Geography, and Human-Animal Studies. The lens of political ecology interrogates the relationships among nature, society, and capital, with special attention placed on the differential power relations that produce exploitation. Given the meat industry's clear linkages to core political ecological themes, it is surprising that this is the first edition to specifically address meat. As aptly noted by Emel and Neo, while political ecology's longstanding preoccupation with human-environment relations has produced fruitful research on agriculture generally, the
Agriculture and Human Values, 2018
In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) which promo... more In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) which promote an agenda of reconnection, allegedly linking consumers and producers to the socio-ecological origins of food. Rarely, however, does the AFN literature address "origins" of food in terms of animals, as in the case of meat. This article takes a relational approach to the reconnection agenda between humans and animals by discussing how the phenomenon of animal welfare and "happy" meat are enacted by producers and consumers in mundane, embodied, and nuanced ways. Utilizing hybrid conceptualizations of human-animal relations through "natureculture" and "being alongside", we demonstrate that consumers and producers of AFNs perform natureculture entanglements daily, often considering humans and animals as part of one another and the ecological system. Nonetheless, we also point to how participants in AFNs set boundaries to distance themselves from moments of animal life and death, explaining away uncomfortable affective naturecultures through commodification logics. Drawing on qualitative data from consumers and producers of food networks in Austria, we introduce the concept of "human-animal magnetism" to illustrate that the draw for humans to care about other animal lives exists within a spectrum of attraction and disassociation, engendered through specific human-animal interactions. Ultimately, we offer a cautiously hopeful version of alterity in AFNs of meat in which more caring human-animal relations are possible. Keywords Human-animal relations • Alternative food networks • Visceral • Meat • Natureculture It would be a mistake to assume that the 'externality' of nature can be suspended, on the sole grounds of its metaphysical or ontological implausibility: in empirical practice, it takes a lot of work to establish relations between environmental entities and social practices or assemblages. (Asdal and Marres 2014, p. 2057) For me what's important is that animals are multidimensional, living beings. There's this emotional relationship they have with us, where you really understand the animal…farming is fundamentally about being with animals as living creatures, the key is making those human-animal relationships more visible.
play a critical role in food systems, they face constraints and limitations related to resource r... more play a critical role in food systems, they face constraints and limitations related to resource rights and decisionmaking, gender-based violence, and increased vulnerability to food insecurity, as well as unequal burdens providing food for the family (FAO and University of Wollongong 2023). Research shows that gender inequalities are both a cause and outcome of unjust food systems, and improving gender equality should be a key goal towards sustainable food systems (Njuki et al. 2022). At the same time, policy and scholarship on the role of traditional food systems for Pacific food system change exhibits gender-blindness and gender bias (FAO and University of Wollongong 2023), particularly related to small-scale and low-value fisheries (Mangubhai and Lawless 2021). This is evident both in how women's roles within food provisioning on land and sea are under-examined, as well as the bias in food system research which sidelines indigenous subsistence practices in the global South (Belton and Bush 2014; Barclay et al. 2021; Lemke and Delormier 2017; Turner et al. 2022).
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Sep 9, 2023
In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to pu... more In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to put into practice anti-racist pedagogies. Less well-developed is scholarship on the approaches which expand students’ understanding of race and the socio-spatial and material processes of their own racialization. Within the context of food geographies, visceral pedagogies have been useful for advancing student knowledge on the multi-scalar, dynamic and complex systems of power that influence what we eat. Bringing together insight from critical pedagogy, food geographies, and corporeal feminist understandings of race, in this paper I point to the effectiveness of experimental and embodied pedagogies which expand students’ emotional and cognitive learning about the relationship between race and everyday food practices. Drawing from narrative and interview data with primarily white undergraduate students in Colorado, USA, I argue that embodied, critical pedagogies contribute to anti-racist goals by destabilizing whiteness, linking students’ theoretical understandings of race to everyday practice, and building empathy for/with others. Furthermore, I point to the effectiveness of a variety of student reflection formats, from narrative writing, to sharing a meal, to empathetic listening, to argue for greater attention to not only what we teach in anti-racist pedagogy, but how we teach.
Area, Aug 30, 2017
This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alt... more This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alternative food networks. While research on alternative food networks is prolific, it has paid little attention to the bodily intimacies of eating-as-relational, particularly regarding meat. As recent scholarship on visceral geographies of food claims the body as central, meat and accompanying human-animal relations remain in the shadows. How do conscientious meat eaters relate rationally, affectively and metabolically to animals in consumption practices? Building on current work in geographies of food and feeling, I argue that body mapping serves as a device to probe the visceral realm of practices and feelings in meat consumption. Drawing on focus group fieldwork in Austria, I illustrate how body mapping brings attention to the intertwined material-affective dimensions of food by eliciting data on both representational and material (dis)engagement with animal life. Furthermore, it facilitates individual and group reflexivity of uncomfortable practices. As a performative method, body mapping opens space for new considerations of the 'animal' in relation to food practice. For geographers of food and feeling, body mapping addresses the call for critical methods that illuminate the complexity and contradictions of how bodies respond toand care for-others within the food system.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Geoforum, Jul 1, 2021
Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency f... more Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency food assistance in struggles for food justice, dismissing food assistance as addressing symptoms rather than root causes of food insecurity. Yet, the vast network of food pantries and other free food programs are more than a stop-gap measure for millions of Americans — and thus warrant a closer look at how their practices, policies and spaces feel in practice and with what implications towards food justice goals. In this paper, we argue that barriers to emotionally-accessible food, in the form of neoliberal stigma around “free” food, play a prominent role in shaping peoples’ experiences with food assistance. Based on participatory research with a food redistribution non-profit in Boulder, Colorado, we discuss how the emotional burdens of food insecurity manifest in individual experiences with emergency food assistance programs and staff, leading to isolation and disconnection which actively inhibit more inclusive food systems. This research responds to scholarship in geographies of food and emotion, contributing analysis into how discomforts of (lacking/receiving) food are experienced viscerally. Furthermore, we discuss implications of the emotional (dis)comforts of food assistance when examining the role of emergency food assistance in broader struggles for food justice. To this end, we point to alternative practices in food assistance programs which might actively counteract narratives of neoliberal subjectivities, while simultaneously broadening the food justice community in terms of who feels comfortable participating in, and shaping, more equitable food systems.
Policy Futures in Education, May 22, 2018
This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography ed... more This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography education within the remit of education for sustainable development (ESD). We argue that current approaches perpetuate normative food discourse by: (a) framing participation in the food system solely in terms of consumption; (b) simplifying and moralizing food systems as 'good' or 'bad'; and (c) largely omitting animals from a discussion of meat and agriculture. As a result, students learn that their role is to consume 'good' not 'bad' meat, but are ill-equipped to analyse the politicaleconomic, cultural and affective dimensions of food. Meat and consumption topics, although rarely addressed, fall under the broader pedagogy of ESD. Although emancipatory approaches to ESD explore contradictions inherent in and personal aspects of sustainability, ESD in practice often leads to binary schemata of 'right' and 'wrong'. Based on our qualitative review of geography curricula in Austria and Germany (Lower Saxony and Bremen), we find that they neglect meat production and consumption, but that these subjects can be addressed within broader topics about sustainability and agricultural land use. Interviews with secondary school teachers and students indicate that ESD ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of food systems. However, we show that students still rank animal welfare as an important component of sustainability. This indicates that they are influenced by education beyond institutional settings and, furthermore, highlights opportunities for making students aware of the visceral (dis)connections they make between taste and political economy. Finally, we suggest future directions for ESD in order that these links can be explored, probing students to develop their own ethics of the gut.
Agriculture and Human Values, Jun 14, 2016
Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarshi... more Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarship on the socio-ecological implications of the meat industry could not be timelier. Jody Emel and Harvey Neo's edited volume makes an important academic and activist contribution, pulling together diverse articles in an expansive work. Drawing on political ecology and animal geography, the chapters investigate the intimate entanglements between political economy, knowledge regimes, and governance within the global meat complex. Contributing authors take on issues as varied as the 'livestock revolution,' the meat industry's impact on climate change, the framing and fixing of animal welfare standards, and the bioeconomy of animal breeding. Chapters describing global trends are interspersed with local case studies, with geographic analyses spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The range of topics covered and their theoretical accessibility make the work suitable both for an engaged public, as well as for undergraduate study within Environment and Sustainability, Geography, and Human-Animal Studies. The lens of political ecology interrogates the relationships among nature, society, and capital, with special attention placed on the differential power relations that produce exploitation. Given the meat industry's clear linkages to core political ecological themes, it is surprising that this is the first edition to specifically address meat. As aptly noted by Emel and Neo, while political ecology's longstanding preoccupation with human-environment relations has produced fruitful research on agriculture generally, the
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2023
In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to pu... more In recent years, there have been numerous calls for Geographers working in higher education to put into practice anti-racist pedagogies. Less well-developed is scholarship on the approaches which expand students’ understanding of race and the socio-spatial and material processes of their own racialization. Within the context of food geographies, visceral pedagogies have been useful for advancing student knowledge on the multi-scalar, dynamic and complex systems of power that influence what we eat. Bringing together insight from critical pedagogy, food geographies, and corporeal feminist understandings of race, in this paper I point to the effectiveness of experimental and embodied pedagogies which expand students’ emotional and cognitive learning about the relationship between race and everyday food practices. Drawing from narrative and interview data with primarily white undergraduate students in Colorado, USA, I argue that embodied, critical pedagogies contribute to anti-racist goals by destabilizing whiteness, linking students’ theoretical understandings of race to everyday practice, and building empathy for/with others. Furthermore, I point to the effectiveness of a variety of student reflection formats, from narrative writing, to sharing a meal, to empathetic listening, to argue for greater attention to not only what we teach in anti-racist pedagogy, but how we teach.
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Routledge eBooks, Mar 30, 2023
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses in our emergenc... more The unprecedented circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses in our emergency food distribution programs and also highlighted the importance of the adaptive capacity that is actively fostered within such programs. Community-based food distribution programs have faced an increased reliance on their services due to record-breaking food insecurity since March 2020. Concurrently, these emergency food distribution programs have had to deal with the logistical challenges of operating their programs during a pandemic. How are they adapting, and which existing organizational assets have they been able to draw from and/or strengthen? Based on in-depth qualitative research with emergency food distribution programs in Boulder and Denver, Colorado, this paper analyzes how their operational responses to the COVID-19 crisis both demonstrate and reinforce adaptive capacities. By drawing from collective resources, leveraging the efficiency of their flexible and decentraliz...
Geoforum, 2021
Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency f... more Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency food assistance in struggles for food justice, dismissing food assistance as addressing symptoms rather than root causes of food insecurity. Yet, the vast network of food pantries and other free food programs are more than a stop-gap measure for millions of Americans — and thus warrant a closer look at how their practices, policies and spaces feel in practice and with what implications towards food justice goals. In this paper, we argue that barriers to emotionally-accessible food, in the form of neoliberal stigma around “free” food, play a prominent role in shaping peoples’ experiences with food assistance. Based on participatory research with a food redistribution non-profit in Boulder, Colorado, we discuss how the emotional burdens of food insecurity manifest in individual experiences with emergency food assistance programs and staff, leading to isolation and disconnection which actively inhibit more inclusive food systems. This research responds to scholarship in geographies of food and emotion, contributing analysis into how discomforts of (lacking/receiving) food are experienced viscerally. Furthermore, we discuss implications of the emotional (dis)comforts of food assistance when examining the role of emergency food assistance in broader struggles for food justice. To this end, we point to alternative practices in food assistance programs which might actively counteract narratives of neoliberal subjectivities, while simultaneously broadening the food justice community in terms of who feels comfortable participating in, and shaping, more equitable food systems.
Policy Futures in Education, 2018
This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography ed... more This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography education within the remit of education for sustainable development (ESD). We argue that current approaches perpetuate normative food discourse by: (a) framing participation in the food system solely in terms of consumption; (b) simplifying and moralizing food systems as 'good' or 'bad'; and (c) largely omitting animals from a discussion of meat and agriculture. As a result, students learn that their role is to consume 'good' not 'bad' meat, but are ill-equipped to analyse the politicaleconomic, cultural and affective dimensions of food. Meat and consumption topics, although rarely addressed, fall under the broader pedagogy of ESD. Although emancipatory approaches to ESD explore contradictions inherent in and personal aspects of sustainability, ESD in practice often leads to binary schemata of 'right' and 'wrong'. Based on our qualitative review of geography curricula in Austria and Germany (Lower Saxony and Bremen), we find that they neglect meat production and consumption, but that these subjects can be addressed within broader topics about sustainability and agricultural land use. Interviews with secondary school teachers and students indicate that ESD ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of food systems. However, we show that students still rank animal welfare as an important component of sustainability. This indicates that they are influenced by education beyond institutional settings and, furthermore, highlights opportunities for making students aware of the visceral (dis)connections they make between taste and political economy. Finally, we suggest future directions for ESD in order that these links can be explored, probing students to develop their own ethics of the gut.
Area, 2017
This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alt... more This paper explores the use of body mapping methods in the study of human-animal relations in alternative food networks. While research on alternative food networks is prolific, it has paid little attention to the bodily intimacies of eating-as-relational, particularly regarding meat. As recent scholarship on visceral geographies of food claims the body as central, meat and accompanying human-animal relations remain in the shadows. How do conscientious meat eaters relate rationally, affectively and metabolically to animals in consumption practices? Building on current work in geographies of food and feeling, I argue that body mapping serves as a device to probe the visceral realm of practices and feelings in meat consumption. Drawing on focus group fieldwork in Austria, I illustrate how body mapping brings attention to the intertwined material-affective dimensions of food by eliciting data on both representational and material (dis)engagement with animal life. Furthermore, it facilitates individual and group reflexivity of uncomfortable practices. As a performative method, body mapping opens space for new considerations of the 'animal' in relation to food practice. For geographers of food and feeling, body mapping addresses the call for critical methods that illuminate the complexity and contradictions of how bodies respond toand care for-others within the food system.
Agriculture and Human Values, 2016
Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarshi... more Considering the frighteningly rapid pace of global livestock intensification, critical scholarship on the socio-ecological implications of the meat industry could not be timelier. Jody Emel and Harvey Neo's edited volume makes an important academic and activist contribution, pulling together diverse articles in an expansive work. Drawing on political ecology and animal geography, the chapters investigate the intimate entanglements between political economy, knowledge regimes, and governance within the global meat complex. Contributing authors take on issues as varied as the 'livestock revolution,' the meat industry's impact on climate change, the framing and fixing of animal welfare standards, and the bioeconomy of animal breeding. Chapters describing global trends are interspersed with local case studies, with geographic analyses spanning Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The range of topics covered and their theoretical accessibility make the work suitable both for an engaged public, as well as for undergraduate study within Environment and Sustainability, Geography, and Human-Animal Studies. The lens of political ecology interrogates the relationships among nature, society, and capital, with special attention placed on the differential power relations that produce exploitation. Given the meat industry's clear linkages to core political ecological themes, it is surprising that this is the first edition to specifically address meat. As aptly noted by Emel and Neo, while political ecology's longstanding preoccupation with human-environment relations has produced fruitful research on agriculture generally, the
Agriculture and Human Values, 2018
In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) which promo... more In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) which promote an agenda of reconnection, allegedly linking consumers and producers to the socio-ecological origins of food. Rarely, however, does the AFN literature address "origins" of food in terms of animals, as in the case of meat. This article takes a relational approach to the reconnection agenda between humans and animals by discussing how the phenomenon of animal welfare and "happy" meat are enacted by producers and consumers in mundane, embodied, and nuanced ways. Utilizing hybrid conceptualizations of human-animal relations through "natureculture" and "being alongside", we demonstrate that consumers and producers of AFNs perform natureculture entanglements daily, often considering humans and animals as part of one another and the ecological system. Nonetheless, we also point to how participants in AFNs set boundaries to distance themselves from moments of animal life and death, explaining away uncomfortable affective naturecultures through commodification logics. Drawing on qualitative data from consumers and producers of food networks in Austria, we introduce the concept of "human-animal magnetism" to illustrate that the draw for humans to care about other animal lives exists within a spectrum of attraction and disassociation, engendered through specific human-animal interactions. Ultimately, we offer a cautiously hopeful version of alterity in AFNs of meat in which more caring human-animal relations are possible. Keywords Human-animal relations • Alternative food networks • Visceral • Meat • Natureculture It would be a mistake to assume that the 'externality' of nature can be suspended, on the sole grounds of its metaphysical or ontological implausibility: in empirical practice, it takes a lot of work to establish relations between environmental entities and social practices or assemblages. (Asdal and Marres 2014, p. 2057) For me what's important is that animals are multidimensional, living beings. There's this emotional relationship they have with us, where you really understand the animal…farming is fundamentally about being with animals as living creatures, the key is making those human-animal relationships more visible.