The food system of the United States has received increasing attention in recent years for its negative environmental impacts. While the increasing conversation and mobility towards a sustainable and just food system has had many positive impacts across the country, it has also occasionally devolved into a blame game between urban and rural (or agriculture and non-agriculture) environments. There are environmental impacts generated both by populations living within the agricultural sector and those living outside of it. In urban centers we see increasing instances of food deserts as well as an increasing disconnect with the food system as a whole. In the agricultural sector we face the continuing problems of resource consumption and depletion, environmental contamination from pesticides and other forms of pollution, as well as increasing incidences of factory and monocultural farming. While these problems may be unique to their respective sectors, they are by no means disconnected. This paper discusses the need for a comprehensive understanding of the food systems in America, and a joint effort between agricultural and non agricultural sectors to work towards just and sustainable food systems.
Author: Absaroka Mann-Wood (Page 1 of 2)
Although the speaker this week didn’t spend much time talking about environmental activism, I found the conversation to be incredibly interesting regardless. Farber spoke about filling up space intentionally, and looking critically at the ways that that space has been filled and formed in the past and how that informs our present. I thought that there were a lot of concepts that he introduced that could be translated easily into the realm of environmental activism and environmental justice.
The first thing that Farber discussed that I felt translated relevantly was critically evaluating every aspect of our own actions. This includes looking at the conversations that we are having, and who we are including in those conversations. It means making every effort to include every person that we can in those conversations. What really struck me about this idea is how it has been presented by everyone who has come to speak to our class about activism. Catherine Flowers and Robin Kirk talked about finding allies. Crystal Dreisbach talked about including everyone that will be affected by your project, even (and especially) those that you don’t think will be supporting the endeavor. They all talked in some way about ensuring that you include a multiplicity of voices, and that you do so in a real and meaningful way.
Another thing that Farber discussed that I felt was relevant to our class, and the projects that we have been working on, are the specific tactics to encourage engagement with projects. He talked about making sure that you give everyone something to contribute to the project, so that they know that their participation is meaningful and having an impact. He talked about the impact of giving them something tangible to walk away with, both so they will remember the conversation in the future, as well as creating additional incentives for participation. Finally, he talked about creating a space where everyone feels willing and able to participate. I found these specific strategies to be incredibly helpful when thinking about ways to adapt our tactics when planning May Three, Waste Free, and know that many people in my group felt the same way.
I am always shocked when we have these speakers come visit about the vast array of things that they talk about, and how I am able to take something away from every talk. Although they are often not quite what we expected, they always add value into our conversation about environmental activism and the projects that we are pursuing. I feel like this is just one example of the incredible ways in which all forms of activism are similar in their essential make up. We’re all trying to make the world a better place, and we all have so much to learn from each other.
The sentence that most resonated with me from this weeks discussion was from the movie Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective when Ben Falk was talking about having a net positive impact on the planet. Most of the conversation that we have about environmental issues are all about how to do less damage, how can we bring our impact on the planet down to the smallest that it can possibly be. Folk challenged the presumption that this is the best thing that we can do for the planet, arguing that doing the least bad is not enough but that we have the ability to do more good. He argues that if our goal is to have the very least impact that we possibly could have, the best thing that we could do would be to stop existing.
I think that this really resonated with me because it’s something that I have struggled with in my own relationship to the earth for a long time. If you believe that the best thing that humans can do for the earth is to have the smallest impact as is possible, then it logically follows, as folk asserts, that the best thing for the earth would be for humans to stop existing. But that seems much too bleak of a view of humanity for em. I’ve always asserted that humans are fundamentally good, and how can I hold that belief while also arguing that we should have the absolutely smallest impact as possible? I think that the idea of permaculture really offered me a solution to this problem.
I think the fundamental idea behind permaculture that really resonated with me was how it reframed humankind’s relationship with nature. It placed humans back within nature, living and working with nature as opposed to being distinct and separate from nature. For far too long humans have been living divorced from nature. We think of ourselves as separate from the natural world, and therefore make no attempt to live within and think responsibly about the world. If we are not one with nature, and there is no way that we could live within nature then we lose all responsibility to even try to design our systems in tune with the natural world. Once we reframe our position within the world, it becomes not only possible but an absolute imperative that we work to design our systems to fit within natural systems. We become part of the ecosystem again, and have to think of our place within that system.
Of course, we never really left the system. But we thought that we did, and so we stopped thinking about the ways our actions impact the system. We got so far removed, that now we are only capable of conceptualizing human interaction with nature in the negative. It is nearly impossible for us to conceptualize a modern society that lives within nature and has a net positive effect. But permaculture opens that door. It reminds us of the responsibility that we have as a part of the system, and offers us solutions for how to live regeneratively.
I’ve always understood hope to be a passive act. I’ve thought of it simply as “hoping for the best,” something that you thought about while you took no concrete actions towards whatever it is you mean by, ‘the best.’ This weeks readings challenged that conception, and really made me examine the ways that I have been thinking and conceptualizing hope.
Rebecca Solnit wrote in her article “Grounds for Hope,” that hope is “the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” She writes about hope not as something that we think about while we wait for things to work out, but rather knowing that the work that we are doing matters. The work that we are doing will lead to a better future, whatever future we can imagine for ourselves is possible.
This reading was placed directly in contrast with the reading “The Limits of Utopia,” by China Miéville in a really brilliant way. Miéville writes of the dangers of utopia and dystopia, and the dangers of allowing either view of the future to cloud our view of the present and of the work that must be done. “The Limits of Utopia,” begins with the line “dystopias infect official reports.” Miéville is arguing that the view that we have allowed to be shaped for us by mass media, a media often more concerned with making money for the most sensational images it can imagine. He argues that by allowing ourselves to be taken in by these stories, we are forcing ourselves into boxes that restrain what we conceptualize as realistic actions. We cannot allow our perception of realistic actions to be defined by a faulty reality.
This is the essential argument behind Solnit’s piece as well. She writes that “your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power.” People love to paint horrifying pictures of the future. It’s compelling, it’s impossible to look away from. The problem with those pictures, though, is that they are so damn hard to look away from. We cannot be distracted from the reality that we are living through by dystopias that our opponents would like for us to believe. We must have hope. We must have action.
Solnit, R. (2017). Grounds For Hope. Tikkun, 32(1), 30-39. doi:10.1215/08879982-3769066
Unfortunately I wasn’t in class for our discussion on Wednesday, but I was really inspired by our conversation with Catherine Flowers. The idea she presented that most caught my attention was that of rural justice. I am from a rural area, and coming to Duke has been an interesting challenge for me. Interesting because when I was in Lander all I wanted to do was get out of Lander, and get away from a culture that I saw as repressive and, in many ways, backwards. I saw coming to Duke as coming to the light. I would come to Duke, and everything would be better, everything would be perfect.
But of course, everything is not perfect. Every place has their problems, and every place has things and ideas that you as an individual won’t agree with. But Catherine’s talk really made me re-examine the relationship that I have with my hometown. Being at Duke has made me love my hometown, but I often describe myself as “loving the town, less than loving the people.” And I would argue it’s really easy to fall into those patterns of thinking. To disagree with the ideas and ways of thinking that dominate in a place, and to write off that place altogether. But it’s important to think of the ways in which our rural communities are struggling, and how those struggles inform the ideas and identities that form within communities.
When I was looking up information about rural justice, I came across some interesting finds. According to this article from the National Committee For Responsive Philanthropy “since 1970, the jail population in rural counties has expanded sevenfold – twice as fast as urban counties.” When you look at maps of oil drilling in the United States it is overwhelmingly located in rural areas. And anyone from a rural area has heard about the “rural brain drain” sweeping the country.
It’s easy to look down on small town America. It’s much harder to consider the systems that are shaping these areas and figure out what isn’t working.
One of the core themes of this class that I keep finding myself coming back to is the varying power of fact vs. fiction. There is power in reporting the truth, as objectively as possible. There is power in being able to definitively, quantifiably measure the impacts that we are imparting to our planet. But there is also power in telling a story. In telling a story no less true for its lack of “facts,” but a story that tells the truth of the emotions. A story of what a relationship with our land means, and what it means with that relationship is taken away or jeopardized by forces entirely out of your control. Those aren’t stories that we can tell with facts. Both of these stories are powerful.
I was struck in our conversation with mapping at how clearly mapping falls within this frame. Maps tell a story. They tell a story by using facts, but facts that are shaped entirely by people with stories. Yes, objectively the objects represented on a map are indeed there. But what meaning are those objects given? What objects are not given meaning?
The additional power of maps is in the story that of the user. The person reading a map uses that map to shape their relationship with their surroundings. They look at a map and they say yes, those are the things that are important and that I must know in order to understand how I should move within this space. They see a road on a map and they understand what it means to cross that road. They see a river and they understand the things that they need to get over that river. But what about the things that aren’t on a map? What about the things that may truly be impossible to put on a map? How can a map possibly explain to a freshman woman exactly how to cross through a room full of drunk men?
Maps occupy an interesting position on the spectrum of fact vs. fiction, and I haven’t fully been able to process exactly where I would put them. They are composed of fact, but shaped by the fictions of the author. Although I suppose that is true of all ‘factual’ writing, the map imbues that fiction with a special sort of power. We use maps to function, to understand how to move and how to act in our world. When those maps only show one world, what does that mean about how we can move?
This week in class we spent a lot of time thinking about the ways that activism can have as big of an impact as possible. One of the ideas I loved the most from this was when Dr. Kirk was talking about learning from our history. While we have spent a lot of time discussing the history of activism in this class (Bidder 70 and Monkey Wrench Gang among other examples), I loved her idea of looking outside of only environmental activists for our inspiration. She spoke extensively of the lessons that we can learn from the activists who worked to end slave trade, and I found this incredibly powerful. Remembering how interconnected all the injustices facing our world truly are may seem overwhelming at first, but it brings with it a powerful opportunity for change. If everyone who cares deeply about any of those issues comes together to fight against them all, we have an incredible opportunity for change.
Another point that Dr. Kirk discussed that really stuck with me was the importance of remembering that change happens slowly. This was also mentioned in Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, but I found it to be more impactful when listening to someone who had been fighting for change her whole life. When she discussed the shift in the human rights conversation after 9/11 this point really came to life for me. It had been a moment where the human rights community had thought that progress was being made, only to be rudely thrown back. I think that this example really illustrates the importance of continuing to fight for the things that you believe in, even when that fight gets really difficult. It also showed how we cannot allow ourselves to become complicit. We have to use the times that we fail, or that things don’t happen the way that we had imagined, to learn and to adapt. Although clearly this lesson is impossible to learn in a classroom, I think you really have to experience it before fully understanding, it was enlightening to have someone who had experienced it speak to the ways that those experiences can be used as a learning opportunity.
Something that really struck me in our discussion this week was discussing the author’s decision to make this book fiction. It is entirely possible that he could have told the same story, but done it in nonfiction form. He could have written it journalistically, or an anthropology piece about the cultures of the island and the effects that oil companies have had. However, he made the choice to write a fictional account, and I think this choice gave the entire piece a lot of power.
It’s hard to get people to change their minds. It’s hard to get people to listen to an opinion or an idea that they don’t share. This article goes into depth about just how impossible it is to get people to change their minds when presented with factual information. And that’s a problem that America is coming to face with in a spectacular way right now. We have two sides of society who hear entirely different stories, who consume different ‘facts,’ and who live in different realities. If we are going to continue as a society, it’s absolutely paramount that we somehow join these two worlds, that we start recognizing that we do in fact live in one world, with one set of facts. But how do we do that if it’s impossible to reason with people? I would argue that storytelling is our most powerful tool.
The article talks about how after we have our formed beliefs, we don’t want to change them, that in fact we often refuse to consider evidence that would refute our own beliefs. What it doesn’t mention is how those beliefs are formed in the first place. I would argue that our beliefs are built upon the foundation of our experiences. I know the way my world works, I know because I’ve seen it. But what about people who don’t see the whole world? What about people who live in only one place, and don’t have the ability or opportunity to leave that place and understand other ways of living? How do those people get the opportunity to expand their knowledge of the world, and in doing so expand their beliefs and understandings of the way the world works? I argue that storytelling is a powerful tool for exploring those possibilities.
And storytelling can be fictional or nonfictional, but it has to be truthful. It has to truly open your mind and your understanding to things that you would never have the opportunity to experience first hand. And that can be through reading a novel about a place on the other side of the globe, or reading a magazine article about a community across the city from you. And I think that the choice to make the novel “Oil on Water” fictional allowed Helon Habila to tell a true story in a way that deeply impacted his readers. They not only saw what was happening, the way an article allows for, but they understood the feelings and emotions that those events induced. In doing so, Habila opens up a whole new world to his audience. A whole new world they never would have experienced otherwise.
When I was trying to understand the story Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okafor, the idea that I keep coming back to is how we humans always seem to be losing control of our own creations. Okafor illustrates this point incredibly strikingly through her depiction of Zombies, artificial intelligence beings created to protect pipelines that begin to turn on the humans that created them. But I don’t think her point was that we are going to lose control of artificial intelligence, but that we lose control of everything we create. She mentioned earlier in the story that the pipelines running through the town were causing infertility in the women and the men were beginning to pee blood. We create these pipelines preaching ideas of “advancement” and “development,” talking constantly about the wealth and prosperity they will bring, but those are very rarely the true consequences of the people whose lives are actually affected by the pipelines. We see them burst and spill toxic materials into our water sources and our land all the time. We see the terrible impacts that they have on the people who are forced to live and survive the closest to them, and yet we continue to want to believe in the inherent ‘goodness’ of our creations. Especially when those terrible impacts are happening in poor, black communities that always bear the burden of rich, white countries’ “development”.
With her story, Okafor depicts how continuing to live in this arrogance will have disastrous consequences for humankind. If we continue to build and develop and create things without fully considering, or even understanding, the consequences, we will one day be forced to confront them. Some day the damage that our creations inflict on the world will not only happen to the populations that oil companies can easily ignore or sweep under the rug, but they will be forced to reckon with the monsters they have created.
Linda Hogan’s “Power” touched upon a number of issues that it would be possible to write entire books about. We discussed some of those issues in class, including the struggle to define identity when you find yourself stuck between two cultures, the rights of indigenous peoples on their own land, and the power struggles that we can see all the characters grappling with throughout the novels. Each of these issues deserves time taken to understand them deeply, but the conflict that most affected me was our discussion of the rights of indigenous peoples concerning environmental changes. In the novel, this is most dramatically confronted when Ama choses that it is the most humane action to kill the panther, as she can see how much it is suffering. The community rebels against her, many for reasons that most environmentalists would quickly agree with it. It’s wrong to kill an endangered species, isn’t it?
What most struck me about this was how ready the community was to punish Ama for her actions. How ready the world was to understand that killing an endangered species is wrong, and therefore is a punishable offense. But we don’t see any equal anger towards the individuals and organizations that made the species endangered in the first place. The police were quick to come to Ama’s house with their lights blazing to cart her away for putting one bullet into one panther, but do we see any similar action to the CEOs of the oil companies pumping dangerous chemicals into our water and land all in the pursuit of oil? Their actions are undoubtedly leading to the death and destruction of countless more animals than Ama’s single gun shot, but we see no action on the part of the government to hold them accountable. Those companies are polluting our land, air, and water all for the sake of what has been dubbed “economic growth,” and therefore must be good. But when Ama chooses to put an animal out of the misery that those very companies have wrought, she deserves the harshest of punishments. Why is it that our country is so focused on punishing the symptoms of the system, rather than ever looking to the system itself?
