environmental engagement envs 295
spring 2019
digital portfolio
In ENVS 295, "Environmental Engagement", students are tasked with designing and carrying out a semester long engagement project. Through these projects, students connect environmental scholarship with various stakeholders, and build on communication and cultural skills. As a final outcome of the course, students create a poster and share their outcomes at Lewis & Clark's annual Festival of Scholars poster fair. This page outlines my efforts in ENVS 295 by summarizing and linking to my work.
I maintained a record of our project development through a series of update posts on my blog page for ENVS 295, to view these posts please visit this page.
I maintained a record of our project development through a series of update posts on my blog page for ENVS 295, to view these posts please visit this page.
Project Goals
Our goal for this project was to gain an understanding of how people perceive their role as a consumer and to explore opinions on the power of consumers to make changes within the food system, and to explore the applicability of the “shrinking environmental imagination” to the food system.
Scholarship and motivation
My project partner, Grace Anderson, and I took a SOAN course last semester titled "The Political Economy of Food". After taking this class, we were both left with a peaked interest in the idea of purchasing power and food systems in connection with individual identity. For our engagement project, we decided to explore this idea with grocery stores as the vehicle of our exploration. Because food is so important to individual identity, we felt that discussing environmental action through people's food choices would give people an opportunity to reflect on what they eat and why they eat it.
Additionally, we found Bruno Latour's (2011) "Love Your Monsters" to be applicable to the issue of individualization in the food system. Latour upholds that the "sin" within Mary Shelly's Frankenstein was not the creation of the monster itself, but rather its creators abandonment of it. While we've developed a large scale food system that uses technology to its advantage, we have failed to revisit its creation and have allowed industrial agricultural to get out of hand.
At the core of our project is Micheal Maniates' (2001) "Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?" Maniates asserts that we are struggling with a shrinking "environmental imagination", or the distancing of environmental actions from the political and collective, shifting instead toward individual and consumption-based actions. The belief that environmental degradation is the fault of individual shortcomings places guilt and a feeling of responsibility on individual people.
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At the forefront of our project, Grace and I wanted to create a strong foundation of scholarship for our project. We identified a combination of contemporary environmental scholarship and content-specific sources that frame our project. This blend of scholarship guided our thinking as we worked on this project throughout the semester.
Beginning broadly, Grace and I looked at Steve Rayner's (2014) "Wicked Problems", a famous piece of contemporary environmental scholarship. We identified feeding the world, and feeding it well, as a wicked problem. Moreover, grocery stores in and of themselves could be classified as a wicked problem. Any solution for a wicked problem must be "clumsy", meaning the solution must incorporate the views of every solution-seeker. |
In terms of more specific literature related to our project, we looked to a journal article titled "On Individualism in the Neoliberal Period" by Dr. Matthew Eagleton-Pierce (2016). Eagleton-Pierce discusses decision-making in a neoliberal context, and how the idea of 'the consumer' has permeated areas that were once separate from the forces of capitalism (Eagleton-Pierce, 2016). When beginning this project, Grace and I discussed the ways in which free markets place an incredible amount of responsibility on the individual, which remains a central idea to our project. We observed that the "category of the consumer" has completely taken over environmental stewardship as it relates to consumer decisions in the grocery store. We have identified neoliberalism as a primary driver of the "shrinking environmental imagination."
We read parts of Daniel Jaffee's (2007) book, Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival by Daniel Jaffee. Jaffee applies the ideas of "instrumentalism (the role of individual economic gain plays in transactions) and the continuum of marketness and embeddedness to the Fair Trade certification system (Jaffee, 2007). These ideas are central to our project, because they provide a method on which we can evaluate the motivations behind economic behavior and consumer choices. |
Finally, we read Gail Hollander's (2003) "Re-Naturalizing Sugar: Narratives of Place, Production and Consumption." In this piece, Hollander explores competition within the sweetener industry, "as shaped by the material qualities of sweeteners, has given rise to supermarket narratives that seek to differentiate sugars on the basis of ideas of place, freshness and environmental sustainability,” (Hollander, 2003). While this piece is focused specifically on one market good, we applied these ideas to the broader category of market goods.
These pieces of contemporary environmental scholarship and content-specific sources served as the intellectual foundation for our project. Through engagement with individuals on their feelings about food and their consumer choices, we hoped to allow people to deeply reflect on their position and impact within the broader food system.
These pieces of contemporary environmental scholarship and content-specific sources served as the intellectual foundation for our project. Through engagement with individuals on their feelings about food and their consumer choices, we hoped to allow people to deeply reflect on their position and impact within the broader food system.
People
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Action and Engagement
Our consumer survey asked participants to rank and assess several grocery stores and explain their reasoning, articulate the important factors that influence their consumption decisions (factors include cost, selection, accessibility, perceived environmental impact, nutritional value, etc...), and to share their opinions on the efficacy of individual and collective action.
During our discussions with Jay, Bob, and Robin, we discussed issues such as food systems, scales of action, identity-protective cognition, tribalism, and brand identity. We engaged in dialogue with Lewis & Clark students, including Julia, a fruit and nut farmer from northern California. We all expressed our views, and most importantly listened to the views of others. Some core themes within out dialogues included transparency and responsibility within consumption and agricultural practices. |
Findings and Assessment
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Poster
As a final outcome of our project, Grace and I created the poster below to share our findings with the Lewis & Clark community. We presented our poster at the annual Lewis & Clark Festival of Scholars poster fair in the Spring of 2019.
Bibliography
Eagleton-Pierce, Dr. Matthew. 2016. “ON INDIVIDUALISM IN THE NEOLIBERAL PERIOD,” 11.
Hollander, Gail M. 2003. “Re-Naturalizing Sugar: Narratives of Place, Production and Consumption.” Social & Cultural Geography 4 (1): 59.
Jaffee, Daniel. 2007. Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Love Your Monsters.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute.
Maniates, Michael F. 2001. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1 (3): 31–52.
Rayner, Steve. 2014. “Wicked Problems.” Environmental Scientist 23 (2): 3–4.
Hollander, Gail M. 2003. “Re-Naturalizing Sugar: Narratives of Place, Production and Consumption.” Social & Cultural Geography 4 (1): 59.
Jaffee, Daniel. 2007. Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Love Your Monsters.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute.
Maniates, Michael F. 2001. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics 1 (3): 31–52.
Rayner, Steve. 2014. “Wicked Problems.” Environmental Scientist 23 (2): 3–4.