We have decided to investigate the idea of individual action as a means to "improve" the global food system. By improve, we mean how can we the lessen environmental degradation imparted by the global food system. This week, Grace and I developed a rough "plan of attack" for our engagement project. This week (3/11-3/15), we plan to meet with Jessica to polish our questions and general project plan, so we can continue our project with confidence. Additionally, we are going to reach out to Bob Goldman, our professor for the Political Economy of Food, which initially inspired our project. Bob is a regular customer at People's Co-Op, and prides himself on being an ethical and educated consumer. We feel that Bob could give us helpful constructive feedback on our initial project plan, and will allow us to refine our project and questions even further.
After reviewing the feedback we received on our initial project proposal presentation, Grace and I noticed that many of the comments focused on our plan for connection action and our "nagging question". We felt that it was necessary to revisit the relevant scholarship we have collected thus far to gain a more in-depth understanding of the heart of this issue, in order to reevaluate our nagging question. We focused mostly on the classical environmental thinking pieces, as well as a few other articles that are specific to this issue. Firstly, and most broadly, we looked to Steve Rayner's "Wicked Problems". Feeding the world, or feeding the world well is a wicked problem. How can we feed the world while avoiding environmental degradation? How can we feed the world equitably? Grace and I were discussing this issue under the lens of "strange bedfellows" idea. Any "clumsy" solutions for this problem will involve "strange bedfellows". We also found that Bruno Latour's "Love Your Monsters" is very applicable to our project. Latour points out that the issue with Frankenstein was not the monster itself, rather it was the abandonment of it. He uses this idea to shed light on issues of technological advancement, and the discussion of whether technology is more helpful or hurtful to us. We can apply this idea to the issue of our current global food system and the task of "feeding the world". We have created this system, but abandoned it. We have failed to update it to appropriately fit our modern needs. The scholarship that we based our project off of in the beginning is Micheal Maniates' "Individualization: Ride a Bike, Plant a Tree, Save the World?" Where he explains that individual environmental actions are largely the product of a widely help belief that environmental degradation is caused by our individual shortcomings. Because of this belief, people often feel that the responsibility of reversing environmental degradation falls to the individual. Our project is largely based on the underlying ideas from these three contemporary environmental thinkers. We have decided to engage with these issues by narrowing our focus on the food system, and grocery stores in particular. We feel that all of these issues are embodied by the food system, which is a wicked problem that society has faced for decades.
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