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 on my blog page for ENVS 295, to view these posts please visit this page.
I maintained a record of our project development on my blog page for ENVS 295, to view these posts please visit this page.
Project Goals
- To gain an understanding of how people perceive their role as a consumer, and to explore individuals' opinions of the power consumers have to make changes within the food system.
- 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.
Beginning broadly, Grace and I looked at Steve Rayner's "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.
Additionally, we found Bruno Latour's "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' "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.
These pieces of contemporary environmental scholarship 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. n.d. “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. Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2007.
Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Love Your Monsters.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, 256-425 [Kindle]. 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. Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2007.
Latour, Bruno. 2011. “Love Your Monsters.” In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, 256-425 [Kindle]. 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.