In their 1987 Nature publication, “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution,” Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson gave a new reconstruction of human evolution on the basis of differences in mitochondrial DNA among contemporary human populations. This phylogeny included an African common ancestor for all human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages, and Cann et al.’s reconstruction became known as the “Out of Africa” hypothesis. Since mtDNA is inherited exclusively through the maternal line, the common ancestor who was first branded African (...) Eve later became known as Mitochondrial Eve (mtEve, for short). -/- In this paper, I show that mtEve was not a single, successful, or purely scientific discovery. Instead, she was produced many times and in many ways, each of which informed the next. Importantly, though Wilson and colleagues heralded mitochondrial DNA as a source of certainty, objectivity, and consensus for evolutionary inference, their productions of Mitochondrial Eve depended as much on popular assumptions about the certainty of maternal inheritance as they did on new molecular and computational tools. This recognition lets us reevaluate the complex consequences of these productions, which, like mtEve herself, could not be confined to a purely social, material, or scientific dimension. (shrink)

In recent years, two competing methodological frameworks have developed in the study of the epistemology of philosophy. The traditional camp, led by experimental philosophy and its allies, has made inferences about the epistemology of philosophy based on the reactions, or intuitions, people have to works of philosophy. In contrast, multiple authors have followed the lead of Deutsch and Cappelen by setting aside experimental data in favor of inferences based on careful examination of the text of notable works of philosophy. In (...) other words, the debate is split between authors focusing on philosophy’sconsumptionand those focusing on philosophy’sproduction. This paper examines the motivation for focusing on original texts and other evidence of philosophy’s production and finds it lacking. Drawing upon Hills’ distinction between propagation and transmission, I argue that the social epistemology of philosophy does not justify the recent focus on original texts of philosophy. Because the philosophical knowledge of consumers of philosophy is likelyinspiredby producers of philosophy, as opposed to epistemically grounded in the producers’ epistemic states, experimental philosophy had it right all along—if we want to know the epistemic standing of philosophy, we need to look to philosophy’s consumers. (shrink)

This article examines the Depo-Provera Affair—where Israeli doctors administered the contraceptive Depo-Provera to newly immigrated Ethiopian Jewish women—to argue that the Israeli settler colonial project depends on these forms of gendered anti-Black violence, through the management of Black African bodies. In 2013, then Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman admitted that they had administered Depo-Provera to Ethiopian immigrant women without their consent, after reproductive and civil rights activists in Israel called for an investigation after a drop in the birthrate among (...) Ethiopian women: close to 50 per cent within the previous decade. The demarcation of Blackness as a political tool necessary to advance Israeli modernity and the situating of Black bodies as antithetical to the state of Israel are not contradictory but rather illuminate Israel’s deployment of anti-Blackness through the racial and reproductive violence necessary to become part of the superior, European West. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the possibilities of combining two central intuitions about artefacts: that they are functional objects, and that they are non-natural objects. We do so in four steps. First we argue that, contrary to common opinion, functions cannot be the cornerstone of a characterisation of artefacts. Our argument suggests an alternative view, which characterises artefacts as objects embedded in what we call use plans. Second, we show that this plan-centred successor of the function-focused view is at odds (...) with the non-naturalness intuition. Third, we show that this intuition can be developed by defining artefacts as produced or human-made objects, but that the resulting definition might collapse into the plan-centred view, and has trouble distinguishing artefact types or kinds. Finally, we propose a division of labour between production and use plans: among objects in general, artefacts are distinguished as human-made objects; within the domain of artefacts, types or kinds are characterised by the use plans in which artefacts are embedded. (shrink)

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as _Producing Success_ makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead. Demerath undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. (...) _Producing Success_ reveals the many ways the community’s ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as Demerath shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful. Insightful and candid, _Producing Success_ is an often troubling account of the educationally and morally questionable results of the American culture of success. (shrink)

Biomedicine has opened up new possibilities for parenthood. Once resigned to remaining childless or pursuing adoption, infertile couples can now pursue options such as gamete donation, in-vitro fer...

Spinoza’s concepts of wonder, the imitation of affects, cheerfulness, and devotion provide the basis for a Spinozist aesthetics. Those concepts from his Ethics, when combined with his account of rituals and festivals in the Theological-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise, reveal an aesthetics of social affects. The repetition of ritualised participatory aesthetic practices over time generates a unique ingenium or way of life for a social group, a singular style which distinguishes them from the general political body. Ritual and the (...) imitation of affects explain why specific styles of art are associated with consistent styles of bodily modifications, clothing, and affects. This paper claims, not that already similar people flock to the same art, but rather, that immersion in the same art is what produces their similarity. Art (especially in the immersive, festival-like experience of live performance) can generate the affect of devotion, which intensifies in-group love, temporarily blocks affects of sadness, and focusses one intently on the aesthetic experience due to devotion’s connection to wonder. Cheerfulness shows that, through variation of aesthetic objects, art can cause pleasure without risking excess. In addition, while politics’ central affect is sad fear, aesthetically-united groups are bound by joyful affects. (shrink)

Based on data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who live in a relatively homogeneous small, rural town, this article examines how women act to produce social class representations. By presenting symbols of socioeconomic positions, including behaviors, tastes, and values, during their work, the women in the town present themselves as working, middle, or upper class women. Through these representations, they secure a place within the town's subjective social class system.

This work is an argument for the notion of knowledge production. It is an attempt at an epistemological and historiographic position which treats all facets and modes of knowledge as products of human practices, a position developed and demonstrated through a reconstruction of two defining episodes in the scientific career of Robert Hooke : the composition of his Programme for explaining planetary orbits as inertial motion bent by centripetal force, and his development of the spring law in relation to his (...) invention of the spring watch. ;The revival of interest in the history of experimental and technological knowledge has accorded Hooke much more attention than before. However, dependent on the conception of knowledge as a representation of reality, this scholarship is bound to the categories of influence and competition, and concentrates mainly on Hooke's numerous passionate exchanges with Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. I favourably explore the neo-pragmatist criticism of representation epistemology in the writing of Richard Rorty and Ian Hacking. This criticism exposes the conventional portrayal of Hooke as "a mechanic of genius, rather than a scientist" as a reification of the social hierarchy between Hooke's Royal Society employers and his artisan-experimenters employees. ;However, Rorty and Hacking's efforts to do away with the image of the human knower as an enclosed realm of 'ideas' have not been completed. Undertaking this unfinished philosophical task, my main strategy is to erase the false gap between knowledge which is clearly produced--practical, technological and experimental, 'know how', and knowledge which we still think of as representation--theoretical 'knowing that'. I present Hooke, Newton and Huygens as craftsmen, who, employing various resources, labor to manufacture material and theoretical artifacts. Eschewing the category of independent facts awaiting discovery, I attempt to compare practices and techniques rather than to adjudicate priority claims, replacing ideas which 'develop', 'inspire', and 'influence', with tools and skills which are borrowed, appropriated and modified for new uses. ;This approach enables tracing Hooke's creation of his Programme from his microscopy, and reconstructing his use of springs to structure a theory of matter. With his unique combination of technical and speculative talents Hooke comes to personify the relations between the theoretical-linguistic and the experimental-technological in their full complexity. (shrink)

Within the framework of 'Temporalities and the Urban Fabric: Co-Producing Liminal Spaces in Transitional Epochs,' this rigorous examination unravels the multilayered nuances of temporality and its intimate relationship with urban spaces in times of transition. The research delineates the intricate interplay between public exhibitions, urban realms, and socio-political paradigms, particularly within the dynamic settings of the metropolitan entities of Houston and Amsterdam. These cities, as epitomes of temporal urban flux, become fertile grounds for exploring the ephemeral essence of liminal spaces (...) and their transformative manifestations. By weaving together diverse academic domains – from Design Computation and Fabrication to Urban Communities and Spatial Justice – this study underscores the symbiotic fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Gamification within the broader canvas of urban temporalities. Crucially, the research accentuates the transformative potential of Extended Reality (XR) in augmenting the theoretical and methodological contours of urban studies within these transitional epochs. (shrink)

The evolution of the record producer from organizer to auteur, from Phil Spector and George Martin to the rise of hip-hop and remixing.

Social justice needs a home, a place where it can be found, especially for young people growing up in fragmented and increasingly inequitable societies. Community youth arts organizations have secured a certain prominence in this context over the past three decades and are now part of the urban infrastructures that shape connected learning networks in highly industrialized nations. In this capacity, youth arts organizations regularly engage a language and aesthetics of authenticity and trust as part of how they call out, (...) represent and make a home for children and youth. This paper examines how authenticity in youth culture and youth cultural expression is negotiated by arts organizations and how organizations locate their own trustworthiness as allies of young people through the curation of online media archives. The analysis draws on the internet media archives of two youth arts organizations in Canada’s largest English-speaking cities. The Oasis Skateboard Factory in Toronto, ON is an extension program of the Toronto District School Board that enables participants to create their own brands and learn to run a skateboard or professional design business. ReelYouth started in Vancouver in 2005 as a community media empowerment project, and now delivers programs across Canada and internationally.The claims to youth authenticity articulated in each media archive reveal how authenticity and trust are negotiated ideologically by each organization and how organizations mark their ontological status, as a home from which young people can think and respond to an unjust world. I examine how youth authenticity is produced by analyzing how discourses of youth identity, connection and trust are deployed across each archive. Whilst showcasing how authenticity is negotiated by each group, I show how the production of authenticity discourses by OSF and ReelYouth simultaneously convey a deeper reality: the way youth arts groups operate as care structures that offer ontological security, and places of increasing “awareness of previously unnoticed interconnections” for youth. In this way, they operate as sites of border work, places of routing from which the work of social justice can be borne. (shrink)

Context: Von Foerster’s concept of eigenbehavior can be recognized against the broader context of enactivism as it has been advocated by Varela, Thompson and Rosch, by Noë and recently by Hutto and Myin, among others. This flourishing constellation of ideas is on its way to becoming the new paradigm of cognitive science. However, in my reading, enactivism, putting stress on the constitutive role of action when it comes to mind and perception, faces a serious philosophical challenge when attempting to account (...) for the way we actually perceive our environments, most importantly for the fact that we perceive things or objects. Von Foester’s eigenbehavior is understood here as a concept supposed to take on this challenge. Problem: In this article I tackle the following issues: Enactivism must be able to account for the apparent stability of the perceived world: this is not a realm of a never-ending flux of stimuli; it is a realm of stable things. Enactivism is committed to the anti-Cartesian endeavor seeking to bridge the gap between the inner and the outer; between the subjective and the objective. Now, these two points constrain each other so that one cannot address simply by regarding the apparent stability of things as a projection that springs out of the internal machinery binding inputs with outputs. This is because the very idea of such an internal machinery opposes, i.e., it employs the Cartesian dichotomy. So, enactivism is in need of an account of that would not oppose its anti-Cartesian commitment. Method: I introduce the ontology of location and niche theory, as it has been brought forth by Varzi, Casati, and Smith, and develop it so that it can be used in the philosophy of mind. This is a conceptual, semi-formal philosophical analysis. Results: I shall come up with the idea of object conceived of a product of action, and - drawing on von Foerster’s central idea - as a product of coordination of perceptions. Yet, it is not coordination of stimuli but coordination of cognitive connections. The notion of connection is thus articulated in the article and cast as the central concept in my proposal. Implications: We are able to account for both and (2. The apparent stability of the perceived world is due to the setting up and maintaining of connections between the perceiver and the things perceived, resulting in the establishment of what I call a cognitive niche. Constructivist content: Constructivism, broadly construed, takes, in my reading, a negative stance in the first place. Namely, it opposes what I call the metaphysics of the ready-made world. So, it holds that there is no ready-made reality; however it remains open when it comes to positive claims: a mind-independent reality does not exist at all or it does exist but it is not ready-made and as such it must be brought to completion, so to speak, or enacted, as Varela et al. would say, by a cognitive subject. In this article, I follow the latter and address one specific issue: how the enacted world gains its relatively stable architecture. (shrink)

It is often claimed that scientists can obtain new knowledge about nature by running computer simulations. How is this possible? I answer this question by arguing that computer simulations are arguments. This view parallels Norton’s argument view about thought experiments. I show that computer simulations can be reconstructed as arguments that fully capture the epistemic power of the simulations. Assuming the extended mind hypothesis, I furthermore argue that running the computer simulation is to execute the reconstructing argument. I discuss some (...) objections and reject the view that computer simulations produce knowledge because they are experiments. I conclude by comparing thought experiments and computer simulations, assuming that both are arguments. (shrink)

In a contemporary developed economy, the production of labor-power is not left to the "laborer's instincts for selfpreservation and of propagation," as in Capital, but is made subject to large-scale institutional investment and control within, primarily, the educational system. Some therefore of the laborer's consumption of goods and services has no longer a "final" character but directly enters into the production of the most important producer commodity, labor-power itself. This constitutes a partial closure of the circuit of producers' capital (...) and, as corollary to the latter, a significant absorption of the once distinct sphere of circulation, or exchange, into that of production, and with it a historical change in the relationships holding between the overall sphere of production and society itself. (shrink)

The research and publication practices by which scientists produce biomedical knowledge about race and ethnicity remain largely unexamined despite increasing interest in biological explanations for health disparities by race, as well as prominent critiques by social scientists highlighting the implications of conceptualizing race as a biological category. Although a growing number of studies on lab and research practices are helping to map meanings of race and ethnicity on notions of difference and health, we still have very little understanding of the (...) earlier funding application stage or of the resulting publications. We know that knowledge production can involve a range of different processes, including consensus building, strategic and instrumental decision making, as well as conscious and subconscious cognitive filtering, through which we direct analytic attention only to those aspects of a problem or topic that are defined as “relevant” and “important.” These processes also involve the “translation” of ideas such as race and ethnicity for different audiences, which occurs in broader contexts of cultural norms and institutional rules and practices. (shrink)

Developing best practices for the business ethics classroom is an ongoing endeavor. One area of interest is the influence of mindsets on teaching and learning business ethics. Various mindsets are proposed to increase student awareness of the body of business ethics knowledge and motivate them to incorporate ethical knowledge in the real world. This paper reviews the current dominant consumer mindset that is argued to have unproductive effects on pedagogical practices in business ethics. Because human beings are biological production systems (...) and live in a world of dynamic natural and human-made production processes, this paper proposes replacing the consumer mindset with Producer Mindset, a world view that is a far more natural way for humans to think, talk, and make decisions. A Producer Mindset framework is constructed for the business ethics classroom and details are provided as to how it can grow the cognitive and emotional capacity of students to independently produce ethical decisions in business and in their personal lives. (shrink)

We develop the concept of ‘aesthetic practices’ to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education’s Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required so that data produced at dispersed sites can be brought into relation and (...) projected as populations in forms such as bar charts, heat maps and tables. Two examples of aesthetic practices are analysed based on ethnographic studies we have conducted on the production of data for the Hub and Warehouse: metadata and data cleaning. Metadata enables data to come into relation by containing and accounting for the differences between data. Data cleaning deals with the indeterminacies and absences of data and involves algorithms to determine what values data can obtain so they can be brought into relation. We attend to how both aesthetic practices involve normative decisions that make absent what exceeds them: embodied knowledge that cannot or has not been documented as well as data that cannot meet the forms required of data portals. While these aesthetic practices are necessary to sustain data portals as ‘sites of projection,’ we also bring critical attention to their performative effects for knowing, enacting and governing populations. (shrink)

We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addressee’s discourse model when choosing referring expressions (e.g., Ariel, 1990; Chafe, 1994; Givón, 1983; Prince, 1985), by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (and decreased noun phrase use) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, even though the addressee did not hear the preceding sentence, (...) indicating that speakers used their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced more pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned the referent than when it mentioned a referential competitor, regardless of whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent’s accessibility in the speaker’s own discourse model rather than the addressee’s. (shrink)

The prospect of consumable meat produced in a laboratory setting without the need to raise and slaughter animals is both realistic and exciting. Not only could such in vitro meat become popular due to potential cost savings, but it also avoids many of the ethical and environmental problems with traditional meat productions. However, as with any new technology, in vitro meat is likely to face some detractors. We examine in detail three potential objections: 1) in vitro meat is disrespectful, either (...) to nature or to animals; 2) it will reduce the number of happy animals in the world; and 3) it will open the door to cannibalism. While each objection has some attraction, we ultimately find that all can be overcome. The upshot is that in vitro meat production is generally permissible and, especially for ethical vegetarians, worth promoting. (shrink)

The shift from the conventional agri-food system to alternative practices is a challenging transition for agricultural producers, yet surprisingly under-studied. Little research has examined the social and cultural processes in rural communities that mobilize producers and construct and sustain producer-driven alternative food networks (AFNs). For AFNs to go beyond just offering “alternative foods” or “alternative networks” and to be constructed as “alternative economies”, this transformation in the producer community is indispensable. This paper presents a case study of a (...) rural cooperative in Shanxi, China. The discontent with both productivist agriculture and the social decay in communities motivated a group of women to engage in a decade-long process of social mobilization, cultural reconstruction, and learning by experimentation. Through this, they developed an alternative vision and successfully created a localized alternative socio-economic model, which I call “anti-productivism”. It prioritizes ecological sustainability, self-reliance, reciprocity, and cultural values over output maximization, productivity growth, commodity exchange, and monetary gains. This case contrasts sharply with the urban-initiated, consumer-driven AFNs studied in the China literature, which mostly just offered alternative foods but brought little change to the producer community. It shows that the alternative economy must be embedded in an alternative community united by strong social bonds and shared cultural values. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the possibilities of combining two central intuitions about artefacts: that they are functional objects, and that they are non-natural objects. We do so in four steps. First we argue that, contrary to common opinion, functions cannot be the cornerstone of a characterisation of artefacts. Our argument suggests an alternative view, which characterises artefacts as objects embedded in what we call use plans. Second, we show that this plan-centred successor of the function-focused view is at odds (...) with the non-naturalness intuition. Third, we show that this intuition can be developed by defining artefacts as produced or human-made objects, but that the resulting definition might collapse into the plan-centred view, and has trouble distinguishing artefact types or kinds. Finally, we propose a division of labour between production and use plans: among objects in general, artefacts are distinguished as human-made objects; within the domain of artefacts, types or kinds are characterised by the use plans in which artefacts are embedded. (shrink)

Based on a small research project conducted in Kuala Lumpur (KL) in July - August 2017, the paper discusses places and practices of young heterosexual Malaysian Muslims dating in KL. In Malaysia, the law (Khalwat law) does not allow for two unrelated people (where at least one of them is Muslim) of opposite sexes to be within ‘suspicious proximity’ of one another in public. This law significantly influences behaviours and activities in urban spaces in KL. However, apart from the legal (...) framework, the faith of urban users seems to influence significantly the way they perceive space and how they behave in the city. The paper questions the analytical usefulness of the notion of public space (as the Western construct) in an attempt to formulate new intellectual coordinates to discuss urban space in a context of the Islamic, post-colonial, tropical, and global city. The ultimate aim of this paper is to start discussing how religious imagination and narratives could lead to formulating a new typology of urban spaces. (shrink)

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a highly contested illness. This paper analyzes the discursive production of knowledge about, and recognition of ME/CFS. By mobilizing insights from social epistemology and epistemic injustice studies, this paper reveals how actors, through their social-discursive practices, attribute to establishing, sustaining, and disregarding their own and others’ epistemological position. In focusing on the case of the Dutch newspaper reporting about ME/CFS, this paper shows that the debate about this condition predominantly revolves around the ways (...) in which people who make truth claims are represented. In being portrayed as gendered, affectatious, formerly very able, fanatical, or benevolent, people with ME/CFS are constructed as non-/credible. In the debate about what causes ME/CFS, by contrast, the production of non-/credible knowledge focuses more on the content of epistemic positions. Actors in this debate argue that they know the (clear) causes for the illness, something which functions as a discursive strategy to establish and enhance their credibility. This paper contends, however, that since this discursive demarcation of causes is consistently infused with uncertainty – with multi-interpretability, with diffuse explanations, and absence of current knowledge – the credibility of these actors’ epistemic position is undercut rather than established. (shrink)

Sometimes the way to make progress on a topic is to turn your back on it for a few years. At least I hope so, since I have just returned to the Frame Problem after several years of concentrating on other topics. It seems to me that I may have picked up a few odds and ends that shed light on the issues.

This paper explores the interface between users and producers of translational science through three case studies. It argues that effective TS requires a breakdown between user and producer roles: users become producers and producers become users. In making this claim, we challenge conventional understandings of TS as well as linear models of innovation. Policy-makers and funders increasingly expect TS and its associated socioeconomic benefits to occur when funding scientific research. We argue that a better understanding of the hybridity between (...) users and producers in TS is essential to encouraging effective TS activities. In arguing for broader understandings of the hybrid roles of user/producers in TS we rely on empirical observations made during our four-year study of three translational pathways here labeled clinical, commercial, and civic. These pathways were identified in a large-scale network of scientists investigating the pathogenomics of innate immunity (i.e. “the PI.2 network”.. (shrink)

When a technique purports to provide information that is not available to the unaided senses, it is natural to think that the only way to validate that technique is by appealing to a theory of the processes that lead from the object of study to the raw data. In fact, scientists have a variety of strategies for validating their techniques. Those strategies can yield multiple independent arguments that support the validity of the technique. Thus, it is possible to produce a (...) robust body of data with a single technique. I illustrate and support these claims with a historical case study. *Received September 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the possibilities of combining two central intuitions about artefacts: that they are functional objects, and that they are non-natural objects. We do so in four steps. First we argue that, contrary to common opinion, functions cannot be the cornerstone of a characterisation of artefacts. Our argument suggests an alternative view, which characterises artefacts as objects embedded in what we call use plans. Second, we show that this plan-centred successor of the function-focused view is at odds (...) with the non-naturalness intuition. Third, we show that this intuition can be developed by defining artefacts as produced or human-made objects, but that the resulting definition might collapse into the plan-centred view, and has trouble distinguishing artefact types or kinds. Finally, we propose a division of labour between production and use plans: among objects in general, artefacts are distinguished as human-made objects; within the domain of artefacts, types or kinds are characterised by the use plans in which artefacts are embedded. (shrink)

Teoria e práticas semióticas -- Literatura e ideologia -- Apontamentos para a questão do ícone -- Arquitetura como processo de linguagem -- Por uma classificação da linguagem escrita.

The majority of food in the US is distributed through global/national supply chains that exclude locally-produced goods. This situation offers opportunities to increase local food production and consumption and is influenced by constraints that limit the scale of these activities. We conducted a study to assess perspectives of producers and consumers engaged in food systems of a major Midwestern city. We examined producers’ willingness to include/increase cultivation of local foods and consumers’ interest in purchasing/increasing local foods. We used focus groups (...) of producers (two groups of conventional farmers, four local food producers) and consumers (three conventional market participants, two locavores) to pose questions about production/consumption of local foods. We transcribed discussions verbatim and examined text to identify themes, using separate affinity diagrams for producers and consumers. We found producers and consumers are influenced by the _status quo_ and real and perceived barriers to local foods. We also learned participants believed increasing production and consumption of local foods would benefit their community and creating better infrastructure could enhance efforts to scale up local food systems. Focus group participants also indicated support from external champions/programs could support expansion of local foods. We learned that diversifying local food production was viewed as a way to support local community, increase access to healthy foods and reduce environmental impacts of conventional production. Our research indicates that encouraging producers and consumers in local food systems will be more successful when support for the local community is emphasized. (shrink)