"I wonder if I'm being [a] Karen”: Analyzing rural–urban farmer network building

Agriculture and Human Values:1-15 (forthcoming)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Farmers, especially those within historically underserved populations, utilize networks to access educational training, community support, and market opportunities. Through a case study of the Pennsylvania Women's Agriculture Network's three-year Women's Rural–Urban Network (WRUN) initiative, this research analyzes the process of developing solidarity across geographic and racial lines while building a statewide farmers' network. Applying White's (2018) Collective Agency Community Resilience (CACR) theoretical framework to this initiative offers a way to evaluate how socially marginalized groups in agriculture build farmers’ networks to resist oppression within the white heteropatriarchal agricultural system. This research draws on interviews with 12 steering committee members and three years of participant observation to understand how participants assessed the initiative. Findings suggest that changes to existing programming were influential in creating a place for diverse women farmers and growers to meet, thus contributing to prefigurative politics; however, the inability to form commons as praxis and economic autonomy due to divergent needs, varying roles in the agrifood system, and different levels of engagement with racial justice deterred network-building efforts. This initiative examines food justice theory through praxis. Findings offer insights for predominately white non-profits, research institutions, and activists in future anti-racism and food justice efforts in the agrifood system.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 93,069

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-03-21

Downloads
16 (#934,884)

6 months
16 (#172,129)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references