Education for food sovereignty as transformative ethical practice

Abstract

The Anthropocene is a site of domination and resistance for those opposed to the corporatised food regime. The peasant farmers' movement, La V ıa Campesina, uses pedagogical techniques based on Freirian horizontal communication methodology to contest the structural and ideological elements of this regime. This article analyses these techniques, which include farmer-to-farmer learning (campesino-a-campesino) and dialogue among different knowledges and ways of knowing (diàlogo de saberes). Drawing on case studies of Brazil and Chile, the author analyses how peasant farmer organisations engage in horizontal exchange and learning processes to collectively build a shared vision of agroecology, present alternative framings of food scarcity, and challenge the modes of power that operate in the arena of food politics. She explores how movement members apply social process methodology to link the food sovereignty framework with indigenous knowledge, gender equity and post-colonial theory and in doing so demonstrates how these participatory processes generate critical consciousness of the social and environmental unsustainability of the global food system. This mobilises peasant farmers to contest the power structures that shape their food environments, and also to focus on social and economic justice within their communities.

Introduction to the symposium on critical adult education in food movements: learning for transformation in and beyond food movements—the why, where, how and the what next?

“…It is based on an intentional collectivity in organisations, programs, and affinity groups as well as in emergent networks of people linked through bonds of reciprocity, mutual aid, and communication. Collective processes, such as horizontal farmer-to-farmer exchanges, diálogos de saberes, and cooperation allow agroecological knowledge to be shared, documented, discussed, built and mobilized on a large scale, connecting many people and places (Anderson et al 2019;McCune and Sánchez 2019;Mann 2018). These processes recognise that when learning is conceived as an individual endeavour, this often gives rise to individualistic subjectivities and parochial self-interested understandings.…”

Editorial: The role of reflexivity in care-full food systems transformations

“…Co-learning and co-participation therefore have space to take place. The peer-to-peer learning (Mann, 2018) and the continuous re-questioning of collective identity, meaning and purpose behind food activism efforts (Gordon, 2019) are examples here. Enactive research also validates what might be seen as small-scale efforts.…”

“…(2019) mobilise Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy’s (2015) notion of a political ecology of the body and emphasise the co-constitutive viscerality of learning and food. Meanwhile, Mann (2018: 3) positions the participatory nature of agroecology as a teaching tool that is capable of ‘embodying histories’ of food production, and Hsu (2019) highlights the enactive potential of experiential learning about urban verge gardens. The significant point is that the notion of attunement brings together the political potential of using practice-centred methodologies and attention to embodiment to learn an ethical politics and a politics of ethics from situated pedagogical practice.…”

“…Turner examines ways of learning through playful practice, while Spring and colleagues investigate activist and charity-based teaching of ways to (re)organise food and food waste ethically. Raising questions of food sovereignty, Mann (2018) interrogates farmer-to-farmer teaching and learning, while Gordon (2019) focuses on a non-foundational learning of ethics. Each of the other papers addresses the mattering of learning in relation to food consumption: the ethico/religio-politics of eating meat in India (Sathyamala, 2018); the teaching and learning of a different ‘meat politics’ in European secondary schools (Bruckner and Kowasch, 2018); experimentation and experiential teaching of urban verge gardens (Hsu, 2019); collective meal making and eating as a way to convey food ethics through encounter (Kiddle et al., 2019); and the knowledge co-production of Black youths’ food consumption experiences (Jones, 2018).…”

Problematising ‘Transformative’ Environmental Education in a Climate Crisis

“…2020Cf. Bowers, 2008; Martusewicz, 2014; Iared, Tullio, Payne and de Oliveira (2015); Valenti, de Oliveira and Logarezzi (2017); Edwards, Hill and Boxley (2018), Wildemeersch (2018), Rose and Lourival (2019), Mann (2019); cf. Huckle's Critical School Geography , https://john.huckle.org.uk/contents/.…”