Leading Food Dignity: Why Us?

Introduction to the Food Dignity Values Statement

“…The grant proposal narrative itself had declared that "Our project title, 'Food Dignity,' signals both our ethical stance that human and community agency in food systems is an end in itself and our scientific hypothesis that building civic and institutional capacity to engage in [sustainable community food systems] for [food security] action will improve the sustainability and equity of our local food systems and economies" (Food Dignity, 2010). But as we learned in the course of the project's internal struggles over voice, research design, ways of working, and knowledge hierarchies, it is a long journey from ethical goals to operationalized, lived, and shared values (for example, in this issue see Hargraves, Porter, & Woodsum, 2018;Porter, 2018;Porter & Wechsler, 2018;Woodsum, 2018).…”

Introduction—and Invitation—to the Food Dignity Special Issue

“…In this opening set of essays, leaders of the five community organizations partnering in Food Dignity each describe how and why they chose to collaborate in this project and reflect on their experiences with it (Daftary-Steel, 2018;Neideffer, 2018;Sequeira, 2018;Sutter, 2018;Woodsum, 2018a). Then we discuss how the three of us-the project PI, a community leader with decades of experience in community activism, and a non- tenure track academic team member who joined the project a little late-ended up being the ones leading this project to its close, including guest editing this journal issue (Hargraves, Porter, & Woodsum, 2018).…”