Public Scholarship and Community Engagement in Building Community Food Security: The Case of the University of Kentucky

Abstract

The current call for public scholarship and community engagement by universities and disciplinary organizations has created opportunities to develop innovative ways to integrate research, instruction, and outreach. This article discusses a collaboration among scholars at the University of Kentucky and alternative agrifood movement organizations that has evolved as they pursue an alternative agrifood system in Kentucky. This collaboration made instructional programs in sociology and the honors world food issues track places in which both students and instructors can examine “problems” of the conventional agrifood system, conduct research, and develop collaborative relationships with community activists. We draw on Burawoy's discussion of public sociology and its interface with professional, critical, and policy sociologies. Supplementing our discussion with literature from social movements and science studies, we demonstrate how this integrated approach can render sociological knowledge and skills useful as critical support of alternative agrifood movements. We argue that the “experiential classroom” is an excellent site for the critical examination within the agrifood movements of oppositional culture. This, in turn, makes possible students' recognition of injustice in the existing agrifood system.

Agrifood Alternatives and Reflexivity in Academic Practice

“…While established research programs are invaluable for revealing contradictions and tensions within alternative agrifood systems, two contributors to this collection call attention to the need for new methodological and pedagogical approaches: Lyon et al. (2010) and Tanaka and Mooney (2010) identify new research approaches that require close interaction between scholars and AAM actors and this notably requires increased levels of discomfort by researchers. Similarly, new theoretical and empirical orientations are needed that help us interpret social change dynamics and the relationship of these changes to AAMs.…”

Participatory Praxis for Community Food Security Education

“…According to Allen (2004) and Pothukuchi, Seidenburg, and Abi-Nader (2007), the CFS movement has provided new perspectives to ongoing challenges, created policy, and implemented new food system programs through a number of institutional partnerships and collaborations with universities, federal agencies, and community stakeholders. For Tanaka and Mooney (2010), food security may help "bring university and community members closer together to pursue public scholarship and community engagement" (p. 562). The fields of community nutrition, anthropology, sociology, critical food studies, and urban planning are just a few academic disciplines in which this engagement has taken hold in productive ways (see Barndt, 2012;Carney et al, 2012;Ibáñez-Carrasco & Riaño-Alcalá, 2009;Julier, 2015;Levkoe & Wakefield, 2011;Nelson & Dodd, 2016).…”

Collective Approach to Complex Food System Issues, the Case of The Ohio State University

“…Establishing connections between university and community representatives enables research to contribute to social change in food systems work (Nelson & Dodd, 2016;Rojas, Sipos, & Valley, 2012;Tanaka & Mooney, 2010). At OSU, an ever-emerging network of diverse partners involves faculty, staff, and students; local citizens and neighborhood groups; schools and libraries; public officials and agencies; private business and industry; non-profit organizations; and philanthropists.…”