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Putting Local in its Place: An Agrifood System in Crisis and the Emergence of an Alternative Eco-Subjectivity

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Salehabadi, Djahane Banoo Salehabadi
Abstract
This thesis situates contemporary US agrifood localism within its social and historical
context in order bring to light the ways in which contemporary agrifood localism is
forging an alternative eco-subjectivity. Relying on articles on local agriculture and
food published in two widely read academic journals, Agriculture and Human Values
(AHV) and The Journal of Rural Studies (JRS) as my case studies, I (re)-construct
what I call ?the localist discourse.? Interrogating this discourse, I contend that
advocates of agrifood localization, because they often do not theorize place and scale,
make spatial assumptions that have problematic theoretical and political
consequences. Specifically, I extend Maria Fonte?s two-part model of agrifood
localism, to specify that the relocalization perspective on localism?which advocates
increased proximity between producer and consumer?tends to make assumptions
about scale. The form of localization that promotes the preservation of local foods?
summarized under the term origin-of-food perspective?is inclined to make
assumptions about place.
My work departs significantly from recent critics of agrifood localism, however, in
that I engage with geographic theories of scale, place and space as a means to
strengthen the concept of local, rather than to discard it. The act of historicizing
substantive and theoretical localism in general and agrifood localism in particular, I
argue, helps us perceive the potential the contemporary local agriculture and food
movement has to usher in an alternative eco-subjectivity where social problems and
their solutions are conceptualized as interrelated and as embedded in their ecological
context.
Date Issued
2008-03-27Type
dissertation or thesis