Deric Shannon

Food Justice, Direct Action, and the Human Rights Enterprise

Scholars developing a concept they call the ‘human rights enterprise’ suggest a theory of human rights guaranteed, in some cases, by social movements from below and often against the wishes of the state. This article draws on data from an ethnography conducted in a small Food Not Bombs collective to critically assess the radical potential and pitfalls of the claims made by scholars promoting the human rights enterprise and the social movement organizations using the language of ‘rights’ to frame their direct action-oriented praxis.

Anti-Capitalism and Libertarian Political Economy

This chapter begins by laying out the major features of capitalism as analysed by anarchists historically, noting similarities and differences arising from the various tendencies within the libertarian milieu. Defining anarchist contributions to political economy through identification and analysis of wage labour/exploitation, private property, markets, class society, and states allows for an engagement with historical and contemporary voices within anarchism that highlights these analytical commonalities and differences. Next, the chapter examines the ideological structures and cultural mechanisms through which capitalism is naturalised and defended. Finally, this chapter will outline some anarchist objections to visionary thinking in political economy and the tendency for some in the milieu to think in pluralist terms when it comes to visionary proposals.

Where We Are: Place, Pedagogy, and the Outer Limits

This introductory chapter begins by rooting the collection in larger scholarly discussions of place. Next, we briefly give an overview of pedagogical work rooted in a sense of place, including, but not limited to, place-based education. We then suggest that given the wide range of literature on pedagogy and place and place-based education and learning that we might expand our collective notions of place. Finally, we situate the contents of this collection within the context of that suggestion, taking note of our contributing authors who work within the framework of what might be called more “traditional” approaches to place-based education and those who play with our notions of place, expand upon them, or ask readers to creatively re-engage with place.

Teaching on the Farm: Farm as Place in the Sociology of Food and Sustainability

Place-based pedagogies offer instructors opportunities to use place and space as objects for learning and for critique. This chapter reflects on two years of place-based teaching social science on a multi-acre organic farm. First, the chapter introduces the college, the farm, and the larger community of which they are a part. Next, I outline how the farm can be used as a metaphor to discuss the macro-micro link in the social sciences and issues surrounding diversity. I then offer ways that teaching on the farm can aid in student understandings of epistemic distance and relations of inequality. Finally, I reflect on the connections between the farm and the larger community and their role in student learning.