Abstract
In her 2020 Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS) presidential address, Molly Anderson outlined three ways to push beyond boundaries imposed on us and by us to work towards addressing global food system and societal problems. In this response essay, I draw on my experiences and my perspectives as a pre-tenure rural sociologist who is not from around here to highlight how I attempt to push beyond boundaries in my own work and to discuss challenges associated with the feasibility of some of Molly’s call. I also build on Molly’s call for boundary work including a broadening of international collaborations through increased engagement in cross-national comparative research, pivoting from interacting with global social movements to interacting with key stakeholders, and deepening of anti-discrimination work through the use of an intersectionality lens. Arguing that Molly’s call for action is bold but needed, I close my essay with a set of questions that I hope can contribute to larger discussions on how we can help one another push beyond boundaries to work towards more fair and sustainable food systems.
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Notes
Some US federal funding sources do not allow the inclusion of non-US based colleagues as research collaborators.
My scholarship is at the intersection of farm households’ social and economic needs, social policy, and farm persistence/resilience.
As a side note, I virtually ran into Molly at the second public forum. Molly, true to her presidential address, pushed back on two important points through the chat box. First, the inappropriateness of using the playful terminology of “game-changing” considering the violations of peoples’ human rights that are allowed to occur within the current food system functions. Second, and in line with my critique, individual-level tweaks cannot alter a system.
I transferred part-way through my doctoral studies to continue working with my advisor.
This point was made by the director of my research center, Casper Bendixsen, when we were discussing me writing this essay in passing.
For more information on the project, see: https://marshfieldresearch.org/nccrahs/FarmChildrenChildcare.
Transitional justice aims to address systemic or massive human right violations which goes beyond reparation by including truth seeking, prosecution, and institutional reforms.
Far-right French politicians have used the term “Islamo-gauchism” to accuse left-wing activists of close associations with Islamism. Not being sure of the best translation for the term, I reached out to a French colleague. She indicated that there was really no good translation since the term is largely meaningless. Still she suggested “Islamic-liberals “ and pointed to the problematic extremist underpinnings of the expression. When I asked if she wanted to be acknolwedged by name for her translation, her answer “je ne préfère pas “ said a lot about the fear faced by French colleagues at the moment.
France is a notably colorblind society and it has yet to reckon with the consequences of its colonial past. One reason for this lack of critical engagement with racism is in part connected to France’s focus on reaching social and economic equality for all under the premise of the equal and indivisible republic.
Abbreviations
- AFHVS:
-
Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society
- UN:
-
United Nations
- US:
-
United States
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Acknowledgements
I have many colleagues to thank for the opportunities to engage in boundary pushing conversations over the last decade. Specifically relevant to this essay, I would like to thank Shoshanah Inwood, Casper Bendixsen, Doug Jackson-Smith, Morgan Rodgers, and colleagues from the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) committee. Last, thank you to Agriculture and Human Values editor, Matthew Sanderson, for helping me navigate this unusual piece of writing.
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Becot, F.A. Pushing beyond boundaries as a pre-tenure rural sociologist who is not from around here. Agric Hum Values 38, 615–619 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10209-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10209-x