Editors’ Introduction: Cultural Studies and Intersectionality as Intellectual Practice

Abstract

This article outlines the digital storytelling methods used for a community based research project focused on issues of sexuality among California farmworkers: Sexualidades Campesinas (http://sexualidadescampesinas.ucdavis.edu/). We note how our process of collaboration in the creation and production of digital stories was shaped by the context and our envisioned storytellers. We then offer a critical analysis of our own unique experience with digital storytelling in this project, focusing on a handful of concepts key to understanding the nature of our collaborative production process: community, affect and collaboration, storytelling, performance, and mediation, with an eye to the problem of ethics.

Relational Agriculture: Gender, Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

“…3 Nevertheless, several U.S. and Canadian scholars (Edward 2018;Fellows 1998;Leslie 2017bLeslie , 2019Wypler 2019) and an ecofeminist activist in Catalonia (Dur an Gurnsey 2016) have conducted qualitative studies. In addition, an interdisciplinary group of researchers in California carried out a digital storytelling project with sexually diverse immigrant farmers (Lizarazo et al 2017). Together, these findings build on rural queer and food justice scholarship to document queer farmers' ecological values, experiences of heterosexism and transphobia, and resistance strategies via networks.…”

“…The few examples of women and queer farmers of color in this issue indicate that patterns in gender and sexual oppression and resistance vary at the intersections of race and legal status (Leslie 2019;Wypler 2019). In addition, emerging research on sexually diverse immigrant farmers in California demonstrates how the very meaning of sexuality-related language and community imagination may vary across race, ethnicity, and culture (Lizarazo et al 2017). Lizarazo et al (2017) find that while sexually diverse farm workers desired to meet others like themselves, they "did not see themselves as part of any definable LGBTQI community" due to factors like being ignored by mainstream LGBTQþ organizations; the temporal and transitory nature of much of the farm work; the taboo of discussing sexuality and gender identity in some immigrant farmer circles; and some individuals rejecting language used to label sexual identities.…”

“…In addition, emerging research on sexually diverse immigrant farmers in California demonstrates how the very meaning of sexuality-related language and community imagination may vary across race, ethnicity, and culture (Lizarazo et al 2017). Lizarazo et al (2017) find that while sexually diverse farm workers desired to meet others like themselves, they "did not see themselves as part of any definable LGBTQI community" due to factors like being ignored by mainstream LGBTQþ organizations; the temporal and transitory nature of much of the farm work; the taboo of discussing sexuality and gender identity in some immigrant farmer circles; and some individuals rejecting language used to label sexual identities. Scholars of gender and sexuality in agriculture should interpret findings like theseas well as the broader state of the literatureas a call to oversample farmers of color and to prioritize research by scholars of color.…”

“…Dur an Gurnsey (2016) interviewed lesbian agroecological farmers in Spain and Catalonia who encountered devaluing and infantilizing microaggressions in rural and sustainable agriculture spaces as they managed the land, decision-making, and machineryall realms usually dominated by cisgender men. Sexually diverse immigrant farmers in California may face a double-threat of being visible as farmers without legal status as well as being queer in a context where even discussion of sexual and gender diversity can be taboo (Lizarazo et al 2017).…”