Navigating Urban Agroecological Research with the Social Sciences

Bowness, Evan; Nicklay, Jennifer A.; Liebman, Alex; Cadieux, Kirsten Valentine; Blumberg, Renata

doi:10.1201/9780429290992-13

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Consequently, this focus on productivity limits our imagination for the wide variety of cobenefits provided by urban farms and gardens (Siegner et al, 2020). A focus on yield alone arises from reductionist/positivist research paradigms, which form the foundation of many natural (and social) science disciplines (WinklerPrins, 2017;Bowness et al, 2021). Reductionism seeks to break down systems into discrete, ever smaller component parts, and positivism is grounded in the idea that "solving" these component parts will "solve" the systemic problems.…”

Section: Urban Agriculture and Urban Agroecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As we saw in the results, asymmetrical power relations are just as present in participatory research and manifest in the identity of participants in different roles, differing experiences relating to intersectional identities, funding allocation, and the perceived legitimacy of different types of knowledge. However, while it can sometimes feel, like Nic said, that these asymmetrical power relations "by nature, " they are created, supported, and perpetuated through systems and institutions-such as the "feed the world" narratives that arose out of productivist development paradigms (Bowness et al, 2021). One of our most important areas for work-especially as researchers-is to deconstruct and repair the systems that cause them.…”

Section: Repair Ecologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Facilitating Spaces of Urban Agroecology: A Learning Framework for Community-University Partnerships

Nicklay

Cadieux

Rogers

et al. 2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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At the local scale in Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP), MN, urban farms, community gardens, and home gardens support diverse individual and community goals, including food access and sovereignty, recreation and outdoor activity, youth education, and racial, economic, and environmental justice. Collaborations between urban growers, policymakers, scholars, and communities that leverage urban farms and gardens as sites of ecological, social, and political transformation represent spaces of urban agroecology. Participatory research can play a vital role in urban agroecology by facilitating integration of science, movement, and practice, but frameworks to accomplish this are still emerging. This paper, therefore, proposes a "learning framework" for urban agroecology research that has emerged from our community-university partnership. We-a group of growers, community partners, and researchers-have worked with each other for 5 years through multiple projects that broadly focused on the socio-ecological drivers and impacts of urban farms and gardens in MSP. In fall 2019, we conducted our first formal evaluation of the participatory processes implemented in our current project with the objectives to (1) identify processes that facilitated or were barriers to authentic collaboration and (2) understand the role of relationships in the participatory processes. Qualitative surveys and interviews were developed and conducted with researchers, partners, and students. Analysis revealed that urban agroecology research provided a space for shared learning, which was facilitated through co-creation of research, embodied processes, and relationships with people, cohorts, and place. As part of our partnership agreements, we as researchers wrote this article-in close consultation with partners-to share this framework in the hopes that it will serve as a model for other research collaborations working within complex urban agroecological systems.

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Section: Urban Agriculture and Urban Agroecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Repair Ecologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating Spaces of Urban Agroecology: A Learning Framework for Community-University Partnerships

Nicklay

Cadieux

Rogers

et al. 2020

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…Epistemologies can be described as our ways of knowing (Dring et al, 2022) and habits of mind (Andreotti et al, 2018;Dring et al, 2022); epistemologies are the rules that shape how we know what we know (Galt et al, 2012), what is defined as knowledge, and who holds or generates that knowledge (Wilson, 2009;Galt et al, 2012;Walter and Andersen, 2013). There is a broad body of scholarship interrogating agronomic epistemologies, and here we provide a brief overview based on prior work by agroecology educators (Altieri and Francis, 1992;Parr et al, 2007;Østergaard et al, 2010;Galt et al, 2012;Rosset and Martínez-Torres, 2012;Montenegro de Wit and Iles, 2016;Code, 2017;Andreotti et al, 2018;Francis, 2020;Bowness et al, 2021;Dring et al, 2022;Shanahan, 2022). Agronomic epistemologies typically approach food systems through reductionism, by breaking them down into individual components that are studied through specialized disciplines.…”

Section: Epistemological Conditions and Innovations In Agroecology Pr...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Epistemologies enact ontologies-our habits of being (Dring et al, 2022) and understanding of what is real (Jordan et al, 2008;Wilson, 2009), which frame how we relate to each other and the planet (Andreotti et al, 2018). Agronomic ontologies, and Western scientific disciplines more broadly, developed with and as a tool of racial capitalism and colonialism (Andreotti et al, 2018;Bowness et al, 2021). Industrial agriculture-the focus of most agronomic research and education-emerged from racial capitalism and the U.S. plantation system, in which unlimited economic growth from monoculture production systems depended on kidnapping, displacing, torturing, and enslaving Africans and their descendants (Perfecto et al, 2019;Robinson, 2020;Montenegro de Wit, 2021).…”

Section: Ontologies Shape Agroecology Epistemologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming agroecologists: A pedagogical model to support graduate student learning and practice

Nicklay

Perrone²,

Wauters³

2023

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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IntroductionAgroecology has multiple beginnings in diverse knowledge systems, growing practices, and social movements which, as a whole, seek systemic transformation to build just food system futures. As graduate students, we have been inspired by agroecological movements and practitioners and endeavored to build our knowledge and capacities as agroecologists. Over the course of seven years, we have worked collectively with an evolving cohort to build relationships, understand critical lineages, and practice participatory processes that we found necessary for our development as agroecologists at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Building on this work, we sought to refine an emergent understanding of the necessary components of an agroecological pedagogy.MethodsWe thus hosted a series of workshops in summer 2019 to facilitate collective reflection and development of a pedagogy, which we further refined through collective autoethnography.ResultsThe resulting model contains five key components: a cohort at the heart of the model to facilitate collective learning; critical inquiry as the foundation of knowledge production; relational centering as the basis for building and maintaining care-based relationships with self and others; participatory practice as a space for taking action through and within relationships; and situated knowledge to recognize the unique and incomplete knowledge that each individual brings to their work.DiscussionWe imagine this model as the basis for a dedicated agroecology graduate program, and we close by sharing ongoing implementation efforts, key areas for further development, and our hopes for continued integration with broader movements. Ultimately, we have experienced this process as a transformational agroecological space and hope others are inspired to adapt, imagine, and enact the process, model, and principles in their own places and communities.

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Navigating Urban Agroecological Research with the Social Sciences

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Facilitating Spaces of Urban Agroecology: A Learning Framework for Community-University Partnerships

Facilitating Spaces of Urban Agroecology: A Learning Framework for Community-University Partnerships

Becoming agroecologists: A pedagogical model to support graduate student learning and practice

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