The history of the land: a relational and place-based approach for teaching (more) radical food geographies

Abstract

The History of the Land (Brown et al., 2019) is a workshop, field trip, and pedagogical lens developed at Grow Dat Youth Farm in New Orleans and led with teenagers and adults. Using popular education methods, the lesson explores the relational biography of the land on which the farm currently resides. We argue that the history of the land is essential to understanding the spatial and social configurations of contemporary foodscapes; however, critical land histories are not engaged with in many alternative food initiatives and food justice organizations. We offer the adaptable pedagogical apparatus of the History of the Land as a tool for others to further the generative convergence of food geographies and anti-oppression work. In addition to discussing the workshop at Grow Dat, we reflect upon our own learning and healing from participating in an ongoing series of history of the land field trips to rural Mississippi where several of us hold deep personal ties to the land. We coauthors are a collective of farmers, food activists, educators, and academics. Across differences of gender, race, sexuality, class, location, and history, learning about the land together has brought us into intimate conversation about loss, memory, narration, transformation, and how we imagine alternate, liberatory futures.

Integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion into social innovation education: a case study of critical service-learning

“…Students appreciated learning more about social and environmental issues within the local context. This learning primarily stemmed from GDYF’s social change orientation (Brown et al , 2020). Six students independently recalled that the GDYF workshops were the most interesting or helpful aspect of the partnership, with at least two highlighting systems thinking.…”

“…At the beginning of the service experience, 5–8 SISE students join a “crew” with two ACLs and a crew leader. GDYF youth leaders develop skills by leading their crew through agricultural tasks; facilitating workshops on topics such as food justice and neoliberalism; and performing communication practices such as Standards and Real Talk (Brown et al , 2020; Schoop, 2014). Tulane students serve GDYF by participating in the Advanced Leadership Program; this practice round prepares ACLs and crew leaders to facilitate the Youth Leadership Program the following January to June.…”

Toward a radical food geography praxis: integrating theory, action, and geographic analysis in pursuit of more equitable and sustainable food systems

“…Approaching inequality, and resistance to it, enables understanding both of these as actions that are produced through social relations within multidimensional economic, political, and cultural processes . As such, and in line with theorizing in radical geographies and food scholarship, relational approaches attend not only to structural processes but also to the formation of power relations (Brown et al, 2020, 2020; Holt-Giménez, 2017). This approach considers, for example, how relationships with the land are made and remade; how relationships among people have produced inequality but can also be transformed to create more equitable food systems; and insists that action is grounded in relationships forged over time through recognition of shared and divergent expertise and objectives.…”

Religion, Segregation, and Voting Rights: Unforgetting the Legacies of Bishops George Foster Pierce and Lucius Henry Holsey in Hancock County, Georgia, USA

“…Together, youth and staff wrestle with the history of dislocation, farming, and slavery in the southern United States through a pedagogy that explores the cultural and environmental history of the land that our farm now occupies. Our History of the Land lesson, for instance, "theorizes oppressive structures within foodscapes and then imagines how such structures may be transformed" (Brown et al 2020). The curriculum encourages us to explore our personal and collective pasts.…”