The overarching aim of this research project, documented in this chapter, was to investigate the current landscape of community food initiatives as a way to understand the general context of where a regime is situated. The investigation was aimed to explore how we can grow a commons food regime by learning from community food initiatives in London. Using the integrative framework as ‘a tool of insight’ and having progressed through different stages of investigation (e.g. looking across the fields, mapping and categorising and selecting case studies), along with a combination of research designs (e.g. multi-sited ethnography and case studies), and research methods (e.g. participatory observation and interviews), I have gained substantial knowledge and understanding of their objectives, capacity, challenges, opportunities and strategies relevant to growing a commons food regime in London. A number of conclusions can be made from my investigation.
First, the findings confirmed my initial assumption that even though individual
community food initiatives do not have all the elements available, taking them together as a whole, they demonstrated greater potential to grow a commons food regime more effectively in London. A diverse variety of components relevant to growing a commons food regime has been revealed through these community food initiatives and study participants I engaged with. However, though these components are useful, they are not fulfilling their full potential, which can prompt us to reflect on how, collectively, we can grow a commons food regime more effectively in London by making more strategic use of these existing resources and using our knowledge more strategically.
Second, the term ‘commons’ and ‘commons movements’ were unfamiliar to most of the community food initiatives and study participants before my introduction and explanation. However, once they understood my ideas of the commons and growing a commons food regime, many of them expressed that a commons narrative and ethos were relevant to what they were doing and to their visions. Some of them started to be more aware of the development of the commons and even elaborated its scope and meanings creatively and provocatively.
Third, as the previous section reveals, identification of attributes to key elements of commoning dynamics, in as far as they relate to capacity building and governance, are multifaceted and complex. It is challenging to pinpoint a single set of processes, challenges, opportunities and strategies that guarantee the effectiveness of growing a commons food regime in London. Nevertheless, I would like to offer a summary of those insights and key learning from my investigation, which can help identify implications relevant for future research and practice. I make no claim that this list is exhaustive and recognise that others might end up with a somewhat different list. This list lays out the key set of knowledge which I believe can indicate ways forward for growing a commons food regime more effectively in London.
Care is the core
From a methodological perspective, investigation with care proves extremely important. While no single case study or participant covered the six different care-receivers
151 framework, care is nonetheless a well understood and often-cited concept. Similarly,
associated values such as democracy, justice, diversity, coexistence, and aesthetics were also discussed and/or practised, both individually and collectively. Given the amount and quality of like-minded communities and people with their common wisdom, it was important to continue engagement with them, and for them to reveal their living experiences and achieve the power of care in action. However, equally important was to address issues such as personal attitudes and capacity, and the institutional arrangements needed to foster a caring culture and community.
Diversifying institutions
The selection of the case studies demonstrated a diversity of institutions of community food initiatives in London, with different organisational infrastructures, rules, ideologies, norms and values. As expected, many kinds of food-related resources, both tangible (e.g. food, community gardens, tools, funds, locations, volunteers, etc.) and intangible (knowledge, networks, trust, respect, art, and memory, etc.) were shared, derived from a large number of incentives and motivations (e.g. rational and/or relational and emotionally driven choices) and scales (e.g. community, neighbourhood, networked organisations, city wide, regional, translocal, and international). Varied decision-
making processes and mechanisms were revealed, ranging from a mixture of democratic consensus building to more of an authoritarian kind. The processes of rules-making were dynamic and blurred and it is hard to assess when one rule was made to replace another, and many decisions were made informally and in an unwritten form. This implies a more insider engagement to observe and evaluate the evolution of institutional arrangements in order to make appropriate adjustments over time. Additionally, while I encountered initiatives and study participants who shared more radical visions (e.g. an anti-capitalist perspective), gradual effects (piecemeal reforms) were more common. Therefore, harnessing this relatively softer approach with a radical vision could reach a wider audience who might be interested in growing a commons food regime.
Creating platforms for facilitated community participation
All community food initiatives recognised the importance of widening community participation by focusing on food education, policy and advocacy as well as working for progressive community development. While issues around inclusion and diversity were still evident, using food as a means to engage with communities seemed to be more effective than actually challenging current neoliberal food systems. Perhaps at the moment it is more important to harness people’s enthusiasm first, but at the same time build strategic alliances with individuals and organisations who are more concerned with the wider issues of food security/food sovereignty and public health, the imbalance of power relations and the notion of transformative food citizenship. Since relational and safe spaces were helpful for increasing participation, there may be an opportunity and a need to create platforms for deeper civic participation and democratic deliberation, which may also lead to some dynamic networking and social learning opportunities. Furthermore, since the public (both communities and individuals) take time to understand and adopt a certain language, a more effective communication which can enhance interactions, dialogues and potential collaborations is also critical to growing a commons food regime.
Forming networks of actors and actants
While community food initiatives enjoy a level of autonomy for fulfilling their visions and goals, it is evident that no single community food initiative can possess all the knowledge, experience, and resources necessary to address complex and connected challenges posed by the current neoliberal food systems. My investigation indicates that a greater emphasis should be placed on fostering connections between interventions, and warns against suggestions that certain interventions will inherently lead to better outcomes. There is also a need to engage across all levels – individuals, action groups, organisations, networked organisations and beyond (i.e. society). There is some evidence to suggest that these initiatives could serve as ‘hubs’ for bridging community organisations in helping to build capacity. This requires strategic co-ordination and linking of organisations and people – connecting the dots – with a more comprehensive and coherent path of action. It is also to do with functioning on the edges to find common ground to foster and sustain relational spaces and governance networks. Finally, the relational aspects of food networks should not be undermined in practice. To a large extent, the findings illustrate the fact that the neoliberal context and these community food initiatives in London are mutually constituted (e.g. between the local/ the global, nature/culture, markets/social movements). Therefore, how we can creatively take advantage of these kinds of hybridity and co-existing relations, especially through stretching the potentials of connecting place and space as well as humans (actors) and non-humans (actants) to increase adaptive capacity, may be an effective way to grow a commons food regime in London.
Generating virtuous circles for collaboration
Most types of collaboration were seen as being positive. However, cross-boundary collaboration and creating greater synergies through virtuous circles were much less common than expected. This might be due to cultural, political, economic and other barriers to increasing collaboration; for example, finding shared motivations and the lack of sufficient human capacity, time, and financial resources. Overcoming these barriers will be important for increasing the size and scale of collaborations. To that end, incorporating a more inclusive gendered perspective to play the role of mediator, integrator, and synthesiser for convergence of differences might be useful to help nurture a collaborative spirit. More importantly, many initiatives put greater emphasis on the quality of collaboration over quantity (scale) which highlighted how great things can be achieved by generating and sustaining a series of small but positive changes over time. Furthermore, from my investigation, the role of power, legitimacy and legibility are also key factors in the self-organisation of networks prepared to build institutions and adapt to change. Drawing on this insight, consideration could be made to growing a commons food regime through catalyst initiatives in London.
Building collective knowledge and learning
One of the more unexpected and interesting findings from the community food initiatives and study participants was the diversity of types and resources of food knowledge they had, and their reflective, critical and constructive attitudes towards different forms of knowledge and ways of learning. While there were some innovative and transformative ways of knowing and learning available, different and sometimes competing discourses seemed to lead to divergence, instead of convergence, among community sectors. Although combining different types of knowledge for learning is
153 critical in building adaptive capacity for growing a commons food regime, important
questions remained unresolved, particularly in relation to, first, London’s position on food and agriculture and how the current situation is being presented, and second, issues of food security, food sovereignty, and the connection between the natural and social sciences with regard to adaptive capacity in complex social-ecological systems. At one level, due to an absence of a shared vision (or visions) of London’s position in food issues, it is difficult to prioritise resources to address knowledge gaps and develop long- term research and learning development planning. At another level, knowledge itself is a dynamic process which requires a power analysis with basic questions such as why, what, how, and who to know and learn. It is a critical issue to encourage dialogues to foster imaginative and effective ways to discover how different forms of knowledge and learning processes can work for collective benefit.
Fulfilling the role of university
Finally, as an academic-activist, I take the view that the university plays an important role in helping to form multiple and reciprocal connections with society that can result in more desirable governance (Delanty, 2001:152). From my investigation, however, universities seemed to miss the opportunity to play such an important role. In this sense, I consider that the academic-activist can serve as a bridge to bring the university world closer to the outside world and the outside world into the university (Andrews in Elliott et al., 1996:116), as well as helping to connect our surrounding local community with the global context. We need to ask ourselves, “How can we create spaces and conversations that extend past or beyond our research encounters?”, and also “How can we open up universities and academic research so they become embedded in the practice of this critical civil society?” (Chatterton et al., 2007:222). Given the diversity of resources, knowledge and networks the universities possess, as a starting point, I am convinced that there is a scope and an opportunity for universities to grow a commons food regime as a catalyst. As an experiment, special attention is required in developing robust and reflective evaluation mechanisms of the entire process of growing a commons food regime in order to obtain a better understanding of its impacts in building adaptive capacity for navigating change towards sustainable food systems, sustainable communities and cities and a wider scope of social-ecological sustainability. Considerable effort is needed to integrate knowledge and open up spaces for deliberation, reflection, collaboration and innovation. In this regard, promoting an action-oriented research becomes more relevant as it provides a framework that gives credence to the dialectic between theory and practice with explicit aims of creating social change.
Final concluding remarks
As Bal and Boer state, “Theory only makes sense as an attitude; otherwise the generalisation of the very concept of ‘theory’ is pointless” (1994:8). As, I believe, has come through on every page, I am an evangelist and an enthusiast for community food movements. The integrative framework as ‘a tool of insight’ helped me explore the complexity of our food system with common sense and in a rigorous and systematic manner. But while I kept reminding myself of the fundamental importance of taking a holistic view, there was always some limit. Each initiative was complex, let alone the current landscape of community food initiatives as a whole, and any investigation, however insightful, would always emphasise some things and ignore others. This is almost like something of an art, since it is all about how to see the forest and the trees,
how to know what level of detail to get into but also when to stop, how best to capture the essence of complex situations (Sherwood, 2002), and more importantly, how to recognise and accept that ‘we know of the unknowable’ (Flood, 2008).
Wisdom, as an innate characteristic, is rare. But we all can learn how to care and trust and open up the doors to let each other in. For me, this concept of care was particularly helpful to understand a relatively decentralised structure and somewhat diffuse overall goals, and where the various community food initiatives in London had their own vision of what was important and what were their priorities. I was working together with them in ways in which an ‘ethic of care is paramount’ (Denzin, 2003:122). This caring attitude took on an almost mantra-like quality, a certain spiritual power and the entire investigation was a learning process on how to listen to and care for others deeply. In so doing, we might become wiser gradually. Indeed, this care was an attitude that was brought to our own practice, which will be introduced in the next chapter, in growing a commons food regime through a journey of university-led community food initiatives at University College London.
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