Disentangling Participation in ‘Local Organic‘ Food Activism in London. On the Intersecting Dynamics of Whiteness, Coloniality and Methodologies that Constitute Ecological Identities

Abstract

The way we grow and consume food has become a key arena where concepts of nature, sustainability and identity are being negotiated. But who is the “we” in this discourse? The London-based local organic food network Organiclea that seeks to facilitate a reconnection with nature through food growing provides the empirical platform for exploring this question and its related territories of participation in such food spaces and understandings of race, nature and culture. Building on the work of US food justice theorists who have introduced framings of whiteness and coloniality in relation to the exclusiveness of local organic food practice, this paper asks what it means to engage in such food activism in light of intersectionality that informs any identity and therefore stance towards food and nature. By reviewing and embedding these conceptualisations within a UK context with the help of inductive interviews and intersectionality as an empirical paradigm, a deeper understanding of racialised (ecological) identity formation behind ecological identities and the role of scientific methodologies in upholding subordinated diaspora subjectivities can be brought forth. This study therefore provides important subtle layers to gender studies’ signature framework of intersectionality and the disproportionate participation on the part of diaspora subjects in the design and operation of local organic food practice.