Chair: Carolyn Morris
11:00am - 11:20am
THE PERSISTENCE OF RECIPROCAL LABOUR IN RURAL SOUTHEAST ASIA: BEYOND THE DICHOTOMY OF SOLIDARITY VS. MARKET EXCHANGE
Alice Beban
Despite scholars in the 1990s claiming that Southeast Asian peasantry was dead and that reciprocal labour would inevitably disappear in the face of capitalist exchange relations, reciprocal labour practices persist. What are we to make of this? Agricultural economists see in these practices the last vestiges of precapitalist economies that can smooth labour shortages and ensure bare survival, while postcapitalist feminists see the potential for building collective prosperity. In this presentation, I draw upon a large sample of qualitative interviews carried out in Northern Cambodia in 2016 and 2020 to show that exchange labour not only persists; its prevalence and significance within poorer households is increasing. In the face of rapid agricultural commercialisation, debt, ecological crises and gendered inequalities, exchange labour practices help rural families survive and maintain social ties.
Yet, while agrarian studies literature often pits romanticised notions of exchange labour as a form of solidarity against the individualising effects of capitalist wage labour, I find that this dichotomy between sociality/gift vs. market/commodity is increasingly blurred. Exchange labour is not static. In rural Cambodia, the affective labour of exchange is taking on the capitalist logics of efficiency and competition, with implications for who gets included in exchange labour circles and how exchange labour contributes to social solidarity. I explore what these shifting practices might tell us about contemporary experiences of social change, and possibilities for socio-ecologically just futures.
11:20am - 11:40am
CARING FOOD SYSTEMS? THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE IN NEW ZEALAND
Madison Seymour & Sean Connelly
A growing body of literature argues that achieving radical change in the agri-food system requires a radical renegotiation of our relationship with the environment alongside a change in our thinking and approach to transformational food politics. To do this, this study investigates the degree to which components of a more-than-human ethic of care are embedded within New Zealand’s emerging regenerative farming movement. The purpose of this research is to understand the potential of regenerative farming to act as political and social spaces for radical and transformative change. The research is based on farm visits and interviews with farmers and key organizational stakeholders who are either practicing or supporting regenerative agriculture in Otago, Southland and Canterbury. It was found that undertaking regenerative agriculture requires a significant shift in mindset away from the reductionist paradigm that dominates conventional farming towards a more holistic and relational understanding of biological and social ecosystems. This shift is characterized by greater attentiveness to on farm biology to guide engagement in on-farm decisions, but these holistic and principle-based perspectives were also being applied to personal and social lives. The mindset shift found to be occurring with many regenerative farmers is what differentiates ‘being regenerative’ from the technical practices of regenerative agriculture. While the two overlap, it is the mindset that is crucial to the transformational potential of regenerative agriculture.
11:40am - 12:00pm
GROWING FOOD; GROWING COMMUNITY: THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY FOOD INITIATIVES IN ŌTAUTAHI CHRISTCHURCH
Joanna Fountain & Nick Cradock-Henry
The COVID-19 pandemic and phased lockdowns have disrupted the agri-food system in Aotearoa New Zealand, highlighting acute vulnerability, supply chain fragility, and critical dependencies. To reduce future risk, there is now growing interest in regional food security and opportunities to ‘buy local’. There is evidence, too, that pandemic lockdowns have also led many New Zealanders to reassess priorities, with ‘slow food activities’ such as baking and cooking and establishing, or expanding, home vegetable gardens becoming increasingly popular. While these trends reflect a global movement amongst consumers for locally, ethically and sustainably produced food, the pandemic has also highlighted significant issues of food security for many households and communities, where simply having enough nutritious food to feed a family is the immediate priority. This paper reports on qualitative research into five community food ventures in Ōtautahi Christchurch, particularly community gardens and food forests, in the context of COVID-19. Findings reveal that while food is the pivotal element of these ventures, their role in the community is much broader than this. There has also been a shift in roles and priorities for these ventures over time, often precipitated by crises in the city; this has been witnessed during the current pandemic, but was also evident during the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, attracting new participants, and reflecting broader changes in values around food, food security, and community.
12:00pm - 12:20pm
CULTURAL IMAGINARIES AND SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION IN AOTEAROANZ: THE GREAT FLOUR SHORTAGE OF 2020
Carolyn Morris & Matt Henry
At 11.59pm on March 25, 2020, AotearoaNZ moved into a nation-wide lockdown to halt the spread of COVID19. Supermarkets remained open and while the Government reassured citizens that the food supply was secure, panic buying ensued. Reports of flour shortages first appeared in the media on March 31st. Initially unnecessary panic buying was blamed, but by the following day a supply chain cause was discovered. This turned out not to be a problem with the supply of wheat or with milling capacity, but a problem with the supply of small bags for packaging. The cause of the surge in demand for domestic flour was, the media reported, people’s desire to enact a kind of “traditional” family life through baking cakes and sourdough bread as a way of dealing with the profound disruption to life produced by the lockdown.
Food supply chains can be understood as networks of human and non-human actors assembled to integrate the production, processing and distribution of food. They are fundamentally animated by fantasies of a-cultural, technical, rationality, where goods circulate seamlessly and eternal plentitude is assured. The disruption of supply chains by COVID19 disturbed these fantasies, showing that supply chains are in fact particular to their material and cultural territorialisations. In tracing specificities of the Great Flour Shortage of 2020 we also reflect on disruption as a way of making sense of COVID life, in ways that suggest that imaginaries of logistics profoundly frame our ways of being in the contemporary world.
