Symposium with Garrett Broad

Tempe Campus: West Hall Room 135

Citing intersecting concerns related to health, the environment and the economy, critics of the contemporary industrialized food system insist that we are in crisis. In response, a number of food justice activists in the United States have begun to develop community-based solutions to the nation’s food system problems. Grounded within historically marginalized, low-income communities of color, advocates for food justice argue that activities like urban agriculture, cultural nutrition education and food-related social enterprises can be an integral part of an agenda for systemic social change.

This presentation uses an engaged ethnographic case study of the South Los Angeles-based Community Services Unlimited in order to explore the limitations and possibilities of food justice organizing today. With attention to the organization’s narrative practices and networked action over time, the research details the complexity of community-based advocacy in an age of digital communication technology, economic austerity and enduring food inequity. How is it that a community-based organization with its roots in the Southern California Black Panther Party, it asks, can now depend upon governmental funding from a bureaucratic establishment like the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to advance its food justice aims? The work offers insights for interdisciplinary scholars interested in understanding and advancing justice-oriented change, within the food system and beyond.

Garrett Broad is the George Gerbner Post Doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. His research considers the impacts of globalization, communication technology and the politics of knowledge in shaping contemporary communities and networked movements for social and environmental justice. Garrett received his PhD from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

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Co-sponsored by CSPO and the School of Social Transformation