It’s so nice to be cooking again and to have a friend to cook for. Salmon cakes, steamed broccoli, and plain quick quinoa. Quick, easy, yummy.

Salmon cakes: one can wild pink salmon, one egg, little bit flour, little bit parsley, one stalk celery, leftover half onion, spring onion we were trying to finish, splash of sesame oil, sprinkle salt. Makes six.

I don’t know a ton about sustainable seafood, but I have it on good authority (clever fish scientist friends + monterey bay aquarium) that pink salmon’s an especially good choice. Not pricey either. 

Each of us chose a field site for study and took detailed field notes over the course of the semester. Wayne read all our notes and gave us weekly feedback. It was so valuable to my development as an ethnographer to have someone else looking over my shoulder, especially someone who was completely “fresh” to my field.

I chose to focus on FoodLab Detroit (formerly the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs) — the group of triple-bottom-line food entrepreneurs that I’ve been working with in Detroit. In a lot of ways, it become something of an auto-ethnography… so much so that I titled the second section “Origins of this Me-search Project.”

Table of contents is below for context, then just a very very short section. Interested to hear what folks think.

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The Good Food Movements: Peeking Inside the Lumpy Tent……….. 3

Origins of this “Me”-search Project……….. 5

Journey into Detroit’s Good Food Movement……….. 5

Research and Activism……….. 7

Background on FoodLab Detroit ……….. 9

History and Founding……….. 9

Network boundaries and characteristics……….. 14

FoodLab and Race……….. 15

FoodLab as a social network……….. 18

Networking a Network……….. 18

Mapping the FoodLab network……….. 20

Understanding the periphery……….. 20

Bridging two cliques……….. 22

What’s in a Tie?……….. 26

Information & Advice…………….. 26

Shared Resources…………….. 28

Emotional Support…………….. 30

Social Pressure…………….. 30

All networks not made equal……….. 31

FoodLab as a Social Movement Guild……….. 34

More than the sum of parts……….. 34

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild……….. 36

Framing within a social movement guild……….. 39

Frame disputes and network structure…………….. 41

A Dispute about Ethics…………….. 43

FoodLab as a movement broker……….. 48

From the parts, to the whole, to the whole in context……….. 48

FoodLab bridges a divided good food field……….. 49

FoodLab and Tertius Iungens…………….. 53

Further Questions……….. 55

Implications……….. 57

For FoodLab……….. 57

For entrepreneurship in Good Food Movements……….. 58

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild

FoodLab Detroit has some of the markings of an emerging social movement organization (SMO). Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2003) define a social movements as:

Collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part. (P. 7)

Social movement organizations are generally conceived as formal organizations that work to implement the goals of a movement (Caniglia and Carmin 2005). Emerging social movement groups (ESMG) are SMOs who are “in the process of becoming and defining themselves. They are works in progress” (Blee and Currier 2005: 129) Yet FoodLab differs from typical conceptions of social movement organizations (even those in the process of forming) because it does not exist to implement the goals of a particular movement, but rather to propagate the use of a skill or process (good food entrepreneurship – or social entrepreneurship with some food component) in service of multiple goals defined and chosen by individual entrepreneurs. This structure seems to make sense given the fragmented landscape of movements related to good food (see Figure 8 below).

Figure 8: Social Movements Related to Good Food (in Flora 2009)

The  relationship between social movements, social entrepreneurship, and social change is contested. Mair & Marti (2006) suggest that social movement literature may be a useful lens through which to examine the process of social entrepreneurship because “both social movements and social entrepreneurship are concerned with social transformation.” Yet as Starr (2010) and others have pointed out, social entrepreneurship  and social movements are ultimately different models of social change (Martin and Osberg 2007; Thekaekara and Thekaekara 2006).

Critiques of entrepreneurial approaches to transformation within good food movements abound. Food systems academics have noted that purely market-based or entrepreneurial approaches to food systems change may fail to address or may even exacerbate issues such as food security for the most vulnerable and racial and cultural injustice (Allen et. al. 2003). Critics of entrepreneurship as a food movement strategy also suggest that a reliance on market and consumer-driven approaches to change may encourage “individualized, depoliticized behavior” at the expense of attempts at structural change (Donald 2008). Starr (2010) responds to this argument with a catalogue of the strength of the social entrepreneurship approach:

Responding to a political landscape that seems to offer only dead ends, energetic social entrepreneurs are making things happen with resolute utopianism. They are creating space, enabling new experiences, innovating, and providing meaningful jobs for other people who want to work their values. Social entrepreneurship as an approach to social change is personalistic, isolated, and unaccountable, but also experimental, decentralized, agile, and multi-issue. And entrepreneurs know that cultural relevance is necessary to their success, a lesson many social movements refuse to learn. (P. 486)

Notably, FoodLab members have described the network as a way to hold one another accountable to individual missions and shared values through public standards and audits, social pressure, and a shared value of “transparency.”

Rather than a social movement organization, FoodLab could be considered an emerging social movement guild (SMG). The term “guild” implies an association of craftsman organized around a common skill or craft. Guilds incorporate systems of apprenticeships to build skills and competence among members, they often enforce mutually agreed-upon standards of accountability, they may share resources and share a collective identity, yet guild members themselves are independent and may apply have different motivations and ways of applying their shared trade. An SMG, as opposed to a traditional guild, prepares members to use their craft in the service of social change rather than maintaining the status quo: specifically “challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part” (Snow, Soule, Kriesi 2003: 7).

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Social movements can be difficult to observe and describe because they tend to be “fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries” (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Different approaches to describing social movements may focus on the way movements mobilize resources, formal social movement organizations (SMOs), the interaction of movements with external agents, or the way that movement actors construct their identities.

Regardless of the specific approach, movements can be said to be organized to some degree and can perhaps be understood best as networks or networks of networks (Diani, 2003). One of the ways of understanding these networks is through the movement’s online identity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of new social movements (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Online identity can be understood by analyzing a variety of online media created by popular media, SMOs themselves, or individual movement actors, including websites, blog posts and articles, email archives, and online listservs.

The Good Food Movement is no exception to the slippery nature of new social movements. Despite attempts by practitioners and academics to characterize, “pin-down,” and evaluate the success of the movement with comprehensive goals and indicators (see, for example the Vivid Picture Project, Soule 2008),  the movement remains a moving target; some argue that coming to a consensus on movement goals is neither a necessary nor particularly useful exercise (Hamm 2009). As Starr (2010) writes:

Movement critics (academic and activist) tend to write like restaurant reviewers, assessing the worth of a movement’s “product” (always expected already to be running at peak performance). I have recently come to see social movements are long, stuttering conversations in which conversants do not begin with the same mother tongue but over time develop both linguistic and cultural literacy. I see social movement culture functioning as a process of recognition, query, and expansion, repetitious, slow, but growing bigger in each conversation.

Online listservs offer one glimpse into this “stuttering conversation.” Despite their obvious limitations (e.g. various “digital divides” means that low-income and rural contingents might be less represented in online conversations), listservs offer one view into the way the good food movement constructs its identity through movement “frames.”

The COMFOOD listserv was founded in 1997 by Hugh Joseph, a significant leader in the good food movement. Joseph cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), the New England Sustainable Ag Working Group (NESAWG), Boston Food and Fitness Initiative, and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts. Joseph was also instrumental in starting the Community Food Projects and Farmers Market Promotion Program, two USDA grant programs.

According to Joseph, “When Comfood started in 1997, it was envisioned as a straightforward national networking vehicle on community food security topics. Now it’s become a repository for most food-related issues” (Qtd in Starkman 2008).

As of November 6, 2011, the listserv had 5333 members, which may make it the largest online network of food activists and food movement organizations. In contrast, two of the most popular movement-related listservs after COMFOOD are ASFS (created in 2001 by the Association for the Study of Food and Society) with 1829 members and SANE-T (created in 1991 as a discussion group about sustainable agriculture) with 822 members.

Generally, the list is made up of practitioners, activists, academics, students, policy-makers and other individuals. A description of the listserv on the Community Food Security Coalition website explains that “Postings by any subscriber may include, but are not limited to:

• Broad or specific discussions on the issues and strategies relating to community food security; similarly, articles of general interest;
• Requests for information, contacts, or assistance on topics related to CFS research or programs;
• Requests for information about organizations working in specific areas (for example, which groups in a region are doing entrepreneurial gardening programs);
• Requests for technical assistance or related help in designing or implementing projects;
• Descriptions of new activities your organization is initiating;
• Announcements of CFS-related activities – workshops, training sessions, conferences;
• Job notices or internship opportunities”

The listserv is open for anyone to join and to post; it is unmoderated (anyone can post to the list and posts are not screened), and governed by a peer-policing system along a set guidelines.

I was particularly interested in using COMFOOD to begin to understand the role of entrepreneurship within the movement. I’m aware that there are limitations to using the COMFOOD list as a proxy for the “good food movement” as a whole, but I see this as a place to start.

The chart below shows the number of total posts and the number of posts that include the word “entrepreneur” on the COMFOOD listserve from January 2008 to June 2011. I tabulated posts at six month intervals from the COMFOOD archives. Over this time period, there were an average of 374 posts each month and 12.5 posts (or 3.3%) of posts included the word “entrepreneurship.” Overall posting volume has increased over the 42 month period, and the use of the word “entrepreneur” has followed this general upward trend.

The next step in analysis will be to read and code instances of the use of the term “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship” in a randomly selected sample of 50 emails over a 12-month period from Nov 1, 2011 to Oct 31, 2011.

Rather, I’m starting to rephrase  to ask: What role does entrepreneurship (whether defined as a series of processes — e.g. innovation, a stage in business development — e.g. startup, particular characteristics, etc.) have to play in food systems change? How is it conceived in the good food movement by entrepreneurs themselves? How and when is entrepreneurship discourse invoked? What are its “real” and perceived opportunities & limitations?  What does this say about the movement itself?

Check out the MindMap for some of my questions from back in September.

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Social Entrepreneurship in the Sustainable Food Movement

“The food movement […] may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.” (Walsh, 2011).

1. The Rise of Entrepreneurship as a tactic in the Sustainable Food Movement

The sustainable food movement has been characterized in the popular media as a “big, lumpy tent” that coalesces around “the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both” (Pollan, 2010). Policies and organizations that make up the movement have increasingly promoted socially and environmentally-motivated entrepreneurship as a strategy for change.

The 2008 Farm Bill created the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center to support food enterprises that aim to increase access to healthy, affordable, locally sourced foods to underserved communities (CSREES 2009). The USDA’s Community Food Projects Program which aims to “meet the food needs of low-income individuals [and] increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of communities,” gives preference to proposals that “support the development of entrepreneurial projects” (NIFA 2010). A study that interviewed 37 urban and rural alternative food initiatives in California found that entrepreneurial programs dominated their activities (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman & Warner 2003). In the past five to ten years, a growing number of consultants have emerged who specifically support sustainable food and agriculture business development[1]. At the same time, academics like Hamm and Baron (1999) have described small-scale microenterprises as “prerequisites for sustainable food systems” (p. 57). Donald & Blay-Palmer (2006) come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of a 5-year study on food enterprises in Toronto. Based on extensive content analysis and key informant interviews, they find evidence that alternative food capitalism in Toronto offers an opportunity for change towards a more “socially inclusive and sustainable urban development model” (Donald & Blay-Palmer 2006, p.1902).

Despite growing momentum on the ground, and a general golden glow around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, researchers have yet to critically examine entrepreneurship in the sustainable food systems movement. Herein lies an untapped opportunity to develop more effective theories on how and to what extent and in what forms entrepreneurship is a useful strategy to move us toward a more healthy, more sustainable food system. As Donald & Blay-Palmer point out,

The strength of the firm-centred approach is in its ability to understand better the complex multidimensional and multi-scalar interdependencies between, on the one hand, the internal innovative dynamics of firms and, on the other hand, the broader institutional – as well as social, environmental and cultural – setting within which we all operate. (Donald 2008)

Specifically, emerging theory about social entrepreneurship may provide a framework for developing useful hypotheses about the process by which individuals and organizations can produce social, environmental, cultural and economic transformation within the context of the goals of the sustainable food movement. As Peredo & McLean point out, if social entrepreneurship is a “promising instrument,” academic inquiry into its processes can produce knowledge for policy-makers and practitioners to inform effective legislative support, social policy, and best practices in development and management (2006, p. 57).

For the rest of the paper, click here to download the PDF.

Today though, I was sitting next to a pretty blond girl dressed in professional clothes, hair tied back in a sleek ponytail. She looked like an upperclassman — too fresh-faced to be an overworked grad student, but with a certain measure of confidence. After a bit, her beau came in and sat down at the table with her. They started talking about the places where she was planning to apply for jobs.

After talking through a few other options, Beau suggested that she look into the Detroit Athletic Club — he’d heard they were hiring for a food and beverage service manager and said it was one of the top-rated clubs in the States. Her response: “Oh really, interesting… But I hate Detroit.”

His response to this: “Well you don’t have to live there. You could live outside the city.”

I know this is how many people think. I know many many people downtown and live in the suburbs — it’s impossible to ignore the very clear traffic patterns — folks coming in to the city in the morning and rushing out in the evenings – but I guess I tend to hang out with so many Detroit-die-hards and am constantly contacted by folks who are dreaming about moving into the city that I forget what this attitude looks and sounds like — the texture and color and reality of people like this…

I wanted to keep my mouth shut. I was busy and I didn’t really want to get into it with this girl who I didn’t know from Methusalah, and I wasn’t sure if I even cared to engage with someone who would say something so … silly? careless? uninformed? But I couldn’t keep quiet. I told her what I loved about living in Detroit. I told her how it was hard sometimes, but that it was a place unlike anywhere else, where creative people are engaged and participating in building the kind of city they want to see, where young adults can step up and make an impact in a way they can’t necessarily in other places…

She was open. She listened. I don’t know what she took away from the very very short interaction, but I know it made me wonder if there are parts of my life where I’m similarly blinded by perception and make statements or decisions based on flawed and incomplete assumptions. Is it possible to avoid this? Perhaps it’s all a matter of degree.

I’ve been thinking about this a whole lot lately in the context of my own work and life here in Detroit. I moved here in part for a sense of *community* and connectedness and I find that many of the people close to me are drawn & remain in the city for that reason — and yet that interdependence, that rich social web, that “deep participation” is so complicated, and often a source of discomfort.

I wonder how to motivate and manage participation, collaboration, decision-making in “flatter” systems and networks…. how greater interdependence & “richness and diversity of one’s experiences and the strength of one’s social bonds,” while magical on the surface, can be exhausting in practice… the constant give/take/brokering of our values/needs/actions within our networks is a lot in itself. Given our technology as a species, we are no longer operating at the scale of tribes, so we’re negotiating an ever increasing number of connections at varying scales… not to mention the fact that different people are able/willing to “enroll” to different degrees and those who have stronger ties end up being asked to give more than they can sustain as individuals or businesses or organizations (e.g. studies on entrepreneurs with stronger family ties being alternately a blessing and a burden on the business)…

So I guess I just wonder how we deal with this complexity?

When we move out of more bureaucratic, hierarchical command-based approaches to leadership to more participatory, emancipatory, democratic, distributed/chaordic models … and when we move from linear, cumulative models of progress or development to a systems approach focusing on sustainability and resiliency, what are the new kinds of tools (technological, cognitive, emotional, social, political) that we need to manage these changes?

Network modeling? Systems analysis? Ethnography? Facilitative leadership skills?

Spirituality and religion!?

Some incredibly sage and practical advice. I need to make my schedule less busy so I can put more of it into practice. (e.g. learn to be a plumber and find a non-academic partner… though maybe that’s less of an issue since I’m not convinced I’m going to be an academic at all )

I feel like a poor excuse for a “Radical” or “Activist”… I don’t know if I fit that role necessarily, but I’m pretty clear that I want my life to be about figuring out how to contribute to/participate in creating a more just and equitable world and specifically supporting people to feel useful and fulfilled … and I want to be able to do this without driving myself insane… in fact do it in a way that’s generative and full of joy…

Click here to read the rest.

“Activists experience the intellectual-political work of scholarship as part of the struggle. It’s a war. We have to fight. I’ve come to understand the academy as a place where I do some outreach and networking, and sometimes try to transform the institutions to be more liberatory, but for the most part my job is not part of THE struggle. This job is a way to support me and the work I want to do.”

My little Ikea futon takes up 2/3rds of the floor space.  Chocolately open-frame shelves match the dark wood doors and look lovely up against the burnt orange walls. Above the light switch, there’s a gilded Klimt-esque painting that my childhood best friend Lauren gifted me long ago; above the head of my bed, a round paper lantern with red  blossoms and black branches. The light and the bed are in perfect symmetry with the front window, which is dressed in a green-gold textured panel curtain my mom sewed as a gift for our old apartment in San Francisco. My yellow banana-tulip trashcan, picture-mobile, and bottle of Grand-Dad Whiskey round out my nest.

I’d like to install some sort of wall-mounted two-shelf-system nestled between my bed and the wall, so I can stand and work on my laptop in the mornings and enjoy that early light, or plop on a stool to dash off a letter or write in my journal before bedtime. Perhaps next to that, near the door, a system of twine and clothespins and tacks to hang pictures, letters, relics from the week: a shrine to the ordinary inspiration of everyday life. Underneath, beside the white checkerboard heating grate, might be a small space to sit and meditate on the black barley-husk cushion from my retreat in Millersburg, Ohio (on the same trip, where I had the best meal of this year).  And somewhere, mirrors, positioned, of course, for good feng shui. In the meantime, my poppy-stenciled corkboard is patiently propped up against that wall, waiting for its side of the room to be realized.

Being in this room feels nice already, like being hugged.

Being in the whole house is nice especially because of my roommates, Siri and Marcia. We had our first weekly family dinner tonight. Barley and Kimchi-freezer-soup and RSA-animate videos. So great.

Basic recipe: Mince and fry garlic in a touch of olive oil. Toss in 1/500th of our overabundant chili powder stash and fry until Siri coughs. Sprinkle in furikake because it’s there. Throw in frozen puck of wonton sauce from an old Neighborhood Noodle event. Meanwhile, in microwave, defrost gallon bag of frozen chicken stock made from thigh bones leftover from satay-making, frozen fishballs & fake crab from epic Chinese New Year party, and mysterious frozen bean curd.

Hack semifrozen stock into chunks, add to chili-sauce concoction, and patiently bring to boil. (While waiting, consider sipping some chamomile-anise tea). Cut up defrosted seafood & beancurd with kitchen scissors and add, then add 1/4 bag of leftover frozen spinach, 6 frozen pork-leek dumplings and Noodle dumplings that accompanied the sauce. Add 2 cups of homemade cabbage-carrot-daikon kimchi. Bring again to boil. Add fish sauce, sugar, and sesame oil to taste. Throw a tablespoon or so of cornstarch in a bowl, scoop out some broth, whisk it up with a fork, then slowly add back into the big pot to thicken. Bring to a boil again, then beat up a couple of eggs and drop in so they form swirly clouds. Serve atop barley.

Finish off with peaches, watermelon, good roomie musing on social change, and a good RSA-Animate classic.

click it to enlarge

We have some pretty awesome plans in the works with the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs. I’m excited about the business plan bootcamp we’re putting on in January, February and March… and website development and the idea of developing training/resource modules around starting a good food business in Detroit, and a mentorship program, and networking together commercial kitchens, and all kinds of other good stuff. And supposedly I have IRB approval to start my research with the group and approved consent forms and all that, but my questions are still murky (or perhaps myriad is a better “m” word to describe where I’m at… myriad, multitudinous…)

So I’d tried talking it out and I’d tried writing it out in a linear fashion and neither of those things were working very well, so I decided to make a little mindmap. This is still a bit confusing. As you can see, lines cross each other every which-way, but I think it’s helping me come to some sort of peace about how different elements are connected, and what needs to be put to one side or demoted to a secondary or tertiary focus.

click it to make it bigger!