Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2014 Communities of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee Tony Nathan VanWinkle University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the American Material Culture Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Cultural History Commons, Place and Environment Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the Work, Economy and Organizations Commons Recommended Citation VanWinkle, Tony Nathan, "Communities of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2014. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2741 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Tony Nathan VanWinkle entitled "Communities of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Anthropology. Gregory V. Button, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Tricia Redeker-Hepner, Damayanti Banerjee, De Ann Pendry Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Communities of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, and the Solidarity Economies of Local Food-Related Business Networks in Knoxville, Tennessee A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Tony Nathan VanWinkle May 2014 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to my dissertation committee: to my co-chairs, Gregory Button and Tricia Redeker- Hepner for their continued patience, support, and encouragement, and for their essential guidance and critical feedback through the draft stages of the dissertation; to De Ann Pendry, who was always willing to listen to and comment on new ideas; to Damayanti Banarjee, whose graduate seminars in environmental sociology provided a forum for the initial explorations of many of the ideas that appear in this dissertation. I would also like to thank Jon Shefner of the sociology department. Without the community and fellowship provided by fellow graduate students I could not have made it through this process. I would especially like to thank Erin Eldridge, Gabriella Maldonado, and Amanda Reinke for their support, friendship, and feedback. I would also like to thank those undergraduate students whose enthusiasm and engagement helped tremendously in the formulation of parts of this dissertation. Thanks especially to Amanda Cappanola, Lain Myers, Joey Green, Jordon Fouts, Casey Jackson, and Steven Hodge. Also thanks to those friends who lent support and suggestions throughout—Corey Dugan, Jason Robinson, Jill Houser, and Jason & Jodi Watts. Lastly, this would not have been possible at all if not for the unconditional support and encouragement I received from my family, who continued to believe in me even when I didn’t. Thank you Nancy, and Greyson, and Cole. ii Abstract This dissertation examines the socio-economic and eco-political dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio- economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, therefore determining the textures of particular localisms in return. Such processes and expressions, while explicitly oriented toward the recovery and reassertion of the “local,” however, are also necessarily embedded in the structural matrix of neoliberal globalization. Indeed, it is precisely from the negotiation of such global/local dialectics that localist food movements draw their oppositional political value. Accordingly, the study is also preoccupied with the ways in which localist food movements, particularly in their contestational positioning vis-a-vis the global industrial food system, are also actively producing new, and perhaps critical-neoliberal subjectivities that bridge post-Fordist symbolic and cultural economies on the one hand, with affective solidarity economies on the other. iii Table of Contents Introduction: Communities of Abundance? ………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: Visible Hands & Market Stands ..……………………..…………………….45 Chapter 2: Savor the Earth To Save It ………………………………………..………… 101 Chapter 3: Thinking Little . The Next Big Thing ……………………………….. 152 Chapter 4: Your Localism and Mine …………………………………………………… 209 Conclusions ………………………………………………………………………………………255 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………...270 Vita ………………………………………………………………………………………………….289 iv Introduction: Communities of Abundance? This dissertation examines the socio-economic dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio-economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, therefore determining the textures of particular localisms in return. Such processes and expressions, while explicitly oriented toward the recovery and reassertion of the “local,” however, are also necessarily embedded in the structural matrix of neoliberal globalization. Indeed, it is precisely from the negotiation of such global/local dialectics that localist food movements draw their oppositional political value. Accordingly, the study is also preoccupied with the ways in which localist food movements, particularly in their contestational positioning vis-a-vis the global industrial food system, are also actively producing new, and perhaps critical-neoliberal subjectivities that bridge post-Fordist symbolic and cultural economies on the one hand, with affective solidarity economies on the other. 1 While indicative of long-term interests in food studies and alternative economies, the particular nature and direction of the current study was gestated in upper division classes focused around the intersecting topical arenas of globalization, consumerism, and sustainability. Within these classes, the regularly featured section on food is often the most popular among students. Together, we find that contemporary food economies are a particularly resonant lens through which to ground inquiries that can otherwise veer into abstraction. After all, we all eat. Because of its contemporary dualistic nature as a major global commodity imbricated in vast global exchange networks as well as an intensely local product bound up in all sorts of affective relations—food is perhaps especially illustrative of local/global discourses, particularly as these are further refined through emergent ethical consumption practices like fair trade and so-called artisanal food production. Exploring the multivalence of such formations, in class we watched a short profile and promotional video featuring Brooklyn, NY based business, Mast Brothers Chocolate. This highly aestheticized production is built around scenes featuring the company’s artisanal production processes (slow, deliberate, exacting) along with video portraits and the philosophical musings of Rick and Michael Mast, the young, hip proprietors of their namesake company; whose style of self presentation and highly referential, romantic, even anachronistic locution collapses entrepreneur and raconteur into a single persona. Indeed, the theatricality, the performativity of it all, appears more like a stage-set from HBO’s newest 19th century period drama, or a steam-punk costume party, than an operating business. Considered within the context of the neoliberal present, it 2 brought to mind a rather prescient quote from C. Wright Mills’ 1959 study, White Collar: “. the saleman’s world has now become everyone’s world, and, in some part, everybody has become