Critical food systems education, neoliberalism, and the alternative campus tour

ABSTRACT

While still quite modest, the body of scholarship on pedagogy related to teaching for more socio-ecologically just food systems is growing. However, this body of work is largely silent on the conditions within which food systems learning occurs. This is a curious omission given that the institutional context within which formalized food system learning happens has perhaps never been more threatened by ongoing process of neoliberalization. This article builds on the claim that in order to be genuinely transformative, critical food systems education (CFSE) must attend to the conceptual and normative complexity of the food system, while also attending to the conditions and institutions within which formal food systems learning exists. We share our experience with a modest intervention, the Alternative Campus Tour (ACT), and frame this as a pragmatic way to operationalize CFSE in a way that also serves as an opportunity to expose and problematize the conditions of the neoliberal university that undermine the promise of a transformative CFSE.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical food systems education
• alternative campus tour
• agroecology
• sustainble food systems

Notes

1. The ACT at Trent University is inspired by and builds off of a similar ACT project at York University (see York University nd) The tour is a core assignment in the introductory environmental studies course (ENVS 1200) at York University (see Bardekjian, Classens, and Sandberg 2012; Sandberg 2009, 2015).

2. Peter Gzowski, the celebrate Canadian broadcaster, journalist and writer, was also the eighth Chancellor of Trent (1999–2002), and posthumously the namesake of Gzowski College, one of Trent’s 5 Colleges. Gzowski, in the quote above, was editorializing on an acute jurisdictional dispute between the Trent Senate and Board of Governors in respect to the President’s proposal to close two of the university’s colleges. The desire of the President and Board of Governors to shutter the two colleges was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal. The lead up to the decision resulted in significant unrest on campus, the crescendo of which occurred when twenty to twenty-five armed officers forcibly removed and arrested 8 students occupying the Vice President’s office (see Nelson 2004).