Everyday Experts: How people's knowledge can transform the food system
Everyday Experts: Full Book
Download chapters from each of the five themes below or click here to download the complete book (14MB).
Introduction: Everyday Experts
Everyday Experts explains how knowledge built up through first-hand experience can help solve the crisis in the food system. It brings together fifty-seven activists, farmers, practitioners, researchers and community organisers from around the world in 28 original chapters to take a critical look at attempts to improve the dialogue between people whose knowledge has been marginalised in the past and others who are recognised as professional experts.
Using a combination of stories, poems, photos and videos, the contributors demonstrate how people’s knowledge can transform the food system towards greater social and environmental justice. Many of the chapters also explore the challenges of using action and participatory approaches to research.
This is a recipe book for change. It is an amazing cornucopia of knowledge that is held, produced and passed on by experts of experience, diverse global communities and stewards of traditions. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand our food cultures and food system from different lenses. It is also a call to action for those seeking to change the global food system.
Dee Woods, Co-Founder and Coordinator of Granville Community Kitchen and food advisor to the Mayor of London, UK.
Theme 1 – Participatory research - practitioner reflections
1 - Looking inwards, looking outwards: reflecting on an Indigenous research approach
2 - Reflecting on a participatory process on biofuels challenges
3 - Earth Mother: participatory theatre with indigenous peoples
Javier Sanchez Rodríguez and Maria Pastora de la Pava
5 - Participatory workers: from tyrants to critical thinkers
6 - Recovering Andean food wisdom: participatory methods and food sovereignty in the Peruvian Andes
Maruja Salas and Timmi Tillmann
7 - Participatory action research transforming local food systems in India, Iran and Peru
Michel P. Pimbert, Periyapatna V. Satheesh, Alejandro Argumedo, and Taghi M. Farvar
8 - A farmer-to-farmer agroecological approach to addressing food security in Malawi
Theme 2 – Knowledge process in social movement organizations and non-government organizations
9 - La Vía Campesina and academia: a snapshot
Josh Brem-Wilson and Paul Nicholson
Maryam Rahmanian and Thierry Kesteloot
Colin Anderson, Jeanette Sivilay and Kenton Lobe
12 - Canadian women farmers: developing a gender-inclusive vision for agricultural policy
Theme 3 – Education and critical learning processes
13 - Engaging with Cuba’s permaculture movement through transformative learning
14 - Reclaiming the yam: a critical journey into the origin and transformation of our food
16 - Community first! Engaging user participation in A Community Guide to Environmental Health
Theme 4 – Community-university engagement
19 - Community engaged action research and food sovereignty in Canada
Lauren Kepkewicz, Rolie Srivastava, Charles Levkoe, Abra Brynne and Cathleen Kneen
Soumik Chatterjee, Barbara Smith and Parthib Basu
21 - Reclaiming the plots: struggles and strategies from London’s Community Food Growers Network
Theme 5 – Autonomous approaches to Action Research: Knowledge processes occurring in different spaces outside of mainstream institutions
Josefina Ayala Aponte and Dora Maria Chamorro
23 - Connecting the dots and closing the loops: a living lab for living well
Humberto Ríos Labrada and Juan Ceballos Müller
25 - The potential limitations of food sovereignty activism: a reflective case study
28 - From the grassroots or by the state? Strategies for fostering urban agriculture in Brazil
Rafael de Brito Dias, Milena Pavan Serafim and Julicristie Machado de Oliveira