Growing community food economies in the Philippines

Abstract

This thesis is about collective ethical economic action for a climate and resource changing world. It is a series of re-thinking economy experiments in the food arena based on my research in the Philippines. In the thesis I argue for a new mode of critical inquiry that centres on matters of anthropogenic concern: gathering and assembling economic diversity; human actancy; and human-nonhuman actancy, in order to grow post-capitalist food economies. I also argue for hybrid collective ethics and methods that cultivate new ways of being in the world leading to new economic and food futures. In the empirical chapters I show how urban neighbourhoods in Northern Mindanao and Manila are addressing food economy concerns such as malnutrition, food security, poverty and post-typhoon livelihood re-building through collective ethical economic actions. I demonstrate the importance of cultivating enabling political, social and economic environments. The strength and innovation of this thesis is that it employs a collective methodological approach to extend theoretical understanding of collective ethics. Nested in Community Economies Collective scholarship, this research grew out of an action research project on local economic development in the Philippines. The thesis research links various other Philippines-based networks in the fields of agroecology, social enterprise development, local governance and community-based disaster preparedness. My doctoral project enacted community food economies by harnessing these networks and their diverse knowledge practices in an innovative workshop event and through the formation of new hybrid collectives. These collectives include 'actors' as colourfully diverse as municipality mayors, local government workers, landless poor urban communal gardeners, NGO workers, agronomists and sanitation scientists, economic geographers, privately owned vacant land, waste-dump sites, composting toilets, human manure, vegetables, flooding rivers, super typhoons, waste tetra-packs, recycled bamboo, janitor fish and digital media tools. The hybrid collective networks that were formed during the doctoral research have continued beyond the project. For example, a network of home farmers and gardeners correspond and support one another regularly via Facebook. In times of hardship such as in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan or 'Yolanda' in the Philippines, networks like this one are a lifeline for financial and social support and continued collective practice. This thesis shows that research is a performative act with material affects. Performing hybrid collective methods and ethics offers one way to cultivate new food and economic futures in a climate and resource changing world.