Introduction
The Participatory Food Systems group (PFS) brings together the research interests, backgrounds, and practices of independent researchers, early career scholars and activists, and community organisers interested in exploring the intersections between politics, justice, food, space, art, and participation, among others.
The group’s ultimate aim is to democratise knowledge and the critical exploration of issues such as colonialism, food sovereignty, and urbanism by generating ways for different groups, from members of urban poor communities to chronically online autodidacts and may others, to access knowledge that would otherwise be relegated to the gilded heights of academia.
It hopes to develop a website where essays and recorded conversations, co-learning sessions, and other videos could be shared in a digestible and interactive way. It also eventually hopes to be able to hold physical workshops with interdisciplinary and inter-sector groups in Bangkok, Yogyakarta, Manila, and other parts of South and Southeast Asia.
Participatory Food Systems Dialogues
The dialogues hosted by Project 7½’s Look Who is Talking series kicks off PFS’ activities by providing a space for its members to share and discuss their research interests, and co-explore with each other and with members of their own, each other’s and Look Who is Talking’s networks. This sharing takes the form of a series of recorded dialogues initiated and facilitated by members of PFS, who speak about or present on their advocacies and research interests.
Dialogue 1: Beginning with Endings — Climate Grief and Food Systems Collapses
This first co-learning session was held on 12 May 2022. It is an informal conversation touching on the power dynamics and problematics of collapse narratives, as well as governmentality and colonialism within food systems. It was held between Huiying Ng – doctoral researcher at the Rachel Carson Centre, Christina Mirasol Sayson – activist and independent researcher, and the participants present during the session.
Held on 21 June 2022, this talk features a discussion between Boonanan “Pan” Natakun, lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning and vice-director of the Urban Futures and Policies research unit at Thammasat University, and Ezekiel “Zeke” Sales, activist and cultural worker currently pursuing studies in the University of the Philippines, on the COVID-19-instigated phenomena of community kitchens and community pantries in Bangkok and Metro Manila. This exploration of mutual aid amidst societal collapse looks at the intersection between formal and informal sectors, as well as the power of solidarity even in the face of cooptation and active repression and persecution.
This talk was held on 4 August 2022. In it, Gatari Surya Kusuma, a researcher, writer, and curator based in Yogyakarta, and Napong Tao Rugkhapan, an assistant professor of urban planning at the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University, share their work and research on narratives, mythologies, and visual materials in their respective home countries. Gatari discusses how myth and visual narrative could create an alternative history and preserve knowledge rooted in the land, and Tao speaks about rural myths in Thailand, arguing that agrarianism is an elite project that seeks to romanticise the country’s pastoral landscape at the neglect of pressing issues such as land tenure and food insecurity.
Held on 10 September 2022, this talk lays out a brief introduction to the concept of “participation” in a research and development context –from its mid-20th Century roots, via UN-led global south developmental politics, to communication theory, collaborative pedagogy, and Participatory Action Research. This conversation is led by Pujita Guha, a curator, artist, scholar, and Ph.D. student. She is currently Chancellor’s Fellow at the Film and Media Studies Department of the University of California Santa Barbara. She runs Forest Curriculum, an artistic and interdisciplinary research platform together with Abhijan Toto, and her curatorial, creative, and academic interests include thinking about forests and frontiers, cinema and media, infrastructures, and South and Southeast Asia.