Otherwises At School And In The Community: Public Schools As Leaders In Rural Food System Relocalization

This action research study looks at the role that rural public schools can play in the relocalization of food systems. The school cafeteria is an oft overlooked site of privatization in public education and the State’s agricultural management curriculum affects an erasure of local knowledges of self-sufficiency. The research engaged students, school staff and community members in a rural, southern Appalachian community in the local food systems projects of seed saving and growing food for the high school’s cafeteria. Based on qualitative, ethnographic data, the analysis explores decolonial otherwises (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018) to the global corporate food system, to the neoliberal subjectivities of public schools and students, and to the existing relationship between the education and food systems. This dissertation presents a rare application of the frameworks of food sovereignty and decoloniality to a white, North American population. In doing so, it highlights the deterritorialized nature of the neocolonial agent and opens opportunities to recognize solidarity across contexts of struggle. Finally, the study recommends a relocalized pedagogy as an adaptive and mitigative response to climate change at the local level.