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Food sovereignty, a framework focused on systemic change in the food system that accounts for food access, food justice, and food security, is an important driver of community wellbeing. However, the complex determinants of food sovereignty are not fully understood. Interdisciplinary assessments of food systems are needed to establish the impact of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and other social identities on food access. Understanding the goals and lived experiences of diverse communities and community members is critically important to advancing research on the sociology of food and agriculture. Drawing from community interviews addressing local food systems in six different communities in Washington's Upper Yakima River Basin, a qualitative assessment of expert perspectives on local and regional food systems illuminates perceived connections between food sovereignty and wellbeing. Findings suggest that food access and dependence on local agriculture varies across and within communities. Additionally, we find that agriculture is undergoing social, economic, and political transitions that may have immense community impacts moving forward. Given the diverse array of both agricultural and recreational economies in the study site, qualitative data informs our understanding of stakeholder perceptions at multiple levels of the food system. The implications of these findings lead to a forward‐looking discussion of linkages between food dimensions and other variables that impact local and regional wellbeing.
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Toward a new conceptualisation of language revitalisation
This paper outlines a new model of language revitalisation that understands language to be a characteristic of a nexus of social activities rather than an independent object. Language use is one of an overall set of factors contributing to the wellbeing of a particular community. Our model treats language as one node (or a cluster of nodes) in a complex system of interacting behaviours. Changes to another node or in the language node(s) itself can impact overall social wellbeing, something often ignored by linguists (but not by other social scientists working in Indigenous communities). Disruption to an existing network occurs within a time frame; the longer the disruption, the more likely that the network redefines the group. Variables that define the language ecology operate on multiple levels. For the group and for individuals within the group, there can be considerable variation in usage and proficiency over time. Sustainability cannot be reduced to simple cause-and-effect relationships between sociocultural variables. The next phase of language revitalisation projects should be built around the concept of language activity as part of promoting community wellbeing. The use of complex networks that have been applied to human wellbeing in other contexts support our argument.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1761551
- PAR ID:
- 10252098
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
- ISSN:
- 0143-4632
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 16
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1827645
