Critical food systems education, neoliberalism, and the alternative campus tour

Abstract

ABSTRACT While still quite modest, the body of scholarship on pedagogy related to teaching for more socio-ecologically just food systems is growing. However, this body of work is largely silent on the conditions within which food systems learning occurs. This is a curious omission given that the institutional context within which formalized food system learning happens has perhaps never been more threatened by ongoing process of neoliberalization. This article builds on the claim that in order to be genuinely transformative, critical food systems education (CFSE) must attend to the conceptual and normative complexity of the food system, while also attending to the conditions and institutions within which formal food systems learning exists. We share our experience with a modest intervention, the Alternative Campus Tour (ACT), and frame this as a pragmatic way to operationalize CFSE in a way that also serves as an opportunity to expose and problematize the conditions of the neoliberal university that undermine the promise of a transformative CFSE.