The settler colonial ideology of social justice: An epistemological critique of exogenous food justice initiatives

• In Event: 2454 - Critical Theory II: Critical Race Theory

Abstract

When we think about the power that creates inequality and oppression in western society, we usually do not think about social justice initiatives – individuals engaging in deliberate efforts to combat the mechanisms of oppression. In this paper, I lay out an epistemological argument for why researchers continue to discover that many food justice organizations are reproducing oppression instead of providing solutions to them. I argue that individuals who establish and run social justice initiatives that address mechanisms of oppression that they do not experience are unable to produce non-oppressive social change because the actions they implement will align with their non-oppressed epistemology, which operates to perpetuate the current power structure. I utilize elements of Black feminist thought and standpoint theory to make a postcolonial argument that this phenomenon is actually a replication of the very historic and systemic processes that created oppression in the US in the first place, because it operates as a mechanism by which settler colonialism perpetuates itself. I analyze food justice initiatives—due to their, and settler colonialism’s, explicit connection to land—that are established and run by individuals who are exogenous to the oppression. I demonstrate that, even when social justice initiatives recognize that oppression manifests through their work and intentionally attempt to change the way in which they operate--specifically through neoliberal market solutions, diversity work, and antiracism workshops--oppression is still the unintentional end result. I argue that this continues to occur because it is not the actions that matter, but the epistemological standpoint of who implements them, and as such, the very existence of such initiatives themselves.

Author

• Samantha Hobson, University of Michigan