The Biopower of Organic Intellectuals: Reconciling Foucault and Gramsci to investigate the Socionature of Community Supported Kitchens, Poster 43

The Neoliberal industrial food system is the dominant paradigm for food consumption and is hegemonic, reinforcing the system that created it. This system financially benefits large corporations while degrading the global... [ view full abstract ]

The Neoliberal industrial food system is the dominant paradigm for food consumption and is hegemonic, reinforcing the system that created it. This system financially benefits large corporations while degrading the global environment, making humans sick, and enforcing class inequality. Recent trends in the study of Socionatures suggest that reconciliation of the work of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault is productive in both the realms of the Socionature, and in studying the power structures of liberal capitalist social formations, all the while growing the ken of scholarship that engages dialogue between the two thinkers. By motivating their ideas of Cultural hegemony, Biopower, and the power of intellectuals, this paper develops the critical scholarship on the complex Socionature of food systems. A case Three Stone Hearth, an innovative Community Supported Kitchen simultaneously operating in, and resisting the capitalist liberal social formation provides an example of intellectual reclamation of Biopower, the very notion of which deconstructs the established neoliberal power structure. This paper finds that Three Stone Hearth is not only an effective bottom-up approach to addressing critical issues within the industrial food system, but also an effective model for increasing democracy within the workplace. Increased democratization in the workplace has been discussed as essential to overcoming structural issues that face contemporary society outside of the food system.