Interfaith Community Gardening: Growing Food Justice

Abstract

This research explores the role that interfaith community gardens can play in developing understanding of food justice and fostering social change. Secular discourse on food justice addresses the problems of, and therefore the need to transform, the current global, industrial food system via collective action. These problems include exploitation of the workers, inhumane treatment of the animals, the degradation of the environment, as well as unequal access to healthy and affordable food. In previous works, I analyze a conception of Islamic food justice, as well as interfaith food activism as a praxis to challenge both essentialized religious identity and neoliberal subjectivity. In this chapter, I argue for the need to reimagine a possible solution to the current industrial food system—one that goes beyond individual choices but is feasible enough for individuals to make a tangible difference. I draw from contemporary studies on urban gardens and farms built specifically as part of a larger attempt on educating and mobilizing congregants in faith-based food justice movements. After examining global food systems and related religious dietary laws, as well as the complexity of global food ethics, I then examine the question of what precisely constitutes food justice. I present interfaith community gardening as a faith-based practice for members of different religions to cultivate sacred acts of listening. Finally, I note the role of community gardening as a challenge to neoliberal subjectivity. They can promote essential skills that are needed for community members to see themselves as empowered producers, citizens, and activists who can bring about substantial changes to the current food system through democratic means.