Abstract
Phoebe Godfrey’s Understanding Just Sustainabilities from Within: A Case Study of a Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen in Connecticut leverages a unique insider-outsider perspective to present a reflective evaluation of the theory and practice of just sustainabilities. While at first glance the singular focus on a Commercially Licensed Co-operative Kitchen (CLiCK) in Willimantic, Connecticut might sound esoteric, Godfrey situates her case in the broader literatures on food justice and nonprofit organizing, deriving key insights for the study and practice of just sustainabilities in the United States. Most distinctively, Godfrey is unabashed about her political project of pursuing social and environmental justice as praxis, and this intellectual activism empowers her to deliver expansive critiques to environmental sociology, as well. The case, which centers a small town in northeast Connecticut, diversifies the types of places where just sustainabilities have been studied beyond large cities to the smaller and more numerous towns spread across the United States.
A key disciplinary contribution of the book is its attempts to reinvigorate a public sociology tradition. Godfrey practices public sociology in three ways: in how she devised and conducted her research (as inseparable from her work as an activist, as long-term, community-engaged, and self-reflexive), from her citational politics (elevating Black feminist thinking and case studies of intersectional environmentalism as performed by women of color), and in her writing style. The book is largely written in an accessible style and voice, with careful explanation of the theory and concepts invoked.
Part I introduces the conceptual framework of the book, which links the theoretical lineages of just sustainabilities with intersectionality theories. Chapter One provides a literature review of the concept of sustainability, its critiques from environmental justice movements, and its subsequent evolution into just sustainabilities. Chapter Two locates intersectionality in the Black feminist scholar-activist tradition before extending it in relation to the “environment” through Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of “interbeing.” Grounding intersectional theories of justice in place, and embedding discussions of social identity in materiality, Godfrey reasserts the original emphasis on praxis in intersectionality theorizing. This is Godfrey’s attempt to recover intersectionality from the “deracinated buzzword versions” emerging in environmental scholarship and activism. Conversely, by embedding intersectionality within the just sustainabilities framework, Godfrey argues that sustainability practitioners such as herself are driven to reflect on their positionalities and not let the names and concerns of society’s most oppressed “fall through the cracks” (p. 40). Chapter Three amplifies key examples of intersectional environmental scholarship and activism to demonstrate what putting these insights into praxis could look like.
Having oriented the reader to her conceptual framework and political stakes, in Part II Godfrey moves into her case; and this is where this reader found herself less convinced. For one, Godfrey tells rather than shows. And while her method is advertised as a combination of autoethnography and collaborative ethnography, the autoethnographic sections are much better developed than the latter. Indeed, the book surprisingly lacks ethnographic vignettes that might animate her narrative. The use of interview quotes of CLiCK stakeholders distributed across the book is disjointed and disconnected from the rest of the text. Moreover, the quoted passages do not give the reader a good sense of how CLiCK’s diverse stakeholders (board members, individual members or users, nonprofit and institutional members) perceived and interacted with the organization or with each other, at different stages.
Additionally, while she describes how cooperative principles were included in the charter of the organization at its creation, I could not discern if and how these were lived and enacted by its members daily. I was left looking for examples of how CLiCK, as a nonprofit with a board and three classes of members with some unspecified level of power over decision-making, embodied aspects of “commons as praxis” (p. 67). While some of this was due to the personal nature of the project, and indeed Godfrey is keen to remind us that this is primarily her story, composite stories or vignettes could have provided more depth and texture to the case, and more convincing evidence for the claims made of the organizations’ cooperative values.
Alternatively, leveraging her insider location, Godfrey convincingly illustrates the nonprofit conundrum faced by 501c3s like CLiCK. An important insight revealed by her autoethnography that is unlikely to be evident to researchers looking in from the outside is the ways in which the successes and failures of nonprofits in realizing their intentions derive from both micro (individual personalities, interpersonal relationships, social identities) and macro (structural issues around funding, grant cycles) factors. The bridging of micro and macro throughout the analysis is a distinctive feature of this book.
In Part III, Godfrey takes on the task of critically reflecting and evaluating CLiCK vis à vis the just sustainabilities and intersectionality framework introduced earlier. Here again, I was left with some questions. While Godfrey signals to some of the race and class differences of the “communities” CLiCK is composed of and serves, these are not explored in ethnographic detail, but more in broad brushstrokes. Further, some quantitative information or demographic variables such as the race, class, gender, LGBTQIA+ status, nation of origin, and so forth of culinary members/users would help demonstrate CLiCK’s claims to being a “radically inclusive” community.
While the book’s strengths lie in the author’s self-reflexive assessment of the ways in which CLiCK attempts to do just sustainabilities as praxis, it is less critical about where CLiCK stands in relation to the broader project of addressing the structural inequalities tied to colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. CLiCK’s theory of change, as explained by Godfrey, is that by enabling those of limited economic means to open food businesses, it would engage the tenets of community economic development. She writes, “by using a model that is supportive of individual businesses, while remaining rooted in the solidarity economy, CLiCK aimed to address root causes of inequality, in this case of entrepreneurial inequality, as in unequal access of startup capital . . . and to the means of production” (p. 78).
Several questions arise. First, as described earlier, it was not clear to me how CLiCK remained rooted in or practiced the solidarity economy as a grant-funded nonprofit. Second, although expanding access to the means of production is certainly an important aspect of addressing structural inequalities, given that CLiCK treated all its members the “same way,” was there not some possibility that already privileged (in terms of economic, cultural, or social capital) members of the surrounding areas were more likely to benefit from CLiCK compared to more structurally disadvantaged groups? Simply put, in treating everyone the same, could CLiCK reproduce entrepreneurial inequality? And finally, the book offers no critical examination of the “empowerment model” that has been critiqued in the global development literature as a problematic expression of neoliberal, individualizing logics. Some engagement with these critiques would have deepened the analysis. In the absence of it, Godfrey’s claims that CLiCK tries to emulate the cooperative, anti-racist ethos of the Food Justice Movement in place of the more individualized, consumer-choice oriented Alternative Food Movement is less convincing.
Ultimately, and like Godfrey herself, this book can function as a boundary object; a translator between the activist and scholarly communities that co-constitute the field of just sustainabilities. With its conversational tone and personal style, it is also readily accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students and has important insights to offer those who are interested in critical community studies, food justice, and sustainability studies.