What is reciprocity?

Deprograming the myth that support can only come from the top-down

and

Aug 13, 2023

∙ Paid

Double exposure of Steven holding lemon grass and jars of sauerkraut. Behind the polaroid is a blurry phone photo of the lemon grass. Double exposure of ají dulce peppers on a stainless steel table, behind the polaroid is a phone photo of the peppers. — Polaroids from the workshop by Alex Matzke.

“If something is taken, something is left in return.” -Jessica Hernandez, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science

First, thanks to Southern SARE for their Sustainable Agriculture Leadership Program. This award made it possible for us to build-out our existing research, clarifying a framework for sharing and archiving sustainable practices and knowledge built with the community. Without the funds provided by the award this work would truly not have been feasible for us to undertake.

To recap, detailed (very detailed) instructions on everything in the workshop available via our June newsletter, Notes From Two Years Without A Fridge. And last month we debriefed the issues guiding the workshop—energy poverty, blackouts, and chronic inflammation—in our newsletter, Workshop Debrief: Los Apagones.

Zine: cómo preparar los alimentos pa’ los apagones

The first in a series of bilingual zines! Expertly printed by La Impresora.

You may have noticed the titles of the zines don’t translate. That’s an intentional decision, because they are intended for different audiences.

La versión de español está disponible gratis para puertorriqueños quien viven en Puerto Rico.

In Fresh Banana Leaves, Dr. Hernandez speaks to the settler-colonial norms inherent in projects and initiatives within conservation sciences. We would add that it is accurate to group sustainability and tourism studies more generally, and agriculture tourism specifically, into that colonial slurry.

“We need to start discussing this top-down approach that is embedded in the sciences, in particular anything related to our environment, where scientists believe their academic credentials and experience can outweigh lived experiences and local knowledge. This is why reversing this top-down approach to become a bottom-up approach is critical and essential to benefit local environments and communities.
The bottom-up approach allows conservation initiatives and projects to come from within the community. Contrary to the top-down approach, it centers the communities from the start as it does not assume or introduce demands, commands, and practices that are oftentimes given without building rapport or having experience living within the environments scientists are trying to protect and conserve.”

We are not immune to the assumptions society attempts to socialize into us. And to top it off, we learned some pretty shitty practices from people who exploited us under the pretense of mentorship. It’s a process to deprogram what capitalism has wrought on our relationships to each other and to the planet.

We started this work by listening to the community. People told us they were excited about this information because blackouts affect everyone. And so if you’re down to support us in our bottom-up approach, consider buying a zine so we can continue to give them away for free to our community.