Backyard Authenticity

261 Pages·2017·24.64 MB·English

University of Colorado, Boulder
CU Scholar
Geography Graduate Theses & Dissertations Geography
Spring 1-1-2016
Backyard Authenticity: Urban Backyard Food
Production as the New Agrarian Ethics of
Authenticity in Practice
Eric Reiff
University of Colorado at Boulder, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at:https://scholar.colorado.edu/geog_gradetds
Part of theAgriculture Commons,Food Studies Commons, and theGeography Commons
Recommended Citation
Reiff, Eric, "Backyard Authenticity: Urban Backyard Food Production as the New Agrarian Ethics of Authenticity in Practice" (2016).
Geography Graduate Theses & Dissertations. 99.
https://scholar.colorado.edu/geog_gradetds/99
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BACKYARD AUTHENTICITY: URBAN BACKYARD FOOD
PRODUCTION AS THE NEW AGRARIAN ETHICS OF
AUTHENTICITY IN PRACTICE
by
ERIC REIFF
B.A., Hanover College, 1996
M.A., University of Denver, 2007

A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirement for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Geography
2016
This thesis entitled:

Backyard Authenticity: Urban Backyard Food Production as the New Agrarian Ethics of
Authenticity in Practice

Written by Eric Reiff

Has been approved for the Department of Geography

_________________________
Mara J. Goldman

_________________________
Emily T. Yeh

Date: _________________

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the
content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above
mentioned discipline.

IRB protocol # 13-0290

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Abstract

Reiff, Eric (Ph.D. Geography)
Backyard Authenticity: Urban Backyard Food Production as the New Agrarian Ethics
of Authenticity in Practice
Thesis directed by Associate Professor Mara J. Goldman
The goal of this dissertation is to critically examine urban backyard food (UBF)
production as a set of practices and discourses. Until this dissertation, most thinking on UBF
production has been reflected in popular literature that often touts UBF production as a
necessary and practical step to mitigate personal health, food justice, and environmental
sustainability concerns over food systems. I found that UBF producers tend to parse the
world into inauthentic techno-urban-industrial modernity and anti-modern, ‘natural’, or
authentic people, things, and relationships. I use UBF producers’ practices and the
meanings and purposes they instill in those practices to reveal how different people
understand how society is ordered, and what UBF producers would like to change about
that ordering.
The ethnographic data that I collected in the Denver metropolitan area from 2013 to
2015 shows that UBF producers are grappling with an historically reoccurring concern for
finding the right way to be (authentic) in the world. This ethos offers a rebuttal of
modernity through its antagonism toward contemporary techno-industrial food
provisioning. At the center of this is an ethics based on a moral ontology of nature or what
New Agrarians call using “nature as measure.” I find that UBF producers want to use their
practices and discourses to create, revive, or emphasize what they conceive as moral or
authentic forms of value, labor, and products. They tend to do this by conflating nature as
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measure with nostalgia for pre-WWII agriculture, a nostalgia based on a culturally situated
rather than transcendent nature. I argue that in the process of trying to reproduce pre-
WWII agrarian experiences, UBF producers may be reviving and perpetuating a narrative
in which white European male dominated agriculture is held up as the pinnacle of
authenticity and morality.

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank my Committee Chair Dr. Mara Goldman as well as committee
members Drs. Elizabeth Dunn, Emily Yeh, and Jill Harrison for their critical insights during
my proposal defense. They helped point me in useful and productive directions at the
beginning of the research process. This dissertation would not be what it is without their
insights. I also want to thank them and Dr. Brenda Parker for their advice at my
dissertation defense on how to revise this dissertation in preparation for publication and
their ideas on where to take my research next. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Bill
Travis even though he was not part of my dissertation committee beyond the proposal
defense. If he had not put his faith in me when I applied to the University of Colorado at
Boulder Geography program in 2010 the last six years would have looked very different for
my family.
And, it is to my wife and three daughters that I owe the most gratitude. My oldest
child was three when I began working on my PhD and she is now almost ten. As far as my
children are concerned I have been a graduate student for all of their lives. I am indebted to
my children Mathilda, Ursula, and Beatrix and my wife Erica for their patience, support, and
encouragement as I went through this process. They helped me stay the course whenever I
felt lost in the weeds. This dissertation is as much theirs as it is mine.

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Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................. iii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................ v
Contents ............................................................................................................................................................ vi
Tables .................................................................................................................................................................. x
Figures ............................................................................................................................................................... xi
Definitions ....................................................................................................................................................... xii
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Problem statement ....................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Research questions ....................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Broader social context ................................................................................................................................................................ 6
Summary of literature that substantiates the study ...................................................................................................... 7
Urban agriculture .................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Other forms of alternative agriculture ........................................................................................................................ 10
Urban backyard food production: history and influence .................................................................................... 13
Contribution to scholarship ................................................................................................................................................... 21
Research setting ......................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Methods of data collection and analysis .......................................................................................................................... 24
Researcher’s positionality ................................................................................................................................................ 25
Participant observation ..................................................................................................................................................... 29
Semi-structured interviews ............................................................................................................................................. 31
Discourse analysis ................................................................................................................................................................ 32
Organization of the dissertation .......................................................................................................................................... 34
Interlude 1: Snapshot of an interview ........................................................................................ 36
Interlude 2: Green ketchup and pizza ........................................................................................ 38
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Chapter 1: Alienation and authenticity: A conceptual and theoretical framework
for UBF production ............................................................................................................... 40

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................. 40
Marxist conceptualizations of alienation ......................................................................................................................... 44
Labor .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 44
Products ................................................................................................................................................................................... 46
The (in)authenticity of labels: an ethical diversion ............................................................................................... 47
Capitalism, technology, urban-industrial ordering and the metabolic rift ....................................................... 49
Ideological approaches to modernity and alienation ................................................................................................. 52
Foucauldian discourse analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 53
Co-production of nature .................................................................................................................................................... 56
Searching for authenticity ...................................................................................................................................................... 60
Three concepts of authenticity ....................................................................................................................................... 61
Marx ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 61
Existentialism (and Heidegger) ................................................................................................................................ 62
Foucault .............................................................................................................................................................................. 64
Morality and a transcendent ethics of authenticity ............................................................................................... 65
The ethics of using nature as measure, or a moral ontology of nature ......................................................... 68
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 70
Chapter 2: Values: UBF producers as New Agrarianism’s ethics of authenticity in
practice .................................................................................................................................... 71

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................................. 71
U.S. Agrarianism: looking for authenticity in small family farms .......................................................................... 73
Good Use and a Culture of Care ............................................................................................................................................ 76
Cultural norms and the economy .................................................................................................................................. 82
The Household: Subversive potential, source of care .......................................................................................... 85
Technology and place(lessness) .......................................................................................................................................... 89
UBF Production, New Agrarianism in (focal) practice ............................................................................................... 96
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Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 103
Chapter 3: Labor: the authenticity of measured control .................................................... 105
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 105
Labor, control, independence: concrete labor and the authentic self .............................................................. 107
Using concrete labor in UBF production to “feel alive” or get “back-to-the-basics” ............................ 108
Prepping for the apocalypse: “It’s not a hobby, it's a post-apocalyptic life skill!” ................................. 111
Knowledge as power: becoming more authentic by building skills-based and generalist
knowledge to survive the apocalypse ........................................................................................................... 119

“Bud’s gotta go, mom!”: producing authentic children ............................................................................... 124
Authenticity and the productive home economy ................................................................................................ 129
Nature as measure (or reflexive labor and the production of a moral ontology) ....................................... 131
Getting in touch with nature: the metaphysical value of getting your hands dirty .............................. 134
Authentic time and place: Nature’s rhythm and the value of being there ................................................ 136
Using labor to “help nature” or the production of “authentic” nature ....................................................... 140
Negotiating authenticity: “That’s when I knew I couldn’t be a farmer” ............................................... 141
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 143
Chapter 4: Products: finding, creating, and circulating non-monetary values or
why “backyard eggs just taste better” ......................................................................... 146

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 146
Conceptualizing the coproduction of authentic selves and products ............................................................... 148
Evaluating the authenticity of things .............................................................................................................................. 150
“Sort of so pretty” .............................................................................................................................................................. 151
Healthy products embed the authenticity of self into the authenticity of nature ................................. 153
Sensing authenticity ......................................................................................................................................................... 155
Congealed labor as social bond ................................................................................................................................... 159
Heirlooms: “natural” diversity as authentic .......................................................................................................... 161
UBF production as the co-production of authentic places, people, and products ...................................... 165
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The authenticity of lawns and edible landscapes, a moral question ........................................................... 166
Compost morals: the authenticity of re-, up-, and just plain cycling ................................................................ 171
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 177
Chapter 5: Subjectivity and the self: the conduct of authenticity .................................... 179
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 179
New Agrarianism and the conduct of authentic UBF producers ........................................................................ 181
Conflating definitions of authenticity ....................................................................................................................... 181
Conducting authentic subjects ..................................................................................................................................... 185
Novelty and UBF production ........................................................................................................................................ 188
Authenticity and neoliberal governmentality ....................................................................................................... 192
Enframing and selling authenticity ........................................................................................................................... 195
The New Agrarian ethics of authenticity as cultural (re)production ............................................................... 199
Gingham style: nostalgia for grandma and gingham as punk authentic ................................................... 199
The demographics of UBF production ..................................................................................................................... 205
The New Agrarian ethics of authenticity and the production of cultural hegemony .......................... 215
UBF production as focal practices ................................................................................................................................... 218
Focal practices, mindful practices .............................................................................................................................. 219
“Don’t be an Urban Homesteader Asshole,” toward being mindful of the cultural positionality
of UBF production ................................................................................................................................................. 220

Ensuring that the New Agrarian ethics of authenticity is inclusive ............................................................ 223
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 226
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 228
References .................................................................................................................................................... 234

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