The Joy of Decommodification

A Cartographic Cookbook

Editor
Forbes Lipschitz

Student Contributors

Claire Conner
Makayla Davis
Adrian Farhat
Kristiana Gresham
Jack Gruber
Emily Loomis

Colin Martinez
Molly McCahan
Roshni Nair
Mann Patel
Marley Renner
Brad Reuschling

Agriculture in the United States is steeped in a legacy of settler colonialism and slavery. Conventional farming systems in the era of late stage capitalism facilitate the exploitation of marginalized peoples and the degradation of regional ecosystems, while contributing substantially to climate change. Food, however, can be a powerful anchor to construct identity, commemorate history and resist threats of cultural erasure. It is within this context that cooking is a cultural, political and ecological act. Each meal we prepare connects a global network of corporate driven food production, processing and distribution infrastructure. Each food choice we make can either tacitly endorse or challenge these existing power structures and systems. The product of an upper level landscape architecture studio completed the fall of 2020, The Joy of Decommodification combines maps and recipes to reveal and challenge the unjust and unsustainable legacy of agricultural commodification in the United States.

The work was featured in in the July 2021 print issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.