RE-EARTHING: A SOCIAL SEMIOTICS OF AGROECOLOGICAL FUTURES

Abstract

As individuals in cities take independent steps to change food production practices at-source, their work meshes with questions of how social systems learn, and the significance of small-scale changes. This research inquires what a traveller’s network of agroecological knowledge does to shape imaginaries of the future, and how the learning gains that individuals receive within such learning assemblages might be shared. I propose that futures shaped by agroecological principles and practices, and oriented around the growth of intrinsic value, are better understood through conceptual and methodological reorientations. I introduce two reorientations—semiotic and temporal. Speaking to literature on infrastructure and narrative genres including ethnography, I outline a method of un/learning within a translocal learning assemblage of agroecological practitioners, city travellers, peri-urban smallholder villages, and displaced people in Southeast Asia. I propose three disorientation devices—vectors that scaffold and transmit re-earthings—for boundary work between urban and agrarian spatial narratives.