Abstract
This article documents the author’s experience participating in a course taught primarily by food activist, Dr. Vandana Shiva, and run by the Earth University in Uttarakhand, India. Drawing on Gandhi’s four pillars of nonviolent action, this article links individual course participants’ experiences of transformative learning to the transformation of the global food system. It begins with a brief overview of the course content and structure followed by a transformative learning literature review. It then provides sample participant narratives exemplifying various aspects of their own transformation and suggesting that this course supported participants in their already-in-progress process of transformation. The important role community-based organizations such as Navdanya play in efforts for global food systems transformation is also discussed. Within the context of personal and social transformation, the article concludes with a call for transformative learning to be accompanied by patience, particularly in light of the urgency created by today’s complex challenges.
This article documents my experience participating in a course from November 21–30, 2013 at the Navdanya Biodiversity Conservation Farm, a nonprofit hub of activism and learning located on 47 acres of farmland in Uttarakhand, India. The course was run by Navdanya’s Bija Vidyapeeth (Earth University) and primarily taught by renowned food activist and Dr. Vandana Shiva (see, e.g., Shiva 1993, 2010), together with former Jain monk and nuclear disarmament advocate, Satish Kumar (see, e.g., Kumar, 2009, 2013) and various other guest instructors. Titled, “Gandhi, Globalization, and Earth Democracy,” the course introduced participants to Gandhi’s four pillars of nonviolent action and demonstrated how these pillars can be applied to effectively resist globalization and promote Earth Democracy in its place (to be discussed in more depth below). This is one of many courses offered by Bija Vidyapeeth and is significant in that it offers a physical, community-based site of resistance to the dominant industrial agri-food system. It also serves as a space for people from around the world to temporarily come together in their efforts to promote a more sustainable global food system.
This article links individual course participants’ experiences of transformative learning to the transformation of the global food system. I begin with a brief overview of the course content and structure. I then review literature on transformative learning, followed by participant narratives that exemplify various aspects of transformation. Here I suggest that this course supported participants in their already-in-progress process of transformation rather than arguing that the course itself served as a transformative moment (though it may have for some). Following these participant narratives, I discuss the important role community-based organizations such as Navdanya play in efforts for global food systems transformation. I conclude with a call for educators, learners, and activists to remember the value of patience as they navigate the urgency created by today’s complex challenges, including those related to food.
Overview of Gandhi, Globalization, and Earth Democracy
As some readers may be aware, for several decades Vandana Shiva has been an active voice in the environmental movement. Shiva’s work has focused on the destructive effects of monocropping, biotechnology, and genetically modified seed on the Indian subcontinent in particular and on indigenous peoples worldwide. She argues that such practices stem primarily from India’s participation in the Green Revolution and membership in the World Trade Organization, as well as other free trade agreements and policies associated with globalization (Shiva, 2010; Shiva & Jalees, 2006). Shiva has dedicated her life’s work to transforming global food systems and promoting an earth-centric approach to democracy that respects all beings, human and nonhuman alike. (For more information on campaigns and other works, see the Navdanya, n.d. website, especially the section on Earth Democracy.)
What is notable in Shiva’s work is the direct link she makes between food sovereignty and social justice by drawing on Gandhi’s four pillars of nonviolence. These pillars are Swaraj (personal mastery, self-discipline, or localized self-governance); Sarvodaya (the well-being of all creatures); Swadeshi (honouring the local); and Satyagraha (nonviolent noncooperation with unjust rules; e.g., conscientious objection). As part of Navdanya’s philosophy of Bij Swaraj (translated as seed sovereignty or local self-governance of seed), Shiva promotes the saving of seed as a form of Seed Satyagraha, that is, civil disobedience against seed control by large corporations. Clearly, this effort is inspired by Gandhi’s 1930 Salt Satyagraha or Salt Marches against the British salt tax, though the imperial power is now represented by multinational corporations that seek to control seed rather than a single occupying nation.
Shiva described the link between Gandhian principles and her current focus on seeds as follows: I thought of Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel which had become such an important symbol of freedom, not because it was big and powerful, but because it was small and could become alive as a sign of resistance and creativity in the smallest of huts and poorest of families. In smallness lay its power. The seed too is small. It embodies diversity.…In the seed, ecological issues could combine with social justice. (Navdanya, 2007, p. 8)
The course I attended used these four pillars as an opening framework and actively integrated body, mind, and spirit into the curriculum. The daily schedule consisted of time allotted to an independent morning practice followed by a group morning circle and opportunity to share insights with the whole class. Then came breakfast and a dedicated period of service to the community (i.e., volunteer labour or shramdaam) for example, prep-cooking vegetables for the day’s meals; working in the garden (setting seeds out to dry, moving piles of debris, harvesting potatoes, etc.); or cleaning the dining hall and washrooms. Lunch was followed by lectures by Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar, or other invited guests such as Penn State University Professor, Dr. Madhu Suri Prakash or Professor and Venerable Samdhong Rimpoche (previous Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile). Dinner was likewise followed by evening lectures or films. There were also rest periods throughout the day, during which time members of the course often self-organized fun, community building activities (e.g., volleyball), or workshops based on their own areas of expertise, including arts-based activism, theatre-based exploration, yoga, Raga singing, Permaculture, research on the global commons, soil biology, and more. Approximately 40 people from at least 11 countries (Bhutan, Canada, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States) participated, many of whom shared stories to suggest they were on a journey of transformation and enhancing their knowledge through this course.
Prior to my participation, I sought permission from my home university’s research ethics board to conduct interviews with course participants as part of my ongoing research focus on leadership and learning in alternative food movements. Throughout the 10-day course, I had the opportunity to interview 11 participants representing 4 countries, including the 2 lead instructors: Vandana Shiva and Satish Kumar (names used with permission). The following section provides an overview of transformative learning theory, which lays the foundation for these participants’ narratives that will subsequently be explored.
Transformative Learning
This section introduces readers to the theory of transformative learning. 1 It provides an overview of four frequently cited traditions of transformative learning and then goes into more depth on Mezirow’s (1978, 1991) idea of perspective transformation. Finally, it compares this to Lawrence and Cranton’s (2015) model of coming to consciousness through a process of transformative growth.
Frameworks of Transformative Learning Theory
Over the decades, various authors have proposed “different taxonomies of transformative learning, but they contain essentially the same kinds of categorizations” (Kucukaydin & Cranton, 2012, p. 44). As I have suggested in a previous publication (Agger-Gupta & Etmanski, 2014), these categorizations tend to include the four dimensions of transformation offered by Dirkx in 1998, including transformation as (1) consciousness-raising, (2) critical reflection, (3) development, and (4) individuation (pp. 2–8). Kucukaydin and Cranton (2012, p. 44) summarized these same four streams as Freire’s ( 2003) emancipatory approach, Mezirow’s (1991) rational approach, Daloz’s ( 2012) developmental approach, and Boyd’s (1989) extrarational approach.
These frameworks are relevant insofar as they suggest that transformative learning can take many different forms. Education can be designed with an intentional emphasis on consciousness-raising for the purpose of social change, which is clearly the case with courses run by Bija Veedyapeeth. However, pivotal moments in individuals’ lives can lead to critical reflection and/or individuals’ worldviews can gradually develop and evolve throughout their lifetimes. I suggest that this particular course curriculum’s focus on critical thinking and the instructors’ acknowledgement of the spiritual or healing dimensions of food-based activism (e.g., through the Gandhian concept of Sarvodaya or the well-being of all creatures) weaves together multiple approaches to transformation. After all, as Cranton (2011) suggested, “Although this appears to be a great divide in theoretical positions, there is no reason that both the individual and the social perspectives cannot peacefully coexist” (p. 77). Just as biodiversity in seed is a core principle at Navdanya, this diversity of perspectives on transformation can likewise be celebrated.
Perspective Transformation and Transformative Growth
At the heart of Jack Mezirow’s (1978) landmark contribution to the theory of transformative learning was the concept of perspective transformation. In his own words: Perspective transformation is the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel about the world; changing these structures of habitual expectation to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrative perspective; and, finally, making choices or otherwise acting upon these new understandings. (Mezirow, 1991, p. 167)
It is worth paying some attention to the starting point: the first phase of experiencing a disorienting dilemma. Mezirow (1991) cautioned that the circumstances that lead to perspective transformation could be painful because “they often call into question deeply held personal values and threaten our very sense of self” (p. 168). Mezirow pointed out that perspective transformation can begin as a result of a series of smaller disorienting dilemmas, similar to what might occur over the course of studies when people return to school, or “in response to an externally imposed epochal dilemma such as death, illness, separation or divorce, children leaving home, being passed over for promotion or gaining a promotion, failing an important examination, or retirement” (p. 168). In other words, he suggested that the devastating or ethically challenging experiences one inevitably encounters throughout a lifetime contain the potential for transformative learning.
Mezirow’s work is frequently critiqued as a linear process that neglects the spiritual, joyful, imaginative, intuitive, emotional, symbolic, or psychological dimensions of learning, insofar as it is grounded primarily in critical thinking and rational thought (Cranton, 1994; Dirkx, 1997). “To these more rationally based accounts, Boyd and others have focused on how unconscious emotional dynamics of individuals and groups can both facilitate and obstruct these meaning-making processes” (Dirkx, 2012, p. 400). Scott (1997) went so far as to suggest that “transformation is not a rational process, although it includes rational abilities, and cannot be pushed or planned for as in a goal-oriented, technical, rational process” (p. 44). Moreover, Dirkx (as cited in Kucukaydin & Cranton, 2012) provided the following critique: The common rhetoric of transformative learning that implies a necessity of extraordinary events or ‘aha!’ moments in transformative learning…for transformative learning to take place, these kinds of big moments, events, and traumas are not necessary, but rather transformative learning can be the product of ordinary and everyday experiences. (p. 47)
As a recent example, in their model of transformative learning, Lawrence and Cranton (2015) referred to pivotal periods of change as catalysts. Lawrence and Cranton’s model identifies a catalyst and then discusses how this can be followed by encouraging or delaying influences in the process of individuals becoming increasingly conscious. They use the analogy of gardening to suggest that a skillful gardener can create helpful growing conditions but cannot force growth. Similarly, when such catalytic seeds are planted, encouraging influences (pp. 68–71) can support this seed in taking root more quickly. Encouraging influences include feelings of readiness for change coupled with supportive friendships or romantic relationships that allow the learner to feel valued and loved. Conversely, delaying influences (pp. 65–68) can include the internalization of negative childhood messages, identity confusion, ongoing destructive messages in one’s environment, or overt situations of oppression and abuse. They also describe how ongoing reliance on coping strategies that were once necessary at specific points in peoples’ lives can sometimes serve to “keep people in a holding pattern where transformation is not possible” (p. 68). They suggest that transformation remains possible, albeit more difficult, in the face of these delaying influences.
In addition, Lawrence and Cranton (2015) differentiated catalysts from disorienting dilemmas by stating that “a catalyst can be traumatic, a turning point in a process, epochal (dramatic) or incremental (gradual)” (p. 63). They suggested that these catalysts could be triggered by an external event or could be a more internal process within an individual’s consciousness. They further suggested that “a series of everyday events could also lead to transformative learning” (Lawrence & Cranton, 2015, p. 63). Whatever the cause of the catalyst, Lawrence and Cranton argued that “these events alone did not cause the transformation” leading to greater consciousness (p. 65); rather, the seeds of transformation had already been planted, thus generating more of an ongoing process than a static and final, transformed state.
As mentioned previously, the Gandhi, Globalization, and Earth Democracy course at Vija Beedyapeeth emphasized consciousness-raising while creating both collective and individual spaces for critical reflection and personal and/or spiritual development—not to mention creative expression and embodied learning. In this way, Lawrence and Cranton’s (2015) model is helpful as it is not so much concerned with what particular kind of transformation individuals experience; rather, it acknowledges that transformative journeys can take many forms while still sharing common elements, including increasing consciousness and transformative growth. Similarly, participants in this course were each at different stages of their own transformative processes but were drawn together by a shared desire to learn about and ultimately contribute in some way to the transformation of the global food system.
Seeds and Stories of Transformation
In this section, I provide vignettes from each of the participants that relate to the following themes: identifying disorienting dilemmas and catalytic moments; engaging in embodied learning; connecting with inspiring teachers and influential books; seeking health, happiness, spirituality, and moments of beauty; and seeing critical connections. I cite participants at length to allow them to speak for themselves and have only modified some sentences for grammar to ensure clarity of meaning.
Aside from the two lead instructors, names have been removed for confidentiality and are listed as Participants A through I. These individuals were recruited through a combination of purposive and convenience sampling. They were purposely selected in that when people told a story of their own transformation in the larger group, I followed up afterwards to ask for permission to interview them. At the same time, as word got around that I was conducting interviews, some people approached me and indicated a desire to tell me their own stories. It should be noted that these stories are not intended to be generalized to the larger class; rather, they reflect elements of the individual transformative journeys that were present throughout the course and that contributed threads to the tapestry of the larger collective.
Identifying disorienting dilemmas and catalytic moments
Many of the participants identified what could certainly be considered disorienting dilemmas (Mezirow, 1991) or catalytic moments (Lawrence & Cranton, 2015). For some, the event was truly epochal, such as the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan (Participant B) or the untimely death of one participant’s wife due to cancer (Participant I). For others, the process of change was more gradual (e.g., Participants C, D, E, and G). The following are examples, in participants’ own words.
For Participant B, a woman in her 30s from Japan, it was a disaster that triggered her to begin asking questions: I think I was almost satisfied with my life before the earthquake, but after the earthquake, suddenly everything changed to me. Especially after the nuclear disaster. Actually, I didn’t care about the nuclear reactor because I didn’t think very deeply before, but I saw many people die, and even the farmers had committed suicide because they can’t use their land anymore. So, we witnessed a very, very disastrous story. I thought, how?…I had a big question about my life. I was a nurse in the [older] people’s nursing home.…Maybe I start my job 7:30 [am] until 9:00[pm], 10, 11, sometimes over 12 [midnight]. So, after I came back to the job, I was just exhausted, and then sleep. And then next morning I just go to work. How I can connect with nature? How I can enjoy my job with my hands? That became a big question to me. That’s why I needed to stop and I needed to think more. That’s why I quit my job and I started learning. It’s like one day you’re up in a hundred-story building and the next day you’re thrown out from that. Life had dramatically changed. If I’m blessed to have the best doctors in the world available to me, but still I can’t get a proper solution to cancer, what would happen to a common man? Cancer was not previously a commonly known disease in India. So, in my mind while in the hospital, [I thought about] all the money I earned, so much travelling, so much running around, [and I ended up giving] it to the doctors. I lost money. I lost my wife…[I came to the conclusion that] there is something wrong in the present system of treatment. So, in four months I left my job. I wanted to research and find out an alternate way.
In a different yet parallel story, Participant F, a woman from the United States in her 40s, described how cancer impacted her life: When two people I loved were diagnosed with cancer that sort of set me back and made me take stock. I guess my natural inclination in a situation like that is to do research and to try and understand. And that’s how it became evident to me that our approach to health care—which really should be called sickness care, sickness management, in the United States and I’m sure in other parts of the world—is not very effective. Not very effective if the intention is to keep people healthy. When I started tracing back, first of all I felt that I wasn’t as healthy as I should be for my age because I had long-lived relatives.…So when I started having health problems as young as I did I thought, “What’s wrong here?” because I come from good stock. It had to be something I was doing or not doing or ingesting or whatever.
As three final examples, Participants A, E, and C all described significant changes in their lives stemming from an internal feeling of unrest. Participant A, a man in his 20s and permaculture gardener from the United States, described his turning point as follows: I had always been interested in environmentalism when I was younger. Somewhere along the line in high school, I lost that. And then I went into college for literature and writing—kind of more philosophical stuff, but very impractical. It’s like, how do you apply, how do you do these things? I found that my spiritual and physical needs were not met by it. And so, I dropped out of college when I was 19. I also went through a number of things in my personal life in terms of work. You know I was trying to climb the corporate ladder and that was very important to me.…And so, it just became apparent to me that that was a life that I did not want to pursue anymore. I found it to be kind of this vacuous dead-end existence, where there is always this carrot dangled in front of us that you can never quite reach. You spend all this time trying to reach it and in the end, you know, you’re not going to lay on your death bed and look back and go, “Gosh, you know, remember that time I put in 60 hours. That was just magnificent.” I mean no one is going to do that, right? So, that made it easier for me to kind of [reject] the corporate model and pursue something else. You know, I actually grew up in a lower middle class family; I wanted to be materialistic, I almost had a longing for it…And that’s how I started. So, when I was in college, my aim was to go to the U.S.…And that’s exactly what I did. I kind of followed every conformity line there was. I don’t know what it was, but we had this longing to come back again even though both of us had gone with this American dream. And we went in the good times, you know, when everybody had jobs and getting paid well and all that.
Upon return to India, she decided to visit one of the Indian schools she had been supporting financially while living in the United States. This one visit connected her to a whole world of alternative education, where she began designing training programs and alternative curriculum. Through this network, she also began translating unconventional educational theory such as the deschooling society or unschooling works by Ivan Illich and John Holt, among others, and ultimately came into contact with both Vandana Shiva and Satish Kumar.
These stories of questioning and ultimately rejecting dominant social expectations in order to seek out a better alternative led most participants to question the food they ate as well as their participation in the global food system more broadly. Following these pivotal life events that caused people to seek alternatives, many participants turned to both formal and informal education, a topic explored below.
Engaging in embodied learning
Given that they were participants in a course, it is not surprising that people I interviewed placed a strong emphasis on learning. Yet their focus was not just any kind of learning. Rather, many were seeking a more holistic and embodied approach to education. In particular, some participants from the United States told stories of feeling a lack of satisfaction with their formal college studies (A, E, and H) and a desire to do something more practical with their hands (F).
Participant E described his experience after leaving his job as follows: I thought, well, if I’m not going to be part of this corporate model then I need to learn some other skills.…So, I got involved in education.…While I’ve had some very engaging connections with faculty and students, what I’ve come to find is that the connection with the land that was so transformative for me earlier on was lacking in my studies. So, I felt like the education I was receiving was incomplete, that something was missing. I remember trying to find what my major was. And, really, the skills I wanted to learn were how to build my own house, how to grow my own food. But that was not part of any curriculum there, you know? And that was thought of as beneath you. Like, somebody else for the rest of your life will wash your clothes and grow your food. You’re here to learn, to develop your intellect, you know? You’re smarter than them. And I didn’t like that. And I also just wasn’t that interested in it. Job is only a means to an end. But if a job is not bringing you relationship, satisfaction, joy, pleasure, meaning of life, what’s the job for? So, even a job is for something else. Education should be something greater than finding a job.
Connecting with inspiring teachers and influential books
As part of their process of learning and transformative growth, the majority of participants expressed that coming into contact with influential books (D and E) and/or inspiring teachers (A, B, G, and I) had a major impact. For a few participants, Vandana Shiva (E, F, and G) and Satish Kumar (B and I) were, in fact, those inspiring teachers. Here is an example from Participant G, a man in his 20s who works with the Gross National Happiness (GNH) Centre in Bhutan. Dr. Vandana Shiva, she is one of the council members for the GNH Centre. She has been coming to Bhutan quite often. The farmers in the south [of Bhutan], they’re really close to the border of India. So now what they have been thinking is that they will grow organic food. Bhutan is an organic country only. But they are growing organic food, which is quite expensive from the normal things, right? Those guys, they sell [their organic produce] to the Indians and they bring back…food which is not organic at all. Yeah, so, Dr. Shiva had a really good talk. And then many of the farmers, they changed their mind.…Like, we’ll first eat what we have to eat and then what’s left, we’ll sell it.…So I came here because I wanted to learn about organic farming, basically. …[Because] the GNH Centre, they’re going to have the all-organic farm, which is about a hundred acres of land.
From a different perspective, Participant D, a software engineer in his 40s from India, shared the story of a book that changed his life: I was brought up with a very dominant British background very typical of my father and his friends. And also, I was given a British convent education…I bought this farm 17 years ago,…and, I had this dream of, you know, wearing these…old British clothes and walking down the countryside enjoying myself. I would have loved that life, believe me. I wasn’t going to be an agriculturist; I had no mind of going and tilling the soil. That was going to be somebody else’s job. I never even had an idea of what was organic food and, you know, whether it was healthy or not. And what changed my life was a person called Dr. N. W. Walker. I had read his books 16, 17 years ago, but it was a book out of print which I got my hands on about eight or nine years ago, it’s called “Back to Land for Self Preservation” (Walker, 1977).
Seeking health, happiness, spirituality, and moments of beauty
As mentioned above, an overt desire for better health motivated some participants to learn more about their food (F and I). As also described, others were seeking greater happiness, well-being, and overall quality of life (A, B, E, G, and H). For some, this entailed a sense of awe and beauty or even a spiritual connection with something larger than themselves. Similar to Boyd’s (1989) extrarational approach to transformative learning, such experiences brought an emotional, intuitive, and healing dimension into participants’ stories of transformation.
For example, Participant A expressed a sense of wonder upon witnessing the miracle of nature: And after many long hikes of mediation and working on farms, I started feeling stronger again, and more energetic.…I took a natural farming workshop [and the] first day I got there, the guy takes me into the garden and pulls out a radish, a daikon radish like this big [indicates a large size with his hands]. And another guy brings taro, two taro corms like this big. I mean, I don’t know how much taro you see, but that’s a really big taro corm, and that’s what we had for lunch. I was just blown away by that. It was a real period of awe for me—that I would take a pineapple and plant it and then…[it] started to grow! You get a few seeds and you suddenly can eat for another season. It’s amazing! …hiking by myself. And it was just one of those moments: it was a perfect moment where I went around the corner of the trail, there was a rainbow that was coming over the top of the Olympic Mountains and I got caught in a little bit of a rain storm. And that’s when I realized that you don’t need to have an enclosure, a building, a cathedral to be, you know, baptized by God. We’re [always] baptized by God when it rains. And that was a very—that was the first time in my life where I felt a true genuine warmth, a tingling, whatever you want to call it, a catch in the back of your throat that you connect with something at a higher level that transcends the human experience. And so, that was enough for me. And that, you know, put me down that path of having that sense of reverence for the land, for nature. We witnessed a very, very disastrous story. I thought, how? But I trust something great…I thought there is some reason. Maybe if we can’t find the reason, I think many people’s deaths are just a waste, I thought. So, that [creates] a responsibility [for us] to do something…How can I say?…Somehow [when] we have a disaster, or something bad, we think, ah, this is very bad. But if you go and if you try to make some, to find meaning, we can find another meaning, and even very, very bad things can turn to be good things. I thought in Japan, disaster also can be, on one side, can be a good thing because it can be a big turning point in our society.
Seeing critical connections
Although Mezirow’s emphasis on critical reflection has been critiqued for not integrating the soul qualities mentioned above, for many participants, critical reflection continues to influence their thinking and actions while they simultaneously nourish their souls. 2 As such, the transformative journey is not an either/or choice between soul-centered learning or critical reflection; it can be both. For example, Participant H has integrated spirituality into her activism and travels the world to not only speak out in the face of oppression but also creatively challenge it through humour and arts-based methods.
Participant B described how she began seeing connections between parts of her life she previously did not realize were connected. For example, she no longer feels safe making Japanese pickles (umeboshi) from the plum tree in her yard since she had the fruit checked for radiation levels. This led her to the insight that: Every problem is like a necklace. So, it’s connected…for example, electricity is connected to our lifestyle, what we eat and how we can heat our house, and how we can use our hot water…Everything is connected. And the more research I did and the more education I got in that regard that led me to the exploitation of our food system and the cost of having inexpensive food…because good food has become more expensive than inexpensive food, which is more expensive in the long run in terms of our health. So, you know, I explore that relationship.
Just as Gandhi’s four principles are useful in promoting both social and ecological change, so too did this course and its participants promote the idea that “social justice and ecological justice are two sides of the same coin” (S. Kumar, personal communication, November 21–30, 2013).
Discussion: Navdanya as a Critical Site for Transformative Learning
The stories above demonstrate multiple aspects of transformative learning and growth. Although these are presented as individual experiences, it is important to remember that these individuals came together with a shared purpose and desire to learn. What is more, most participants left having expressed a shared desire to contribute, in some way, to transforming the global food system. Some participants suggested that this course served to crystallize their thinking and provide new energy for work already in progress (C, H, and I). Others learned new skills to enhance projects underway at home (G and F) and others left with a desire to teach what they had learned in some as yet unknown way (B and E).
As Shiva and Kumar’s teachings suggest, the simple act of saving seeds can serve as an act of resistance against the dominant industrial agri-food system in both the home and the community. However, in documenting the stories of transformation emerging from this course, my intention is also to suggest that community-based organizations such as Navdanya serve as critical sites of learning and solidarity building in an informal global network related to food systems change. The particular design of and philosophy behind this course allowed for a focus on holistic, embodied learning that integrated elements of spirituality. This is due in part to the knowledge and experiences participants themselves brought forward in the intentionally open spaces of the curriculum but also to the Gandhian concept of personal mastery through Swaraj as well decentralized, self-organized learning through Swadeshi. In this way, elements of democracy were experienced, practised, and reinforced. These aspects of the course combined to generate a powerful concentration of good food—food for the body in the organic meals served everyday; food for the mind in the ideas shared; and food for the soul in the intercultural relationships built and stories exchanged. This food, in turn, serves to nurture the movement for global food systems transformation. In this way, individual processes of transformation are interdependent with the collective.
It should of course be acknowledged that it is a great privilege to have the means to fly to countries outside of one’s home to participate in courses such as these. Moreover, there is also a sense of tragic irony in the ecological impact from the pollution generated by such flights. Nevertheless, similarly focused community-based programs are available in many communities and readers may be aware of such programming closer to their own homes that can serve an equally catalytic role in building momentum for transformative change.
Conclusion: The Role of Patience in Promoting Change
As I have documented elsewhere (Etmanski, 2012, pp. 487–488), the list of social, economic, and environmental problems—indeed crises—associated with the dominant agricultural paradigm is extensive. In the face of such challenges, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. It is likewise difficult to imagine that the slow process of education will be sufficient in addressing these crises. In fact, most likely it won’t be sufficient. Yet as an educator I firmly believe that education—and the opportunities for transformative learning and growth that can accompany it—must be part of the solution.
How, then, do we live with the paradox of urgency in the face of these crises coupled with the slow process of education? For Satish Kumar, the response is: To go step by step. Never expect things to change overnight. I believe in evolution of ideas, evolution of consciousness. So, first thing, those who are engaged in the work of transformation and change, they need to learn to have patience.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge Dr. Elizabeth Sumner and Dr. Beth Page for their review of early drafts of this article. Special thanks to Vandana Shiva, course participants, Lila Linell, Rachel Fisher, Carly Escott, and Helen Kelsey for their support, interest, and inspiration.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Royal Roads University scholarship and professional development grant RPD12-42.