Capitalism and Its Discontents: Back-to-the-Lander and Freegan Foodways in Rural Oregon

Abstract

During an assessment of food needs and habits in rural Western Oregon, back-to-the-landers and freegans emerged as two groups that resist the global industrial food system by tapping into pre-capitalist subsistence patterns. Subsistence agriculture provides the inspiration for back-to-the-landers while freegans are akin to modern day foragers, living off the waste of others and on what they can gather in the wild. In this article, I describe the foodways of these two groups and suggest ways in which they might help articulate a post-capitalist food economy, using the work of J. K. Gibson-Graham and the Community Economies Collective. 1 1. I wish to thank Margaret Mathewson, Carole Counihan, and the anonymous reviewers of Food and Foodways for making this a better paper, and also the freegans and back-to-the-landers who shared their words and food with me. Oregon State University's Rural Studies Initiative, Center for the Humanities, and Department of Anthropology provided necessary support.

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