Dinner at Sassafras Co-op: Food and the Making of a Conscious Community

Whitley, Anona

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/5215 Copy

Description

Title

Dinner at Sassafras Co-op: Food and the Making of a Conscious Community

Author(s)

Whitley, Anona

Issue Date

2008-04-25

Keyword(s)

• Community
• Cooperative Living
• Vegetarian
• Egalitarianism
• Conservation
• Cooking
• Senior Thesis

Abstract

This project talks about my experiences as a student researcher at Sassafras Coop, which is a vegetarian housing co-operative near the university campus. Fourteen co-op residents share the house and everything in it, including cooking and labor responsibilities. A critical part of co-op ideology is the building of community. At Sassafras, food plays an important role in the creation of community through its designation as a vegetarian space,shared cooking and food purchasing, and a shared daily meal. Food is central to my project because it is the object which initially attracted me to Sassafras. I immediately identified with Sassafras' foodways, and this has evoked memories and previous knowledges that are a source of pleasure but that also mediate my experience and analyses. Looking at food provides a window through which one can identify how the connections between individual members' sense of “being in the world” and Sassafras ideology are lived out in daily life at the co-op. Egalitarianism, re-use of resources, vegetarianism, conservation, anti-capitalism, and a general rebuilding of community all play into what I call Sassafras ideology. Broadly speaking, this project speaks to the ways in which individuals come together to consciously negotiate their understandings of the complex processes of the world.

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/5215

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