Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores practices of “sharing” seeds in Tucson, AZ as social processes of (un)commoning and diverse value regimes to explore ideas of reciprocity solidarity as practiced, experienced and imagined in everyday life in relation to desired “good life” in the present and future.

Contribution long abstract:

Public discourses on local food in Tucson, Arizona center “sharing” seeds, especially of desert-adapted crops, in order to conserve the unique agro-biodiversity of the Sonoran Desert as well as increase food security, economic and ecological sustainability, and promote cultural diversity and rich culinary traditions. These discourses on “sharing” are perfectly aligned with national and international discourses promoting seed and food sovereignty, fighting the commodification of seeds and corporate enclosures, and emphasizing the rights of the farmers and rural communities, especially Indigenous ones, while uplifting alternative food networks, and diverse, social and solidarity economy of food.

Based on the extended ethnographic field work, engaged anthropological stance and rich anthropological theory of value, this paper examines these practices of “sharing” as social processes of un/commoning and holding "in common" through value ascribed to seeds and the "sharing" itself as seed move via non-market channels among diverse growers, farmers, nonprofit organizations and other SE entities on one hand, and the values motivating and underlying such SE seed flows on the other. As value regimes are always about power, and since concepts such as “commons” and “solidarity” are continuously socially created, maintained and destroyed within larger social, political and economic context, the paper will further explore who has the power and uses the concepts of commons and solidarity, and to what goal, and who is resisting them.