Presentation short abstract

Participatory action research processes involved learning about agri-food transformation processes with communities of practice in Zimbabwe. Story-sharing and deep listening communicated affective disturbances that generated situated opportunities for agroecological thinking, being and doing.

Presentation long abstract

This paper shares findings from a participatory action research process that involved learning about agri-food transformation processes with communities of practice in Zimbabwe. Articulating a decolonial mindset and praxis, an array of creative and participatory methods, including digital storytelling with marginalised agrifood practitioners, were deployed. We adopted an appreciative approach to how Zimbabwean communities have responded to material and affective challenges driven by corporate-driven agrifood systems, climate change impacts, and entrenched social inequalities.

Methodological processes honoured and unpacked the biographical, embodied and emotional experiences of practitioner-storytellers. Embedded in a capacity-building programme, more than fifty digital stories were completed by participants over 18 months, communicating lived and situated changes towards more sustainable foodways (sometimes, but not always, articulated as ‘agroecological’). We then co-created an e-book, a website and a podcast series. The story-sharing process was highly generative, informing systems mapping, community actions and policy recommendations.

As research data or artefacts, the stories revealed conflicting practices and experiences of change, as well as different perspectives on what needs to be sustained or changed. Importantly, stories narrated the embodied, affective and (sometimes) traumatic experiences that often form the prologue to how agroecological transitions occurred. Story-sharing and deep listening communicated ambiguous, perceptual ruptures and affective disturbances that open up opportunities for different ways of thinking, being, connecting and doing with/through food. These findings add nuance and geographical (as well as biographical) contextuality to how we can understand agroecological transition.