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DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM AUTHORS 1

Wilson, Alice Brooke and Rob Jones (2009). “The Crop Mob: A Collaborative Analysis” Unpublished manuscript. UNC-Chapel Hill, April 27th, 2009. 1

The current global food system is in a multi-dimensional crisis – what has been a perfect storm

brought on by global environmental change, increases in biofuel production and consumption,

speculation in international grain markets, rising oil prices, and increased global consumption

of meat and dairy. Although storm isn’t quite the right metaphor, as some critics have noted,

because that creates a sense of natural inevitability that obscures the very strategic

governmental and transnational policies that led to this storm.

As this food system crisis intensifies, evidence mounts about the various contributions

industrial agriculture makes to environmental degradation, with minimum 15-40 percent of

global greenhouse gas emissions related to non-sustainable agriculture (UC Davis 2009). At the

same time – more and more evidence that sustainable agriculture practices can repair soil

damage, capture carbon, contribute to revitalizing rural economies, and improve health. The

stakes for understanding alternatives to modern industrial agriculture have gotten considerably

higher, and because of this, I have been drawn to the Crop Mob, a new group that emerged in

Orange and Chatham counties in the fall of 2008. Also, I was drawn to this project because of

my own position as a farmer and food activist and scholar – and the assignments for this class

gave me the push to get involved. I would consider myself a part of the crop mob now, although

as you’ll see in later discussion membership is very fluid. Moreover, I would say that I have

formed a friendship with the mob and have initiated what I think we all hope will be a longer

collaboration in the co-production of research on the critical dimensions of the Mob-

The Crop Mob represents the cutting edge of praxis—theory plus action--in the

sustainable food and agriculture movement. By its explicit focus on building community,

through shared work, and rejection of another round of endless meetings about problems, the

Crop Mob is the kind of social movement that fundamentally seeks to re-shape the public

sphere and democracy by redefining the terms of debate, especially with respect to economic,

social, and cultural practices—in recent social movement studies, this is called cultural politics

(Alvarez 1998). By shifting the terms of debate, social movements are increasingly understood 1 DRAFT.- Please do not cite without permission from authors.


as knowledge-producers and world-makers (Escobar 2008, Casas-Cortes et al. 2008). The

emergence of contemporary social movements like the Crop Mob, at the conjuncture of the

food crisis, the financial crisis, and unequal distribution of land ownership—has been linked to

the tendency of capital to create its own barrier by destroying production conditions, what has

been called the second contradiction of capitalism (with class struggle being the first; O’Connor

1998). So, the Crop Mob is a kind of activism 2.0 – a social movement outside the structural

understandings of social change as inevitably driven by class conflict, for example, under

capitalism. Clearly inspired by DIY anarchists and freegans, critical mass bikers, and

community gardeners, this group represents a new-wave of land-based activism, an interesting

update of the 1970s back-to-the-land movement explicitly committed to political activism. The

logic of the first-wave back-to-the-landers, in the context of anti-Vietnam War activism, was

“tune in and drop out” --the personal is political. Land-based activists at that time clearly

focused on individual actions (homesteading, making their own food/clothes/media), clearing

the path for the new age movement, with its explicit focus on self/personal growth and

individual enlightenment at the clear expense of political engagement. As the context of

activism changed (the Vietnam War faded), the feminist-environmental-civil rights movements

of the 1970s were eroded by the increasingly dominant neoliberal logic (both economic and

inter-personal) of the 1980s and 1990s. I argue that the context of activism has shifted again,

with the meltdown of the neoliberal economic system and the increasingly unavoidable effects

of global environmental change, and we have entered into an era marked by a linked ecological-

economic-socio-political global crisis. I propose that groups like the Crop Mob, which are

explicitly focused on making new, different connections between the environment, the

economy, and the community are especially important to document and understand. This

project fits into my broader commitments as a nascent scholar-activist: My research is devoted

to contributing to understanding transformations in the world food system, particularly the role

of imagination as a vitally important social practice that charts pathways to constructing new

constellations of possibilities – this is broadly part of the “anthropology of the future”. I am

interested in the emergence of what I am calling new food imaginaries or geographies of

sustenance -- ways of understanding food that include social practices and natural cycles. How

does a sustainable food imaginary take shape in conflict and become embedded in social


practices? I specifically look at the cultural politics of imaginaries of the future that embed agri-

food practices with environmental and ethical concerns.

The Crop Mob is a critical case for understanding these processes and practices of

imagination. The group is explicitly dedicated to building community, and since January I have

been attending gatherings, interviewing key members, and analyzing the contours of this new

community. The group describes itself as:

a group of young, landless, and wannabe farmers who come together to build and

empower communities by working side by side.

…

Any crop mobber can call a crop mob to do the kind of work it takes a community to do. We

work together, share a meal, play, talk, and make music. No money is exchanged. This is the

stuff that communities are made of.

(cropmob.org)

The Crop Mob started in October 2008, as the neoliberal economic system and the

industrial food regime were both in rapid decline. The youth-driven group is explicitly about

intervening in what it has identified as a key weak point in the sustainable food/agriculture

movement, the loss of the kind of community needed to take on labor-intensive projects.

So, what IS the crop mob? I would answer that by saying it is a new, emergent form of

community, land-based but electronically connected, dedicated to creative, collective,

collaborative work and above all celebration – building community is, has to be, fun. In effect,

the crop mob is a listserv, gently controlled (that is, you can’t enroll yourself, but anyone can

ask to be enrolled), self-organizing and self-governed. The group self-consciously avoids being

called an “organization” – preferring to just use the term mob instead, in all its glory as a noun

and a verb – and consists of approximately 100 people. There have been seven mobs since the

first one in Oct. 2008 (Biofarm/sweet potatoes Oct. 08, Stone House Nov. 08, Cane Creek Farm

Feb. 09, mini-mobs at Okfuskee and the Carrboro backyard garden Feb. 09, Trace’s farm

March 09, UNC-CH April 09). At the close of each mob, the next mob is decided in a fluid

group process, or else someone will step up and call one, like in the case of the UNC mob

yesterday.


Although the group’s website suggests this a “going back to the old days of barn-

raisings,” I propose that this kind of community never existed before, so it’s not a question of

going back– instead, the mob IS a set of collaborative acts building a movement. The previous

distinction between individual action and critical political action – how some have

distinguished new-agers or hippies from anarchists, for example – is not a particularly relevant

distinction, as the mob engages in cultural politics to change the terms of debate about the

future.

Because the Crop Mob is self-consciously dedicated to building community, their

concept of community became the focus of my research. In the past, when more people were

tied to the land by necessity (1/3 of Americans were farmers in the 1930s, now less than 2%),

community was created/imposed? by history/location -- geographical proximity, not choice.

Obligations to share in collective work projects were enforced by societal norms, often with

great levels of detailed hierarchical arrangements, clearly defined social roles, and highly

specified forms of reciprocity. Perhaps paradoxically, these rural, land-based communities

supported high levels of social diversity because in a sense, people were stuck with each other

and sorted out ways to interact despite differences (Colloredo-Mansfeld, personal

communication April 22, 2009). However, social hierarchies were also hard to escape, with

high levels of discrimination against women, homosexuals, lower class etc. – it’s easy to

imagine the relief of the city for the “girly boy” and the tomboy, or the comfort of slipping into

an urban mass to an individual escaping a reputation of their family as low class or uneducated,

or a woman escaping an unchosen marriage.

So -When a community is chosen, how do obligations get managed? How does an early

21st century community, chosen not enforced, take shape? How can you define community?

How does a new kind of community get built – one that respects differences, embraces

diversity, does not enforce homogeneity? There’s an interesting parallel between the complex

cultural and biological processes that generate diversified, sustainable agro-ecological farming

systems and those that give rise to resilient communities in complex systems (Altieri 1995;

Fowler and Mooney 1990).

Following technology guru Howard Rheingold, I propose that the Crop Mob is a “smart

mob” -- an emergent form of social life with cultural innovations that “reorganize social


interactions in light of new technologies” (Rheingold 2002: 214). This kind of mob opens new

vistas of cooperation (ibid.)

Distinctive elements of the Crop Mob:

*LAND-BASED – unlike other examples of “smart mobs” – urban or social movement

focused, this is about coordinating collective labor.

* exists for the purpose of building community (few other things are primarily that—church,

bowling, etc)

*self-organized/self-governing – this opens up questions about whom to trust, who is a member,

who can be counted on

* a hyper-networked community that depends on the internet for communication (Rheingold

2002)

*pro-active, not reactive (no meetings about problems)

*producing not consuming, new forms of knowledge

*changing the field of possibilities – “anything can happen!”

In conclusion, Crop Mob is part of a global countermovement against industrial

agriculture. The alternative food economy emerging at this historical conjuncture is stimulating

a recreation of the local, and I am interested in the dimensions of the local that are being created

and contested in the material expansion in time and space (see ethnographic description #3). I

suggest the Crop Mob is enabling the production of an imaginary of the future that embeds food

and agriculture practices within political and ethical practices. The Crop Mob entails a shifting

of subjectivities, and is itself a new institution that generates activities and practices to

materialize this imaginary.


Some of my questions for future research include:

• What shape do practices of relocalization have? How is local being recreated?

• How are historical inequalities (class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality) negotiated with

respect to new subjectivities that emerge in these practices?

• Gathering many more perspectives on the conception of community the group is building

(the community is very conscious of how it is predominately young, white, similarly dressed,

very nice, educated middle class)

• How do members of the group relate to land and land ownership?

• Included in this sense of community is the question of group membership, who is a

member, who can be counted on, trusted, and how obligations and expectations within a self-

organized/self-governing community are managed

• Further explorations of scale, how local and global problems are intertwined, where this

group fits into the landscape of local activism.

• What kinds of knowledges and theories the group sees itself producing

A next step could be to organize an “activist research” meeting after the next mob, and

inviting people to join in creating a collaborative documentary/research/action project together.

I predict an interesting set of discussions about what is research, for whom, by whom, how are

questions framed, etc. I am interested to see what kinds of questions the group has – what

information they think would help the group’s goals, or just be interesting to know. Because my

own interests lie in how the alternative food economy emerging at this historical conjuncture is

stimulating a re-creation of the local, I would like to explore the dimensions of the local that


are being created and contested through the group’s practices. Does the Crop Mob agree with

my analysis that they are enabling the production of an imaginary of the future that embeds

food and agriculture practices within political and ethical practices? What kinds of activities

and practices materialize this future vision? What other analytics exist? With more time, I hope

to pursue collaborative research especially focused on the networks connected through the Crop

Mob, with groups like the Carrboro GreenSpace and its proposals for an urban crop mob

“minga,” and with key community events like Vimala’s underground kitchen.

Finally - if the Crop Mob exemplifies the potential for outbreaks of cooperation, what

Rheingold calls a “co-operation epidemic” (Rheingold 2002: 164), then a main focus of the next

phase of this project could be figuring out ways to document and legitimate the kinds of

knowledge and education the group is already doing.

Works Cited:

Altieri, Miguel. 1995. Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. Boulder: Westview Press.

Alvarez, Sonia E., Evalina Dagino, and Arturo Escobar. 1998. “Introduction” Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-Envisioning Latin American Social Movements. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Casas-Cortés, María, Michal Osterweil, Dana Powell. 2008.“Blurring Boundaries: Recognizing Knowledge-Practices in the Study of Social Movements,” Anthropological Quarterly (81) 1, p. 17-58.

Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes. Durham: Duke University Press.

Fowler, Cary and Pat Roy Mooney. 1990. Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity. Tucson: University of Arizona.

O’Connor, James. 1998. Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism. New York: Guilford Press


Rheingold, Howard. 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access. Basic Books (Perseus): Cambridge, MA.

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