This is a recipe book for change. It is an amazing cornucopia of knowledge that is held, produced and passed on by experts of experience, diverse global communities and stewards of traditions. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand our food cultures and food system from different lenses. It is also a call to action for those seeking to change the global food system.
Dee Woods, Co-Founder and Coordinator of Granville Community Kitchen and food advisor to the Mayor of London, UK.
A new book from CAWR, Everyday Experts, available for free to download, explains how knowledge built up through first-hand experience can help address crises in our food system – at home and abroad. It brings together fifty-seven activists, farmers, practitioners, researchers and community organisers from around the world to take a critical look at attempts to improve the dialogue between people whose knowledge has been marginalised in the past and others who are recognised as professional experts.
Using a combination of stories, poems, photos and videos, the contributors demonstrate how people’s knowledge can transform the food system towards greater social and environmental justice. Many of the chapters also explore the challenges of using action and participatory approaches to research.
The chapters in everyday experts present new insights, analysis and stories that can expand our imagination of a future that encompasses:
- making dialogue among people with different ways of understanding the world central to all decision-making
- the re-affirmation of Indigenous, local, traditional and other knowledge systems
- a blurring of the divide between professional expertise and expertise that is derived from experience
- transformed relationships amongst ourselves and with the Earth to confront inequality and the environmental crisis
The book is available as a free download and will be launched at an event on Tuesday 14th November at 18.00pm at CAWR, Ryton Gardens, Coventry, UK.