ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on fieldwork with two food nonprofits in Appalachian Ohio to illustrate the critical role of communicative place-making in food organizing. These organizations mobilized and constituted meanings about place to create a more resilient, just, and secure food system. We propose two concepts to illustrate the importance of place for communication and food scholars: (1) regionally attentive organizing and (2) collaborative empowerment. Regionally attentive organizing describes the processes of organizing (food) resources in ways that are responsive to the discourses, history, cultures, and context of a particular place. We advance collaborative empowerment as a mode of organizing that creates and advocates for communal skills, communal resilience, shared resources, and local collective action. These concepts create a deeper understanding of how organizing practices interact with place. We argue that regional attentiveness is crucial to successful food organizing. The chapter concludes by recommending that researchers practice regionally attentive reflexivity by considering how their data, interactions, and representations (dis)engage with and construct meanings about place.
