Introduction

This chapter introduces the study of subsistence food producers in South Chicago. Taking as context a world of overlapping crises – environmental, social, political, economic – this chapter explores the way in which we can begin to understand how people respond to these crises by making new social structures. Drawing on Morris Berman’s Dual Process Theory, these new social structures are identified as shadow structures, which can be any way in which individuals or communities build social structures that parallel industrial capitalism and could potentially replace it as it fails through inevitable crises. This school of thinking – historical Marxism – is part of a lineage of theory that cares about large-scale structural changes to the economy and political systems and resultant social change. This study uses the qualitative study of subsistence food producers to understand one community that may be developing the shadow structures that could eventually replace capitalism.