ABSTRACT
This chapter situates the study of subsistence food production on the South Side of Chicago. This study has included the choice to include a wide diversity of characteristics of subsistence food producers, sampling to maximize range of age, race, class, gender, age and geography, which leads to a different, and more inclusive, set of characteristics than has typically been explored before in literature on transitions. This chapter also discusses the specific history of each geographic field site, all in the Southern part of Chicago: urban, suburban and rural, using vignettes to illustrate. This study uses qualitative interviews, ethnography and grounded theory, and the chapter explains methodological procedures and respondent characteristics in detail.
