ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors introduce the food ritual FieldTable as a practice in sympoiethics. Sympoiethics recognises that an ethical human life unfolds as part of sympoiesis or ‘making-with’ each other and the living planet. FieldTable was hosted as a Touchstones thanks-giving ritual and provocation in the Western Cape of South Africa in 2016 to manifest the enlivening, embodied experience of our ‘naturecultural’ entanglement. As a sympoietic intervention, this participatory food ritual emerged with communities of place through attending to the diverse voices, energies and expressions of the human and the other-than-human world. By making visible the life-giving connections between humans and the sentient Earth and choreographing emancipatory encounters between the bodymind, the matter of food and the genius loci of habitats, this performative ritual engaged participants in convivial and interdependent exchanges with the living food cycle. This chapter explores how within the context of agroecological food cultures, FieldTable offered a safe and convivial space to attend to social, ecological and food justice through the experiential, the educational and the contemplative. The authors conclude by showing how recovering naturecultural food rituals can stimulate transitions towards new approaches, response-abilities and actions which foster a sympoiethics of care in the everyday.
