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Although often intended to address injustices in food access, farmers markets tend to cater to affluent communities, and to exclude on the basis of race and class. One means of addressing this is federal subsidy programs, like the Senior Farmers Market Nutritional Program (SFMNP). We explore the dynamics of the SFMNP program in Memphis’ farmers market landscape in 2011. We examine the visible barriers experienced by SFMNP patrons to market access including delays in establishing the program in a largely African-American neighborhood, and the more subtle barriers such as perceptions of more affluent markets as white spaces. We then explore some successful efforts to make these issues visible and address them, including activism on the part of seniors and public dialog in social media. Despite this, we find that ongoing resistance to acknowledging farmers markets as spaces of racial inequality continues to challenge their food justice potential.

Aboriginal people in Australia construct their identities in relationship to a state and public imaginary that places primacy on celebrating and preserving “traditional culture” and in turn regularly fails to recognize the impact of colonial history, state constructed definitions, and indigenous modes of identification. For Kooris in the suburban Sydney community of La Perouse, claiming and legitimating Aboriginality can be particularly challenging; they are suburban rather than urban or rural, neither assimilated nor traditional, and Black, but always suspect of being White. This article examines how urban Aboriginal identity is negotiated among/between Aboriginal people and the socio-political conditions that make this negotiation necessary, desirable, but sometimes risky. I explore the ways in which Kooris variously asserted their Aboriginality through their bodies, practices, and politics along a continuum of identity construction. I argue that Kooris move between affirming cultural belonging and differentiating between indigenous cultural styles, histories, and geographies. I suggest how constructions of intra-Aboriginal sameness and difference take us behind the veil of recognition and allow us to consider Aboriginal identity constructions as forms of indigenous knowledge production that can reproduce, speak back to, and sometimes shift, the geographic, racial, political, and cultural boundaries that underlie prevailing state policies and popular ideas about Aboriginal cultural identity and authenticity.

This article examines the role and methodologies of the anthropologist as practitioner working in faith-based development initiatives. In particular, the author discusses attempts to use a participatory action research (PAR) model to examine the current programs, congregational participation, and future community development activities of Saint Andrew African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. The article examines how the FBO's traditional model of community development interfaced with the university research team's participatory approach and shaped the way that research was carried out. Additionally, the author discusses the varying ways that she, as an anthropologist, and her methods were positioned and the process of negotiating a mutually acceptable methodology. This FBO-university partnership revealed several key issues that have relevance for anthropologists engaged in work with FBOs and beyond. First, the model of faith-based community development shapes the possibilities of the work. Second, it shows how the anthropologist, and university partners more generally, are positioned by the organization, informs how and by whom the data is collected, what data is collected, and how it is used. Finally, there is no longer room for anthropologists to work alone; community issues and agency demands are complex and require interdisciplinary collaborative responses.

This paper uses the repatriation and ceremonial reburial of Indigenous remains to La Perouse, an Indigenous community in Sydney, as a lens through which to examine the cultural politics of representation and recognition that are central to contemporary Aboriginal identity construction. The return of the skeletal remains of 21 individuals highlights the role that representative bodies — past and present, individual and organizational — play in engagements between the State and Aboriginal people. Heralded by some as a sincere sign of reconciliation and treated as suspect and misguided by others, the reburial produced diverse responses from both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike. Speakers at the repatriation focused on righting the wrongs of the past, reconciliation, and moving forward in cooperation, suggesting the redemptive significance of these events. Among Kooris at La Perouse, debates about community, representation, and belonging expose the ways that Aboriginal people and communities operate through, against, and beyond ‘whitefella’ structures of recognition to define who they are and what their culture is.

Thomson of Arnhem Land. 2000. 55 minutes. Directed by John Moore. Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st floor, Brooklyn, N.Y., USA 11201. 718-488-8900, info@frif.com