{"id":8465,"date":"2016-03-30T19:04:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T19:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/?p=8465"},"modified":"2016-09-14T15:18:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T15:18:45","slug":"freegans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2016\/03\/30\/freegans\/","title":{"rendered":"Freegan Foragers\u2019 Moral Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Alex V. Barnard, <\/span>“Making the City \u2018Second Nature\u2019: Freegan \u201cDumpster Divers\u2019 and the Materiality of Morality,” American Journal of Sociology<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2016<\/span><\/div>\n
\"A<\/a>
A freegan feast. Photo by Natalie HG via flickr CC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dumpster diving and urban foraging—that\u2019s how \u201cfreegans\u201d shop. Freegans participate minimally in the conventional economy through an environmentally sustainable lifestyle, including living off others\u2019 waste. Based upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork with freegans, UC-Berkeley Ph.D. candidate Alex Barnard<\/a> argues that this lifestyle constitutes an innovative alternative to consumer-driven city life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barnard\u2019s ethnographic study of New York City\u2019s freegans took place over two years. Barnard attended \u201ctrash tours\u201d (dumpster dives announced to the general public), freegan communal \u201cfeasts,\u201d organizational meetings, and \u201cskillshare\u201d events to observe the subculture\u2019s performative claims-making practices. To supplement his participant observations, including six months of subsisting on discarded food, Barnard conducted 20 interviews of active members of freegan.info.<\/span><\/p>\n

The themes and questions Barnard found in the freegan life centered around how freegans create what they consider a moral place in a capitalist city they characterize as immoral. One freegan describes NYC as an \u201cevil haven of decadence and debauchery.\u201d A distinctive lifestyle and relationship to the physical world helps freegans create and sustain a sense of morality, and freegans use nature as a framework for deciphering right from wrong. Nature, they believe, is free from social influence—a moral concept \u201coutside of us.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Barnard anticipates a logical question by explaining that freegans choose to live in the city rather than move to the purer countryside as an act of resistance. Moving to literal greener pastures would do little to push back against the capitalist system. Further, as freegans derive a sense of morality from using waste as a natural resource, they see themselves as offsetting the mainstream population\u2019s wasteful practices. Even in a \u201csin city,\u201d individuals and groups find ways to use space to live in a way that aligns with their values.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex V. Barnard, “Making the City \u2018Second Nature\u2019: Freegan \u201cDumpster Divers\u2019 and the Materiality of Morality,” American Journal of Sociology, 2016 Dumpster diving and urban foraging—that\u2019s how \u201cfreegans\u201d shop. Freegans participate minimally in the conventional economy through an environmentally sustainable lifestyle, including living off others\u2019 waste. Based upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork with freegans, UC-Berkeley Ph.D. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2028,"featured_media":8466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[98,10156,14907,10482,65,97,30,19416,37382,37383,3107,39089,3862,3175,119,3437,891,3690],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-capitalism","tag-consumer-culture","tag-sociology-of-culture","tag-ecology","tag-environment","tag-ethnography","tag-food","tag-food-supply","tag-freegan","tag-freeganism","tag-morality","tag-morals","tag-natural-resources","tag-norms","tag-poverty","tag-scarcity","tag-values","tag-waste"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/files\/2016\/03\/3366789639_7329e0f47c_z.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8468,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions\/8468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}