CULTIVATING CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

By the time we had unpacked the first dozen stories of the Greater Silicon Valley corporate food system, we had glimpsed the importance of corporate care, and begun to see what futures mattered to people in this intensely moral foodscape. In the methodology of forecasting, the purpose is to provoke reflection by anticipating possible consequences, including unintended consequences. These anticipated futures drive thoughtful choices, but do not necessary predict actions. In this project, the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences wants to identify and pursue positive outcomes, but it was clear from the onset that stakeholders varied in what they thought would be the most important outcome. Positive outcomes combined mundane and audacious goals hoping to “improve the productivity of the workforce” to “end world hunger.” We looked closely at the relationships people identified as important, the sources of power and agency within their social worlds, and their particular configurations of hope and concern to reveal potential futures.

In our ethnographic forays we stayed primarily in the present, identifying work niches and practices, and tracing connections to other parts of the food system. We asked policy advocates about their connections to farmers, and farmers about their ties to educators. Chefs were queried about their ties to corporate wellness and to the workers that ate their food. Each person was asked to give an ethnographic tour of the work space, whether literally around a farm or kitchen, or if suitable to the work, figuratively through stories of travel between worksites. In our experientially-focused interviews we asked about the spaces and rhythms of food purchase, preparation and consumption. We queried about workmates, friends and family and their roles in the interviewee’s personal foodscape. We watched people in corporate cafes choose dishes, cluster and talk. Some workers had their children with them, a few grabbed food and zipped back to their workspace. We pulled weeds on an organic farm, and asked interns how they saw what they did fitting in with the corporate foodscape.

As we listened we began to discern several key lessons. First, people have deep abiding aspirations for the future of food—either imbedded in their own sense of self and wellness, or through passion for the future of the food system. They could identify clear “good” outcomes, but the criteria for that goodness shifted. We needed to parse those varieties of goodness more exactly. Second, we began to hear particular words and concepts repeatedly, “utopia,²” “practical,” “efficient” and “moonshot.” Miriam Avery, having worked with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Dissident Futures, understood that these words hinted at a threefold framework that sorted overlapping aspirational futures into Speculative, Utopian, and Pragmatic Futures (Hertz 2014). Third, participants were already actively engaged in trying to incorporate elements of Carol Sanford’s Responsible Business Framework, which emphasized reconnecting stakeholders into a larger system. As we coded and talked through our first set of interviews and notes, the three analytical lenses jelled into a single coherent whole.

While Pierre Bourdieu was publishing his tome on French distinctions, Georg Henrik von Wright, the Finnish philosopher, was publishing his abstract consideration of the varieties of goodness (1963). In this work, he systematically considered how goodness distinctively expresses diverse concepts linguistically and morally. We used his framework to ask, “what do these nuances mean in the foodscapes we were exploring?” Avery and I translated his typology into robust questions and combed the notes and transcripts, translating them into insights we could use to describe people’s aspirations. Von Wright’s domains of technical, instrumental and utilitarian goodness translate into the kind of information that could play out on a smart phone or wearable device that promoted food education—nutritious food, that could be tracked, and could be effectively and appropriately produced. More intriguing for us, would be the sorts of goodness that benefited people. Beneficial goodness integrates food into wellness, and compels action. Moral goodness might mandate environmentally sustainable food systems, or mindful eating. Hedonic or playful goods support adventurous eating, delicious food, nostalgic and “awesome” experiences. Social goodness is inherently moral, and would point to that elusive cosmopolitan set of virtues such as cross-cultural and cross-class respect.

This analytical exercise proved powerful for us. From there it was a short step into sorting interview and observational stories into the overlapping aspirational futures, linking the details of the future fictions with ethnographic realities. Each scenario took the values, practice and aspirations of Utopian, Pragmatic, and Speculative approaches to the food system and projected them into three possible futures, from 2014 to 2040. The terms were drawn from language used in conversations with our interlocutors. Each scenario asked, were corporations to focus their influence on just one approach, how could they impact the food system as a whole? What might be the intended and unintended consequences of privileging one expression of future values over the other two? Our April 2014 Farms to Firms memo, introduced to the summit of the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences, presented these future scenarios, as well as excerpts from the ethnographic realities to which they connected. The forecasts read like narrative fiction. For example, the Utopian narrative, “Good food in 2040” read:

A network of family farms stretches around the world, in cities and rural areas alike. It starts as a niche, separate from the rest of the food system, but clear benefits to People, communities and the Earth quickly accelerate its influence. Global firms move from reactively addressing damage to people and the planet to proactively participating in co-creating and sustaining a resilient, equitable food system. They support a fledgling network of local farms, pioneering a new form of CSAs—“company-supported agriculture.” This, along with the efforts of artists, journalists, and chefs, begins to change people’s ideas of what a food system can and should be. To feel good about eating, we have to know that food sustains more than individual appetites and wellness. Food isn’t good for anyone unless it is good for everyone.

This scenario drew on both the language and practices of research participants engaged in farming and food service vending. However pithy we made our scenarios, any insights we could come up with would have to translate into actions that could be taken up by many participants in the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences, and our specific partners within the food systems team. To provide a quick and provocative overview, we imbedded this chart in the memo (see Figure 1) outlining aspirations, varieties of goodness, limitations and inquiries sorted by scenario (Avery et al. 2014: 8). Playing with the scenarios should be a way of thinking through the consequences of a project, or a strategic plan so that “varieties of goodness” would be achieved. We also framed the scenarios not only as visions of one scenario triumphing over the others, but of each expression of the future offering lessons for the others.

FIGURE 1. Guidelines to participants for engaging with the alternative future scenarios.

Simply being thought-provoking is not enough. How could our insights translate into the world of business people? One of the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences participants held the key to this challenge and her collaboration shaped our thinking. Carol Sanford, a business consultant, grapples with integrating corporate responsibility as a necessary part of global business survival. She defines a pentad of stakeholders, which we immediately translated into stakeholder communities we had identified within the context of the food system (see Figure 2):

FIGURE 2. Carol Sanford’s pentad of stakeholders translated to the food system (Avery et al. 2014: 7).

These stakeholders must connect, often restoring connections once extant in the past, but now no longer reinforced. When a proverbial modern child is asked, “Where did this carrot come from?” That child will say, “Safeway,” not a farm. In this framework, Utopian aspirations reconnect customers and the earth, educating people who will make choices about the fate of farm land in acts ranging from the voting booth to the kitchen. Having been sensitized by prior Institute for the Future Global Food Outlook forecasts (see Avery et al. 2013), we imagined that different stakeholders would relate to particular scenarios more enthusiastically. We did not want the participants to think that these scenarios were mutually exclusive, or that they should identify with only one scenario. In practice, at the April 2014 summit of the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences, we asked people to self-identify with particular scenarios, donning stickers. Participants validated this integrative approach by consistently self-identifying with more than one approach, and eagerly seeking out those with different combinations than their own.

As we talked to purchasers, chefs, and food managers it was clear that more than serving food was at stake. The choice made by companies to amplify their impact through holistic corporate care creates potential ripple effects. Even as such care makes workplace inequalities visible within and between companies, it also opens up new possibilities for creating positive impacts on the food system, and on the lives of workers. In the 19^th century a forty-hour workweek was an almost unattainable aspiration, but it marked the emergence of the 20^th century middle-class. In the 21^st century, new practices of corporate care could redefine the habitus of food production and consumption, as well as the larger realm of wellbeing. It requires thinking intentionally about the future we collectively make.

Anthropology has long been the great thief of theory, inspired by philosophers, sociologists and each other, to view the world in a new way. We have turned ethnography into reports, films, and plays. We turned our data into near-term science fiction, thinking about corporate food systems and experiences that had not yet come to pass, but would inspired the reader/listener into reflection. Storytelling, particularly storytelling about the future, stimulates such conversations.

J.A. English Lueck is an anthropologist, Interim Dean of the College of Social Sciences at San Jose State University, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future. English-Lueck has written ethnographies about cultural futures from California to China, including three on Silicon Valley (www.svcp.org). Jan.English-Lueck@sjsu.edu

Miriam Lueck Avery is Program Co-Director, Health Horizons and Global Food Outlook at the Institute for the Future. Miriam identifies innovations in health and well-being, health care, food, nutrition, and sustainability. She studied anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and has been a professional forecaster for seven years. Mavery@iftf.org

2014 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, ISSN 1559-8918. © American Anthropological Association and Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, some rights reserved.

NOTES

Acknowledgments – Many team members contributed to this project. The San Jose State University practicum students and alumni Armando Ayala, Chelsea Bahr, Evan Branning, Sarah Goldman, Robert Johnston, Jason McClung, Alex Moreno, Nicolas Thoryk, and Deborah Walde-Baughn worked with Institute for the Future partners Ben Hamamoto. Google, Inc. collaborators Michiel Bakker (Director Global Food Services), Michelle Hatzis (Global Food Program, Health and Wellness Program Director) and Kelsey McNamara (Global Food Program Operations Coordinator) and the participants of the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experiences were invaluable partners. Special acknowledgments go to Carol Sanford for her thought partnership and generous permission to use the Responsible Business Framework as an integral part of process.

¹ Data was collected in two phases. The first phase, Farms to Firms, focused on identifying stakeholders and getting an overview of the food system, a map view. The second phase, Firms to Families, examined the lived experience of chefs, corporate managers, workers and their families, a street view. We engaged in days of participant observation in cafes, farms, community events and corporate workshops, and interviewed 27 people at length, from different farms, vendor organizations and workplaces.

² This term was not used by the interviewees, and then by us, in the literary sense of “no place,” but as a metaphor for ambitious aspirations.