Anisah Madden

Postdoctoral Researcher

Institute for Agroecology

University of Vermont

Vermont, US

Other Affiliations

Supporting Academic, Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

Degrees

PhD, Social and Political Thought, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, Australia

B.A.H., International Development Studies, Trent University, Canada

Research Interests

Democratising food and agriculture governance, land and non-human relational cosmologies, solidarity / action research, facilitating participation of food providers, grassroots capacity-building, micropolitics, food sovereignty, agroecology, plant medicine/food as medicine, healing arts, diverse economies, social and solidarity economies

Links

Academia.edu

Institute for Agroecology

Contact Information

anisah.madden@uvm.edu

anisah.madden@communityeconomies.org

Publications

Enterprising New Worlds: social enterprise and the value of repair

This chapter looks at social enterprise through a lens inspired by community economies and post-development. Without refuting that any trading enterprise must take form in one way or another, the authors look beyond essentialist models towards the embodiment of ‘social enterprising’; a term capturing various processes and intuitions that enact the social through bold economic experiments and that help multispecies communities to live well together. ‘Decolonial love’ and Buddhist teachings of ‘loving kindness’ (Mettā) are mobilized as a way of framing context in Eastern Cambodia and a University Town in Central Canada. Practices of mundane maintenance also offer an alternative to the developmental discourse premised on innovation, while a ‘reparative stance’ and attention to small narratives helps avoid undue pessimism about the significance of this mundane work.