Justice across Real and Imagined Food Worlds: Rural Corn Growers, Urban Agriculture Activists, and the Political Ontologies They Live By

The article examines two seemingly disparate case studies, one involving conventional corn producers and agriculture professionals located in North Dakota, the other focusing on participants in a diverse urban agriculture cooperative in an anonymized U.S. city. Drawing on qualitative interviews and data‐presenting devices known as “word clouds,” the article explores how, and to a lesser extent why, understandings of the terms “social justice” and “autonomy” varied between these spaces. While these imagined political ontologies differed greatly, the article describes each case as grounded in a shared neoliberal (“real”) world that negatively impacts both populations, a realization that could provide a source of recognition and reconciliation between groups. The article concludes by asking why those interviewed in the rural space failed to understand their marginalization to be an artifact of the neoliberal highly individualistic worldview that their articulated imaginaries appear to support, while also exploring how the divergent political ontologies between the groups can be brought into better conversation with each other.