Virtual case study scenario--slow food

I'm taking a class in the "Innovation Studies" Department, on Individualism and Collectivism. The paper for this class involves developing a "virtual case study" that explores some aspect of this topic in a way that might be applicable in real life, to a real problem. I chose a scenario involving the "meme" of slow food, which is a movement that started in Italy to counter the homogenization of cuisine and the obliteration of local food traditions. Slow food also embodies a more general slowing down, building community, bringing people together and increasing focus on the beauty of nature in urban areas.

I wondered whether reviving a practice of cooking and eating real food, food from the local area, grown sustainably and enjoyed with other people at least occasionally could be a meme that would spread virally. Ultimately, I am interested in whether the kinds of cultural changes that are part of this "meme" or "meme cluster" could be expected to bring about a regeneration of democratic processes and more open and productive ways of dealing with conflict than are typical in highly individualistic US society. I am very interested in responses to what follows. Please let me know what you think.

Three families live in the same block are members of the same community-supported farm. They often visit the farm together when it is their turn to harvest, and they pick up their vegetables at the same place in their neighborhood every Tuesday. They decide one Tuesday, spontaneously, to bring their bags of vegetables to the home of one family and cook a dinner together. They enjoy this process so much, that they began to do it every Tuesday.

Because it is summertime, they often eat this meal outdoors. Other neighbors happen by, and are invited to pull up a chair. The kids bring their balls and games, and soon there is some sort of game in the yards or alley every Tuesday while the adults linger around the table. Several of the neighbors have recently taken down fences so there is a wide grassy area for these games. Different neighbors bring wine or beer each time.

The conversation at these meals ranges widely, but always touches on the quality of the food and the fact that it was grown in the local area. There is talk about which farmers market is the best, how much better grass-fed beef and free-range chicken taste than their factory-farmed counterparts, and reminiscence about growing up on a farm or eating from Grandma's victory garden. Recipes and food traditions from the heritage of each family are shared. There is discussion about the industrial food system and how it has become the collective way to meet everyone's need for food, but at a huge cost in ecological damage and questionable quality of food laced with toxic chemicals. Questions are raised, and not always answered, about food security -- the reliability, or unreliability, of this massive system, and whether it is wise to depend on it. Some people begin to think about planting their own vegetable garden.

Word of the neighborhood dinners immediately reaches the larger community of people who are members of the same community-supported farm, some of whom live within the same larger neighborhood. Some of these who live within walking distance of each other on other blocks start getting together in a similar way, holding weekly shared dinners that become block-wide events at least sometimes. One such group contains several musicians, and they develop a practice of having music jam-sessions after dinner. Another, which is across the street from a park, evolves a weekly soccer game to which many neighbors come who aren’t yet part of the dinner group.

The shared meals build bonds of friendship among those neighbors who participate, and increases the amount of visiting between their homes as well as sharing of tools and expertise in things like gardening and home repair, help with computer and other technology problems, occasional childcare and being each other's emergency contact, even sharing vehicles or giving each other rides. On pleasant summer evenings, when they aren’t sharing a cooked-from-scratch meal in someone’s back yard, many neighbors are likely to be sitting on the front porch, watering the garden, or walking around the block enjoying the flowers and visiting.

The season comes to an end, and the Tuesday dinners end, too, for a while. But the original group of neighbors have grown so fond of the time they spent together sharing food that they continue getting together every week for a common meal. They rotate hosting and cooking, and continue the practice of using local in-season foods. Sometimes they cook together. Sometimes they invite others from the larger group. Although many still have their favorite television programs that they like to keep up with, most are finding that they don't miss the hours spent sitting in front of a lighted box on Tuesdays.

Each summer the weekly shared meal becomes more entwined in the life of the neighborhood, the interrelated memes of slow food, local food, in-season food and shared food becoming more deeply embedded in the value system of every person who participates. After several years, the practice has taken hold in a dozen blocks throughout the larger neighborhood and is still continuing to spread. It has now gone far beyond the neighbors who are members of the same community-supported farm and has begun on blocks where no one belongs to that farm. The phenomenon of the "Tuesday night dinners" has become known across the city, due to neighborhood newspaper reports and word-of-mouth.

In the neighborhood where it started, the strength of the meme and the depth of the values transformation are tested when the slow-food groups that live along several blocks of a fairly busy street began to talk about asking the city to install a traffic-calming device to reduce the speed and volume of traffic on their street. Although many families participate and feel themselves to be part of the informal association of folks eating together, the groups have never included everyone, and on some blocks the majority do not participate.

How the slow-food families go about pressing their desire for traffic-calming in the face of opposition or indifference from those who have not been infected by the meme will make up the final portion of the scenario. Can the social capital built up by sharing food and increasing community bonds overcome some individuals’ resistance to the proposed change? Does the meme cluster involving slow food build stronger connections between individualistic and collectivist values? Can slow food values be of any use in a conflict situation, either by simply increasing social capital and resiliency in decisionmaking or possibly even by deepening the democratic relationships of participants?