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Beside the berm: The convenience of roadside picking

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  • Dominic Piacentini

Abstract

This article gathers together stories from wild foods pickers in West Virginia's North Central Highlands who work along the side of the road. Building from anthropological scholarship in roads, roadsides, and edgework, I argue that amid neoliberal privatization, the side of the road is a convenient place to gather wild foods. Because the property along the side of the road is often confused, ignored, or mixed, it is also a convenient place to engage in forms of commoning, (re)negotiating access to wild foods and medicines, such as elderberries, sassafras, and St. John's wort. The stories presented here were collected in interviews and participant observation conducted during ethnographic fieldwork in 2019. They demonstrate the deep, more‐than‐human relationality of enviroeconomic provisioning along the side of the road.

Suggested Citation

  • Dominic Piacentini, 2021. "Beside the berm: The convenience of roadside picking," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 208-218, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:8:y:2021:i:2:p:208-218
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12209
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Agrawal, Arun, 2001. "Common Property Institutions and Sustainable Governance of Resources," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(10), pages 1649-1672, October.
    2. Dimitris Dalakoglou & Penny Harvey, 2012. "Roads and Anthropology: Ethnographic Perspectives on Space, Time and (Im)Mobility," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(4), pages 459-465.
    3. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015. "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10581.
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    Cited by:

    1. Rahul Oka, 2021. "Introducing an anthropology of convenience," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 188-207, June.
    2. Katherine Farley, 2022. "“We ain't never stolen a plant”: Livelihoods, property, and illegal ginseng harvesting in the Appalachian forest commons," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 309-321, June.

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