Mapping Food Riots—Teaching Global Connections

Writing and teaching using global history is by no means a novel concept. Students in both K–12 and postsecondary education systems have been exposed to them to varying degrees since the 1990s. Despite having clear connections to world history, agricultural history has largely been taught through national and or regional lenses. Recently, agricultural education specialists have identified the integration of “a more globalized approach” to teaching agriculture to be a priority for the future.1 As such, we are left to answer the question of how history instructors can develop effective assignments to encourage undergraduate students to think more globally about agriculture. Moreover, how can these assignments be accessible to classrooms that do not have the budget, time, or access to fieldwork and or civic engagement components? These were the two guiding questions that I asked myself when designing assignments for a course titled Food, Science, and Technology during the Interwar Period. My approach was to go digital. Though still imperfect in several ways, the digital assignment (discussed below) inspired students to engage and reflect on global narratives within agricultural history.One unit of this course focused on how World War I reshaped the global agricultural market by disrupting food supply networks. The result was widespread hunger and even famine conditions in many European countries. In some cases, disturbances caused by food deprivation led to revolutionary events and even the collapse of empires (Russia). To consider the global effects of the war and connect them with the issues of food access, I designed an assignment that asked students to trace the outbreak of food riots from 1914 to 1919. In outlining the goals for the assignment, I sought to make it a collaborative in-class experience that focused on developing the following skills: (1) improving historical research skills, including formulating a research question, obtaining data, evaluating it, and placing it in a global historical context; (2) developing knowledge and mastery of digital technologies; and (3) working in collaboration with others.For this assignment, students worked in groups of four to six people during the period of one ninety-minute class. Each group was assigned a year and was asked to find articles in newspaper databases (e.g., the New York Times) using several specific keywords, such as “food riot,” “food revolt,” “food disturbances,” and so on. After finding relevant articles that reported news about food riots in different cities across the world, students put this data into an Excel spreadsheet (fig. 1). Each group had its sheet in the joint Excel spreadsheet in which they recorded the date, city, country, participants, cause, and resolution. Over the course of this assignment, these groups collected and analyzed between ten and twenty newspaper articles. The rest of the class time was devoted to transferring the collected data using Google Maps onto a single map that had layers for each year (fig. 2). Each layer was identified with a different color to make it easier to track the development of food insecurity during and after World War I after the map was completed. Students spent approximately thirty minutes creating the map by putting colored pins and writing short descriptions of events based on the information from newspaper articles. After the map was completed, students examined the map layers that their colleagues created and discussed their findings in small groups and then as a large group.As a result, I observed a more engaged and productive conversation about global connections in agricultural history. Students commented on the global impact of World War I on food production and food access, as well as social and racial inequality. Students connected key course themes outlined in lectures and secondary readings with their analysis of primary sources. Further, the map helped not only to visualize the number of food riots but also to demonstrate the growth and then the eventual decline of food riots in different countries. The dynamic nature of digital technologies presents students with another way of looking at the “change over time” concept. Second, this assignment helped students to “live” a life of a professional historian. Students obtained hands-on experience in asking a research question, identifying keywords for their search, and then working through the database with an immense amount of information. In the process, they used critical thinking skills to evaluate information and choose what articles fit their search criteria. Moreover, by working with the database, they realized that not all articles contained the same amount of information, and they were able to identify historical gaps that could only be filled with the help of other sources. Finally, the assignment dismantled stereotypes of agricultural history as a dry and insignificant subspecialty by demonstrating its deep connections to political, economic, and cultural history. In the end, mapping out historical events and processes by using newspaper archives proved an effective way to visualize the agricultural history and food history of the twentieth century.I believe that the assignment can be modified to adapt to different teaching contexts. For larger classes, the assignment can be a take-home group project where students meet outside of the classroom. For virtual environments, students can work in breakout rooms. To shorten the time spent on the assignment in and beyond the classroom, an instructor might choose articles ahead of time and focus students' efforts on analyzing the assigned material and transferring acquired information on a map in Google Maps. The assignment can be adapted to the analysis of other historical events and processes that are not connected to famines and food riots. Mapping the Green Revolution comes to mind.Despite the positive outcomes, the assignment still had some drawbacks. One obstacle for those engaged in premodern, marginalized, or Indigenous histories is access to sources. However, even those who focus on the modern era will have productive conversations about the limitations of newspapers and whose perspectives they provide. Another obstacle was the utilization of English-language newspapers that reported on domestic and foreign riots. While the records of riots were valuable, it was important to recognize whose voice students were hearing in those accounts. Nevertheless, the assignment achieves two crucial goals. It demonstrates how the global military conflict impacted agricultural production and food access in urban and rural areas not only in Europe but also in other places all over the world

Geography · Sociology · Diverse Educational Innovations Studies · History