Cultivating Diasporist Ontologies: Identity-Based Agrarianism and the Practices of Anti-Colonial Place-Making

Over the last two decades there has been an increase in studies connecting identity-based agrarianisms to global anti-colonial struggle. There has, however, been little scholarship bringing Jewish agrarianism into conversation with other racialised and displaced groups to consider its contribution to anti-coloniality. Diasporism ideology emerged in the Black Radical Tradition, Indigenous anti-colonialism and Jewish Radical Diasporism and has created a constellation of anti-colonial political identities. Diasporist political identity is practiced culturally, socially, and politically, including within identity-based agrarianisms. This paper proposes ‘diasporist ontologies’ as the generation of new belonging and ways of being, which situate diasporism through the practice, production, and renewal of culture in place. Drawing on an ethnography of identity-based agrarianisms in the Great Lakes region of Turtle Island (USA) I consider how places produce diasporist ontologies. I reveal how diasporist ontologies are cultivated through relational connection with place and consider the emergent anti-coloniality that is produced.