Cultivating Pilipinx Thrivance: Foodways As Praxes of Care

Background and Purpose

Pilipinx Americans (PA) endure syndemic effects of persistent and chronic colonial harm including elevated rates of suicidality, depression, metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, and cancers, exacerbated by lower rates of help-seeking (Domingo, et al., 2018; Fuller-Thompson et al., 2017; Nadimpalli & Hutchinson, 2012). Research on PA mental/health has been sparse and has predominantly featured westernized methods rather than culturally embedded ones. Cultural incomprehensibility, a difference in conceptualization of mental/health, has been identified and may help explain help seeking rates including both access to informal supports and acceptability of available interventions (Sevillano et al., 2024). This study explores cultural knowledges transmitted intergenerationally to identify and describe potential entry points to disrupt the multifaceted problem of PA disparities. Grounded theoretically in the Halo-Halo Epistemology (La Torre et al., forthcoming), a culturally embedded, decolonial, and Indigenist framework of PA survivance, and the kuwentuhan methodology (Gutierrez et al., 2023), a PA collaborative storytelling methodology, we examined PA foodways as cultural complexes and asked the research question: what is important about foodways and land relationships in diaspora?

Methods

Constructivist grounded theory was selected as it is the best method to answer the proposed research question because it helps develop, refine, and adapt theory pertaining to processes (Charmaz, 2014). Intergenerational interviews (N=11) were conducted in California and Hawai’i, with PAs with a history of growing traditional foods and medicines. Coding was conducted in four stages: initial coding, a line-by-line process identifying action contained in the data; focused coding, a process of grouping significant initial codes together to make meaning; axial coding, a process of identifying and connecting codes to reveal potential relationships; and theoretical coding, a process of relating codes together to develop a theory or model to explain the data.

Results

Results include (1) intellectual sovereignty, that PAs (re-)produce intricate knowledge systems including epistemologies, ontologies, and axiology’s through sustained foodways; (2) refusal/agency, that PA foodways form a multidimensional resistance of domination including counter-capitalist, social, and medicinal praxes; and (3) corporeal joy, that PA embodied knowledges, satiety, and joy are integral, not incidental, to wellness. Together these results elucidate integral cultural knowledges that inform future inquiry, intervention, and education that honors that past while grounding on present.

Conclusions and Implications

Starting from cultural embeddedness, rather than adaptation, is a clear and untried path in promoting PA wellness, health, and healing that is rooted in resilience. The present study does just that, from theoretical orientation to methodology, and, as such, adds critical building blocks to a future where PA-centered interventions may be tried and tested and add to the array of evidence-based interventions. Implications for social work education include the urgent need to update curricula to reflect the heterogeneity of practitioners as well as those served by the profession. Culturally specific knowledges are both required for a congruent and more effectual provision of service and enhance the field by diversifying tools and frameworks available for promoting change