The Politics of Palestinian Olive Oil, Food Sovereignty and the Contemporary Food Crisis - Literature review Example

READING RESPONSE By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Reading Response Part One Food Sovereignty Under this concept, and compared to the World Trade Organization proposals of ‘one size fits all’, Rosset (2008) posited that all countries and people are believed to have the right for formulating their own policies regarding their agriculture system, provided that such policies do not have negative effect on the third world countries. Rosset (2008) further states that Food sovereignty can help nations’ safeguard their local markets from other countries’ policies and practices. Under the paradigm of Food Sovereignty, it has been mentioned by Rosset (2008) that social movements, as well as an increasing number of both progressive and semi-progressive regimes, suggest the reregulation of the food product markets, which were specifically deregulated during neoliberalism. The paradigm also propose that such markets are regulated better as compared to how they were deregulated in the past, with open supply management, allowing setting of the prices that are fair to both consumers and farmers alike. In general, the people of the world are fed by peasants as well as family farmers, posits Rosset (2008). National and domestic food markets were first flooded with low-cost imports, and currently, after a large size of the market share has been captured by the transnational companies, the food imports prices that currently are relied by scores of countries have considerably increased. To sum up, Rosset posits that feeding the world has no real solution, and so countries should help force the changes in international as well as national public policy, which are needed urgently. Culinary Modernism Culinary Modernism according to Laudan (2001) had offered for all what was desired: food that could be processed and preserved, that was novel, fast, and industrial, the best food at affordable price. After the emergence of the modern food, Laudan (2001) asserts that people started growing stronger, taller, and the number of diseases reduced. In consequence, people lived many years. There were choices for men apart from the hard labour in agricultural fields. Failure to comprehend that the majority of individuals lacked choice but to dedicate their lives to both cooking and growing food, can result in the inability to understand that the Culinary Modernism foods offered people consummate choices not only of diet but also on how to make their lives valuable. Laudan (2001) claims that that the modern, fast food is a catastrophe as indicated in the magazines and newspapers, on TV culinary programs, as well as in award-winning cookbooks. Therefore, people are inconsiderately failing to understand the fact that the majority of the industrial foodstuffs are better. For instance, it impossible to produce a suave chocolate with a grindstone like that produced by industrial machines. Therefore, Laudan (2001) suggest that instead of running away from industrial foods, people should be clamouring for more industrial foods. The Politics of Palestinian Olive Oil As stated by Meneley (2011), the movement intended for supporting the production of the Palestinian olive oil by means of consumption practices has some similarity to other consumer movements utilised to effect political change. This is evidenced particularly by the sugar and rum boycott by slavery opponents as well as the boycott of food products from South African such as grapes and wines by the apartheid regime opponents. The above-mentioned boycott campaigns concentrated on the injustice and inhumanness of apartheid or slave economies for the persecuted, and so utilised the oppressed pain as a motive for boycotting such food commodities. Contrary to the above examples, the suffering and pain of the people of Palestine is considered the reason for consuming the Palestinian olive oil. Therefore, similar to scores of fair-trade products, the Palestinian olive oil fair-trade according to Meneley (2011) is offered as a substitute for agricultural products obtained through manipulative conditions. At one time, the olive harvest was of both celebration as well as communal hard work, but now it is attributed to fear and tension. In her observation, Meneley (2011) posits that the occupation political economy, have an effect on the Palestinian population everyday emotions. Punk Cuisine According to Clark (2004), punk cuisine as a shared system of praxis, it assists in articulating the politics purpose, and subcultural identity. The Seattle punks’ cuisine in late 20th century intended to critique consumerism, Whiteness, patriarchy, corporate capitalism, and ecological damage. As indicated by Clark (2004), being punk is a method of challenging hierarchies within the society and critiquing privileges. In general, the modern punks are motivated by revolution, which they comprehend as a lifestyle in support of environmentalism as well as egalitarianism and in opposition to chauvinism, racial discrimination, and corporate dominance. This ideology is exhibited in their approach to food, whereby scores of punks relate the ‘civilizing’ process of making and changing the food to the human nature domination as well as to corporate supremacy by White male. Punks, as noted by Clark (2004), deem that a person body is filled with rationales, norms, as well as the moral pollution of imperialism and corporate capitalism when they consume industrial foods. Therefore, food in the punk community serves to structure as well as elaborate ideologies concerning how the world operates. The punk cuisine is well conferred as a cultural mechanism answerable to its own rationality, and in discourse with what is perceived by punks as the normative culture. Real Belizean Food Wilk (1999) noted that in a world of continuous cultural contact, marketing, international media, as well as the diets’ change process appears to have hastened; however, the boundaries separating cultures are yet to fade. After materialisation of the notion of Belizean cuisine and Belizean restaurants turned to become a commonplace, the majority of persons have acknowledged that there was certainly a traditional as well as the national recipes lexicon. Actually, when Wilk (1999) was running around inquiring about Belizean food, he established that his own efforts advanced the acceptability to the national cuisine idea. A legitimate Belizean food category has emerged, and because the government desired to reduce food imports, it reluctantly supported a number of campaigns intended for promoting consumption as well as production of local foods with assistance from the Peace Corps and CARE. Belizean cafeterias in the U.S, public festivities, cookbooks, as well as in the luxurious foreign-owned hotels were all important phases where the Belizean food concept was experimented. Wilk (1999) claims that it is thought-provoking for majority of contemporary government to promote consumption of local foods, but significantly, the Belizean foods are currently touted as natural and fresh, contrasted with processed and preserved imports. Part Two The three favourite readings are ‘Punk Cuisine’ by Clark (2004), ‘Real Belizean Food’ by Wilk (1999), and ‘Culinary Modernism’ by Laudan (2001). Thanks to these three studies, I have learned how the food symbolic potential is powerful such that it is completely dominant to people sense of identity. I have also learned that eating patterns of a certain group does not put forth its collective identity and its wider hierarchy position. As stated by Clark (2004, p.23), gender/power relations is played out various social groups including the punks. This can be evidenced by the punk ethic, which has turned out to be more dedicated to revolutionary, democratic principles that practice and celebrate a social order that is an anti-hierarchical, which includes one prohibiting a gender hierarchy (Clark, 2004, p.23). Food has openly been critiqued by punk feminist praxis as a repression site, whereby Victorian age has been utilised as an instance of the discourse where female bodies have been disciplined through food. In this regard, I have learned that this discourse was partly promoted by pharmaceutical and capitalist food industries keen to generate novel products for both attractiveness as well as dieting. As indicated in Clark (2004, p.23) study, this discourse has been identified by feminists as a way of controlling women, which every so often leaves them half-starved, bulimic or anorexic, and obsessed with controlling their diets as well as shape of their body. But still, eating is not just guided by tradition and social norms and does not occur in the ordinary and routine practices of day-to-day life. From Wilk (1999) study, it is without doubt that older acculturation and modernization theories that had foretold an increasing Westernization and homogenization of the cultures in the world are laughable in the contemporary world that appears to produce continuously new diversities, new social as well as political divisions, and a multitude of novel fundamentalisms (Wilk, 1999, p.244). Scores of social scientists according to Wilk (1999) have indicated the renaissance of ethnicity and nationalism, and a number of them hold a view that fortified local identities are directly challenging globalised consumer culture diffusion. In view of this, so as to comprehend eating trends, it is imperative to understand the wider social context as well as its effect on the conditions through which people eat. Through Wilk (1999) study, I have learned that contemporary society has been theorised as a post-industrial society. Therefore, detraditionalisation, individualisation, as well as what seems to be the freedom of choice are frequently claimed to be at the centre of the modernisation, and more personalised and flexible lifestyle and work life are features of post-industrial societies. For instance, citing Clark (2004), punk cuisine was a way of making the punk concept understandable, edible and ritualized; a means of favouring the food from the less mediated anarchist over the industrial product. In view of this, it is apparent that contemporary American food has been converted into a cultural extreme, whereby a fetishized by-product is left behind after its origins in labour and nature were cooked away. Through Laudan (2001) study, I have came to realise that the ethnic food present in restaurants or cookbooks has widely been misunderstood. People allow their eyes to glide over the random references to overseas education in the purported ethnic cookbooks, to travel, and to servants, as well as references that should have clued them to the actuality that the provided recipes are those of monied Chinese, Indians, or Italians wherein maids do all the work of preparing the ostentatious dishes. People can mistake the contemporary Mexican, Asian, or European middle-class meals for peasant food. In my understanding, people from other cultures such as Southeast Asia and Mediterranean as pawns vulnerable to multinational companies determined on selling cheap contemporary products (Laudan, 2001, p.43). To sum up, I have learned that food is imperative for social life as well as for human survival, since it builds our physical bodies and also is closely related to cosmologies, world views, and cultural classifications, and as a consequence, to social identity. In view of the three studies, it has been proclaimed that food and eating are associated with sociality: they are a sign of togetherness. In this case, a meal is an indicator of social relations as well as ritualised food sharing. References Clark, D., 2004. The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine. ETHNOLOGY, vol. 43, no. 1, pp.19-31. Laudan, R., 2001. A Plea for Culinary Modernism: Why We Should Love New, Fast, Processed Food. Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, pp.36-44. Meneley, A., 2011. Blood, Sweat and Tears in a Bottle of Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. Food, Culture Society, vol. 14, no. 2, pp.275-92. Rosset, P., 2008. Food Sovereignty and the Contemporary Food Crisis. Development, vol. 51, no. 4, pp.460–63. Wilk, R.R., 1999. "Real Belizean Food": Building Local Identity in the Transnational Caribbean. American Anthropologist, vol. 101, no. 2, pp.244-55. Read More