I believe that it is time that I say a little about myself, who I am, and why I do what I do. First and foremost, I am a radical scholar-activist. I am currently in school at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing my PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. I am also a Southern white male, which places me in a very particular position to comment on social phenomena in the South from an insider's perspective. As a Southern white male, my first education was that of a white supremacist.
A point of order; while this is my personal story, I am not saying anything that people of color haven't been saying for centuries. 100 years ago, W.E.B. Dubois talked about the "psychological wage" of whiteness, which is essentially white privilege.
I learned early in life about white privilege, the structural characteristic of whiteness that causes whites to have an entitled approach to living and interacting with others. An example of white privilege is that whites believe that if one works hard and follows the rules, the system will provide benefits, a life, and a living to them. Of course, people who aren't white men recognize instantly that all manners of glass ceilings exist that impede this upward mobility, but this belief in upward mobility is a hallmark characteristic of whiteness and white privilege.
Back to my life. My earliest memories were from Fairfield, Alabama, an older industrial suburb of Birmingham. At 5, this area was transitioning from a white neighborhood to a black neighborhood, owing to white flight. My family was poor by any measure of income, but my parents put me in an all white private school because the black public schools were "bad." While the purported quality of schools may or may not have been true, what is undoubtedly true is that being put in private school was the first inculcation of my white privilege. Other instances from my life, further conditioned me to accept white privilege as both natural and the normal mode of living.
I began to defend that privilege vigorously at about 10 or 12 when I started to listen to conservative talk radio. I held Rush and Hannity to be among the most important prophets of the time, and even won caller of the day on Hannity's talk show when it was in Huntsville. The specific reason that I won caller of the day was because I railed agains the Black Coaches Association for defending athletic scholarships. I made some ridiculous comment that basically amounted to "whites are smarter than blacks," though it was highly coded, showing how at a young age I understood how to use racially coded language.
My racist racial theory began to fall apart when I entered the blue collar world, where for the first time I was really exposed to black people. Most of this transformation was non-conscious as I started to assimilate new information. I entered the blue collar world because I refused to go to college, much to my parents dismay. There I saw blacks in much the same position as myself, struggling to survive on meager incomes. The work was long, brutal, and oppressive.
My new anti-racist perspective arose out of my engagement with anthropology after abandoning my blue collar career for an opportunity in higher education. Through anthropology I learned the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that one's culture must be judged by its own criteria. I began to try to understand others around me from their own perspective and even looked back to my experiences as an auto mechanic and warehouse worker with new-found clarity. The anti-racist perspective began to crystallize in graduate school when I was introduced to different aspects of critical race theory.
My rudimentary understanding of the anti-racist perspective basically entailed the mainstream liberal solution to racial animosity - that everything can be solved by constructing a diverse community. While this is a start, it still entails one of the hallmarks of whiteness - universalism. When whites talk about community, they do so from a perspective that entails adoption of their colorblind values. However, colorblindness is in itself a racist ideology in that it denies the real differences in history and experiences between whites and people of color. As I learned to recognize those differences, I saw that constructing a community isn't enough, it must be the construction of a community underpinned by anti-racism, the belief that our society, and even global society, is organized unequally on the basis of race, and to actively work in one's everyday life against that inequality. This entails as much fighting our own individual racist demons as it does reaching out to try to change the world around you. The two are mutually determined.
I've learned that I still have white privilege in spite of my desire for that to disappear. I've learned that I'm still a racist in spite of the fact I don't want to be. And I've learned that this is all a result of white supremacy, the name of this organizing system. To change this system, we must first fight white supremacy within ourselves and then reach out to the world to share that fight with others. This is how change happens.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
White Heroes, Racial Purity, and the Media
A previous version of this blog post stated that no blacks were interviewed. This was incorrect, as Mark Bowen is African American. The error was regrettable.
Apologies to my few readers for not posting sooner, but I'm 5 of 6 chapters down on my dissertation and we have a paper ready for publication. I have been working.
But, something caught my eye today: an article in Grist on local food in Alabama. I found this to be amazing piece that really captures how whiteness is reproduced in the media.
First of all, one of those interviewed and none of the organizations covered are black. This gives one the impression that local food is a solely white affair in Alabama. But, this is clearly not true.
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which saves black land and organizes mostly black cooperatives of small family farmers, has been in operation since 1967, and grew out of the Civil Rights Movement. Alabama has not one, but two HBCU agricultural universities, Tuskegee and Alabama A&M. So, clearly the fight for the small farm has been in existence far longer than Jones Valley Urban Farm, the Front Porch Revival, or Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network. In a fine example of how whiteness distorts reality, a fight that has been led for over forty years by black-run organizations is transformed into a fight led by trendy white heroes.
Furthermore, the claim that somehow the white side of the local food movement doesn't appeal to the white bourgeois is suspect at best.
Food has always been a way to affirm and reproduce identity. During Jim Crow, food practices acted as a way to reproduce white racial purity. In her dissertation To Live and Dine in Dixie: Foodways and Culture in the Twentieth Century South, Angela Jill Cooley argues that because food was ingested and literally became to body of the consumer, it was strictly policed by racial mores. Eating the right food was paramount to reproducing a healthy, pure, white body, and therefore part and parcel to the culture of Jim Crow.
Today's healthy lifestyle justification for local food is a similar purity narrative. Propagated by elites and cultural producers, healthy lifestyle similarly reproduces white purity by relegating alternative food practices to marginal status. As one member of the Health Action Partnership stated to me, "even when (black) people have access to good food, they don't know how to cook it. They cook it with too much oil, and it cooks all the nutrients out of it."
The healthy lifestyle argument for local food is more about reproducing the status of those consuming it than about the actual health of the consumers. (One thinks of the numerous fundraising dinners with Frank Stitt or Chris Dupount and how their highly unhealthy food all of the sudden becomes healthy because it is fine dining). Under both Jim Crow and modern food ways, the "pure food" is backed by the perceived legitimacy and objectivity of science, with whites using science to validate their foodways as objectively superior. The white side of the local food movement, with its overarching focus on health and purity, is absolutely an elitist endeavor. (I love how they talk about it not being elitist and then talk about Frank Stitt and Chris Hastings as the "original local food revolutionaries" three paragraphs later.) Anyone who argues otherwise is selling something.
So what does all this mean? Well, it means that there are deep racial divisions within the local food movement, divisions that are reproduced by media outlets, and which are reflected in the broader culture. There are divisions in the local food movement because there are divisions in the local culture.
What can be done about it? One thing is to hold media outlets like Grist accountable for their product. What Grist did was simply lazy, but it had the unfortunate quality of marginalizing the groups that have led the fight for the small farm for decades.
Another thing that can be done is to host anti-racist workshops like the one Magic City Agriculture Project is hosting beginning next week and continuing for six months. This Allies training will focus on cultivating resistance to white supremacy and building community around this resistance.
Apologies to my few readers for not posting sooner, but I'm 5 of 6 chapters down on my dissertation and we have a paper ready for publication. I have been working.
But, something caught my eye today: an article in Grist on local food in Alabama. I found this to be amazing piece that really captures how whiteness is reproduced in the media.
First of all, one of those interviewed and none of the organizations covered are black. This gives one the impression that local food is a solely white affair in Alabama. But, this is clearly not true.
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which saves black land and organizes mostly black cooperatives of small family farmers, has been in operation since 1967, and grew out of the Civil Rights Movement. Alabama has not one, but two HBCU agricultural universities, Tuskegee and Alabama A&M. So, clearly the fight for the small farm has been in existence far longer than Jones Valley Urban Farm, the Front Porch Revival, or Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network. In a fine example of how whiteness distorts reality, a fight that has been led for over forty years by black-run organizations is transformed into a fight led by trendy white heroes.
Furthermore, the claim that somehow the white side of the local food movement doesn't appeal to the white bourgeois is suspect at best.
Food has always been a way to affirm and reproduce identity. During Jim Crow, food practices acted as a way to reproduce white racial purity. In her dissertation To Live and Dine in Dixie: Foodways and Culture in the Twentieth Century South, Angela Jill Cooley argues that because food was ingested and literally became to body of the consumer, it was strictly policed by racial mores. Eating the right food was paramount to reproducing a healthy, pure, white body, and therefore part and parcel to the culture of Jim Crow.
Today's healthy lifestyle justification for local food is a similar purity narrative. Propagated by elites and cultural producers, healthy lifestyle similarly reproduces white purity by relegating alternative food practices to marginal status. As one member of the Health Action Partnership stated to me, "even when (black) people have access to good food, they don't know how to cook it. They cook it with too much oil, and it cooks all the nutrients out of it."
The healthy lifestyle argument for local food is more about reproducing the status of those consuming it than about the actual health of the consumers. (One thinks of the numerous fundraising dinners with Frank Stitt or Chris Dupount and how their highly unhealthy food all of the sudden becomes healthy because it is fine dining). Under both Jim Crow and modern food ways, the "pure food" is backed by the perceived legitimacy and objectivity of science, with whites using science to validate their foodways as objectively superior. The white side of the local food movement, with its overarching focus on health and purity, is absolutely an elitist endeavor. (I love how they talk about it not being elitist and then talk about Frank Stitt and Chris Hastings as the "original local food revolutionaries" three paragraphs later.) Anyone who argues otherwise is selling something.
So what does all this mean? Well, it means that there are deep racial divisions within the local food movement, divisions that are reproduced by media outlets, and which are reflected in the broader culture. There are divisions in the local food movement because there are divisions in the local culture.
What can be done about it? One thing is to hold media outlets like Grist accountable for their product. What Grist did was simply lazy, but it had the unfortunate quality of marginalizing the groups that have led the fight for the small farm for decades.
Another thing that can be done is to host anti-racist workshops like the one Magic City Agriculture Project is hosting beginning next week and continuing for six months. This Allies training will focus on cultivating resistance to white supremacy and building community around this resistance.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Birmingham enters the 1980s: Gentrification, Hipsters, and the New Middle Class
I recently attended the PostScript blog launch party at 55th Place in Woodlawn. The event was well attended by Birmingham's cadre of hipsters and showcased musical talent from across the country.
What is so interesting about the event is that while almost all of the attendees were white, 70% of the neighborhood of Woodlawn is black. This immediately raises interesting questions like why are whites drawn to an event in a black neighborhood? What are the promoters of such an event trying to accomplish by hosting a trendy event in a black neighborhood? And why did blacks not attend the event?
The crux of the answers to these questions lie in the idea of taste. Bourdieu argued that taste is socially constructed by struggles among the upper classes over what is legitimate. In other words, art considered beautiful, food considered delicious, and books considered profound are not so because of their inherent quality but because of the struggles of taste-makers over these works. Gentrification, or the return of whites to inner city neighborhoods, is a similar field of struggle. Young, trendy, up-and-coming individuals struggle to produce a neighborhood as a trendy (or tasteful) destination by hosting events like the one I attended Sunday night. They work to remake the neighborhood in their image, and the desire here is for Woodlawn to become an artists hub. But this is not the end of the story.
Main Street Birmingham has worked tirelessly to remake Woodlawn in this image. They have promoted 55 Place Arts which is next door to Main Street Birmingham's main office. They have promoted local food in stores in the neighborhood, and they have marketed the area as a magnet for arts and entertainment - consumption-side development. Gentrification requires both the trendy hipsters willing to invest time and money into the neighborhood and government or quasi-government institutions backing neighborhood transformation.
All this seems well and good. A depressed neighborhood receives investment, whites move into the neighborhood, schools get better, jobs are created, and everybody lives happily ever after. However, what this story doesn't tell is that the people who pay the costs of this development are blacks, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for years. In 2000, Woodlawn was 77 percent black and 17 percent white with populations of 9,657 and 2,086 respectively. In 2010, Woodlawn was 72 percent black and 23 percent white with populations of 8,284 and 2,656 respectively. Woodlawn lost almost 1400 black residents during the past ten years, meaning that many blacks were displaced by the white invasion, rising property values, and rising property taxes associated with gentrification. So while a Sunday night meeting of hipsters in a black neighborhood seems innocent enough, it is part of a larger process with dire consequences for blacks and black communities.
What is so interesting about the event is that while almost all of the attendees were white, 70% of the neighborhood of Woodlawn is black. This immediately raises interesting questions like why are whites drawn to an event in a black neighborhood? What are the promoters of such an event trying to accomplish by hosting a trendy event in a black neighborhood? And why did blacks not attend the event?
The crux of the answers to these questions lie in the idea of taste. Bourdieu argued that taste is socially constructed by struggles among the upper classes over what is legitimate. In other words, art considered beautiful, food considered delicious, and books considered profound are not so because of their inherent quality but because of the struggles of taste-makers over these works. Gentrification, or the return of whites to inner city neighborhoods, is a similar field of struggle. Young, trendy, up-and-coming individuals struggle to produce a neighborhood as a trendy (or tasteful) destination by hosting events like the one I attended Sunday night. They work to remake the neighborhood in their image, and the desire here is for Woodlawn to become an artists hub. But this is not the end of the story.
Main Street Birmingham has worked tirelessly to remake Woodlawn in this image. They have promoted 55 Place Arts which is next door to Main Street Birmingham's main office. They have promoted local food in stores in the neighborhood, and they have marketed the area as a magnet for arts and entertainment - consumption-side development. Gentrification requires both the trendy hipsters willing to invest time and money into the neighborhood and government or quasi-government institutions backing neighborhood transformation.
All this seems well and good. A depressed neighborhood receives investment, whites move into the neighborhood, schools get better, jobs are created, and everybody lives happily ever after. However, what this story doesn't tell is that the people who pay the costs of this development are blacks, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for years. In 2000, Woodlawn was 77 percent black and 17 percent white with populations of 9,657 and 2,086 respectively. In 2010, Woodlawn was 72 percent black and 23 percent white with populations of 8,284 and 2,656 respectively. Woodlawn lost almost 1400 black residents during the past ten years, meaning that many blacks were displaced by the white invasion, rising property values, and rising property taxes associated with gentrification. So while a Sunday night meeting of hipsters in a black neighborhood seems innocent enough, it is part of a larger process with dire consequences for blacks and black communities.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The Birmingham-Jefferson Food Policy Council: New Opportunities, part 2
Birmingham-Jefferson Food Policy Council Formed
The preceding article appeared today, two days after my blog post on the BJFPC. I am assuming that it is at least in part a response to this post. The article basically states that the committee that chose the council took into account race and made a push for diversity, and that the agenda for the council is to address food deserts. I will address both topics beginning with the agenda for the council.
The council has not had a formal meeting (a retreat, but no official meeting, the first one is in March, tentatively) and therefore has had no opportunity to form an agenda. If the agenda is formed by the Health Action Partnership, this diminishes the council's independence and autonomy. With all the new faces at the table, the council must be given time to form its own agenda, seeking input from throughout Jefferson County. If not, it will just be the policy arm of the HAP and not representative of the larger community. If the council choses to address food deserts, it should do so independently, drawing from multiple perspectives and multiple social locations.
What I would really like to address is race. Let's be plain. While the HAP may have worked to be inclusive of different races and class positions, it did not succeed in creating a racially and economically diverse body of people. The group is overwhelmingly white and professional. This in and of itself need not impede action, but the members of the council are going to have to think long and hard about their social position in a place as segregated and unequal as Jefferson County. To the point, the council should not devise interventions without the partnership of the communities in which these interventions will take place. Showing up at these communities with grand plans to solve big problems is likely to meet with skepticism and mistrust, as there is a long history of white dominated organizations promising the moon and delivering little. Furthermore, the interventions designed by the white dominated BJFPC will likely be inappropriate without the input of the communities that are targeted. The BJFPC, if it is to be successful, must refrain from developing agendas and programs without first doing the arduous work of listening to the communities targeted by these programs. In other words, programs must be developed in partnership.
Finally, white people going into food desert neighborhoods, which are mostly black, to save them from a broken food system fairly wreaks of a missionary mentality. Whites must understand that they are in a privileged social position vis-a-vis blacks and must wrestle with what this means and how this affects their interpretation of reality. This is why listening is really hard work. Whites not only have to listen to the words that blacks have to say, but also must understand their perspective, where they are coming from, requiring one to really step outside oneself to see how society distributes benefits and disadvantages solely based on race.
I want to reiterate that I am engaging in this dialogue because I want the Food Policy Council to work and work well. I hold no ill will towards whites or members of the Health Action Partnership. I would like for this discussion to continue in hopes that we can adequately address food system issues.
The preceding article appeared today, two days after my blog post on the BJFPC. I am assuming that it is at least in part a response to this post. The article basically states that the committee that chose the council took into account race and made a push for diversity, and that the agenda for the council is to address food deserts. I will address both topics beginning with the agenda for the council.
The council has not had a formal meeting (a retreat, but no official meeting, the first one is in March, tentatively) and therefore has had no opportunity to form an agenda. If the agenda is formed by the Health Action Partnership, this diminishes the council's independence and autonomy. With all the new faces at the table, the council must be given time to form its own agenda, seeking input from throughout Jefferson County. If not, it will just be the policy arm of the HAP and not representative of the larger community. If the council choses to address food deserts, it should do so independently, drawing from multiple perspectives and multiple social locations.
What I would really like to address is race. Let's be plain. While the HAP may have worked to be inclusive of different races and class positions, it did not succeed in creating a racially and economically diverse body of people. The group is overwhelmingly white and professional. This in and of itself need not impede action, but the members of the council are going to have to think long and hard about their social position in a place as segregated and unequal as Jefferson County. To the point, the council should not devise interventions without the partnership of the communities in which these interventions will take place. Showing up at these communities with grand plans to solve big problems is likely to meet with skepticism and mistrust, as there is a long history of white dominated organizations promising the moon and delivering little. Furthermore, the interventions designed by the white dominated BJFPC will likely be inappropriate without the input of the communities that are targeted. The BJFPC, if it is to be successful, must refrain from developing agendas and programs without first doing the arduous work of listening to the communities targeted by these programs. In other words, programs must be developed in partnership.
Finally, white people going into food desert neighborhoods, which are mostly black, to save them from a broken food system fairly wreaks of a missionary mentality. Whites must understand that they are in a privileged social position vis-a-vis blacks and must wrestle with what this means and how this affects their interpretation of reality. This is why listening is really hard work. Whites not only have to listen to the words that blacks have to say, but also must understand their perspective, where they are coming from, requiring one to really step outside oneself to see how society distributes benefits and disadvantages solely based on race.
I want to reiterate that I am engaging in this dialogue because I want the Food Policy Council to work and work well. I hold no ill will towards whites or members of the Health Action Partnership. I would like for this discussion to continue in hopes that we can adequately address food system issues.
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Birmingham-Jefferson Food Policy Council: New Opportunities
I apologize for ignoring this blog for so long. Since October, I've starting writing my dissertation, and most of my writing energy is taken up there.
I do, however, want to weigh in on the creation of a new food policy council, a process which I have observed rigorously and hopefully played a minor role. The food policy council is a great idea and I sincerely hope for its success. FPCs tend to run the gambit from completely independent of any government entity to completely run by departments of health. The BJFPC is a public-private partnership, which bodes well for both independent thinking and actually influencing policy, provided it doesn't devolve into gridlock.
As the agenda is not set, I wanted to provide some directions for the food policy council to take in hopes to that it will contribute to a more robust, diverse discussion of the food system in Jefferson County.
1. While the food policy council pulls from a diverse cross section of the food system, it lacks racial and class diversity. Only 5 of the 21 members are people of color and all of the members are professionals - it lacks representation from the working class. Because of this, the council will be significantly limited in perspective. To rectify this, the council must develop a strong relationship with the neighborhood associations in Birmingham and with black church leaders throughout the region. It also must adopt anti-racism as a stated goal.
2. The largest problem facing urban farms and community gardens in the region is lack of funding. Few national foundations fund urban agriculture programs, and local funding is a very small with many feeding at the trough. The council must devise programs that can be passed by local municipalities that will help fund these struggling farms. Most of these farms and gardens are trying to provide green jobs in areas that have little employment opportunity, which can be an important selling point to local politicians.
3. One way to fund such a program would be the creation of a soda tax. A rough estimate of revenues from a one cent soda tax in Jefferson County is 25 million dollars. This would be more than enough to fund urban agriculture and recycling, both dire needs in the region. Developing robust ties to low-income and communities of color would be even more imperative, given that pushing a soda tax would be initially unpopular.
And here are the things that it should not do:
1. The focus on health falls on deaf ears for many in the region. I have critiqued the discussion of obesity in a previous blog and I believe this to be a highly depoliticized and extremely problematic approach to the food movement. Everyday people in Jefferson County's communities are focused on getting grocery stores and creating employment, not on issues that demean their body-type and lifestyle. The obesity discussion is unfortunately highly evangelical.
2. The BJFPC should also avoid solely focusing on creating profitable markets for rural farmers, though this is important. Jefferson County is largely an urban county and the BJFPC should reflect the needs of an urban county. While delivering fresh, healthy food is important, job creation is more important. The fastest way to get someone to eat better is to give them a job or a better job.
3. And please, please abandon any discussion of food labeling. It costs money, has virtually no effect, and shows a very rudimentary view on how to change behaviors.
I sincerely hope that my suggestions don't fall on deaf ears, and I wish the BJFPC the best of success in the future.
I do, however, want to weigh in on the creation of a new food policy council, a process which I have observed rigorously and hopefully played a minor role. The food policy council is a great idea and I sincerely hope for its success. FPCs tend to run the gambit from completely independent of any government entity to completely run by departments of health. The BJFPC is a public-private partnership, which bodes well for both independent thinking and actually influencing policy, provided it doesn't devolve into gridlock.
As the agenda is not set, I wanted to provide some directions for the food policy council to take in hopes to that it will contribute to a more robust, diverse discussion of the food system in Jefferson County.
1. While the food policy council pulls from a diverse cross section of the food system, it lacks racial and class diversity. Only 5 of the 21 members are people of color and all of the members are professionals - it lacks representation from the working class. Because of this, the council will be significantly limited in perspective. To rectify this, the council must develop a strong relationship with the neighborhood associations in Birmingham and with black church leaders throughout the region. It also must adopt anti-racism as a stated goal.
2. The largest problem facing urban farms and community gardens in the region is lack of funding. Few national foundations fund urban agriculture programs, and local funding is a very small with many feeding at the trough. The council must devise programs that can be passed by local municipalities that will help fund these struggling farms. Most of these farms and gardens are trying to provide green jobs in areas that have little employment opportunity, which can be an important selling point to local politicians.
3. One way to fund such a program would be the creation of a soda tax. A rough estimate of revenues from a one cent soda tax in Jefferson County is 25 million dollars. This would be more than enough to fund urban agriculture and recycling, both dire needs in the region. Developing robust ties to low-income and communities of color would be even more imperative, given that pushing a soda tax would be initially unpopular.
And here are the things that it should not do:
1. The focus on health falls on deaf ears for many in the region. I have critiqued the discussion of obesity in a previous blog and I believe this to be a highly depoliticized and extremely problematic approach to the food movement. Everyday people in Jefferson County's communities are focused on getting grocery stores and creating employment, not on issues that demean their body-type and lifestyle. The obesity discussion is unfortunately highly evangelical.
2. The BJFPC should also avoid solely focusing on creating profitable markets for rural farmers, though this is important. Jefferson County is largely an urban county and the BJFPC should reflect the needs of an urban county. While delivering fresh, healthy food is important, job creation is more important. The fastest way to get someone to eat better is to give them a job or a better job.
3. And please, please abandon any discussion of food labeling. It costs money, has virtually no effect, and shows a very rudimentary view on how to change behaviors.
I sincerely hope that my suggestions don't fall on deaf ears, and I wish the BJFPC the best of success in the future.
Monday, October 3, 2011
A review of Weighing In (Julie Guthman, UC Press, 2011)
As anyone in the food movement can tell you, obesity has become the singular issue of the movement. In her new book Weighing In, geographer Julie Guthman of the University of California, Santa Cruz, sets her sights squarely on the singularity of this issue, arguing that "Those who want to redress the problem [of obesity] put a great deal of effort into educating people to make better choices rather than into reforming the policies that allow bad food to be produced or mitigating the consequences for those harmed."
She does not stop there. She goes on to lambast BMI (body mass index) as a blunt instrument and to skewer obesity alleviation programs that focus too much on individual choice. Guthman argues that something called "healthism" - the attachment of a moral or ethical component to decisions made regarding health, and especially food - has turned the food movement into a sort of evangelical effort to influence the lifestyle of individuals. That lifestyle, Guthman argues, will have very little effect on obesity, because the most likely culprit for the increase in obesity is not overeating and lack of exercise, but obesogens - environmental toxins and other substances thought to cause obesity by disrupting the endocrine system and stimulating estrogen production.
Her arguments hold together thus far; it is convincing that individual choice is much too central in the food movement today, particularly with the dearth of policy oriented work, and her arguments for environmental obesogens are backed by convincing evidence. However, her assertion that the creation of alternative food institutions should be abandoned in favor of policy and anti-capitalist work rings of the ivory tower, a quality unfortunate in much Marxist critique.
While Guthman is correct to attempt to move the food movement away from individual choice and towards more traditional social movement interventions, she fails to see the wisdom in creating the alternative institutions necessary to replace capitalist agriculture. Both anti-capitalist and policy work need to be a central focus of the food movement, because the institutional context in which food is produced creates obesogens and other types of toxic food. Guthman gets this right. However, it is also necessary to create an alternative institutional context that can eventually replace the existing ones. Together, these are the creation and destruction of social change.
Guthman's book is a necessary read for anyone in the food movement. It tackles the cutting edge questions of the day, undermines much of the institutionalization (and probably co-optation) of the local food movement, and provides a strong anti-capitalist vision for the future of the movement. Hers is a timely and profound voice calling the movement back to its justice-oriented roots. Listen to her.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Bittman Misses the Mark
New York Times columnist Mark Bittman unfortunately misses the point when he argues that healthy food is in fact less expensive the unhealthy food. His solution, that all that needs to change is the consumer culture surrounding food, privileges consumer activism over more substantial interventions such as changing production systems or the farm bill. Bittman is arguing, like most bourgeoisie, that all we need for food outcomes to change is for the poor to adopt the culture of the middle class and wealthy. This disavows bearers of this "legitimate culture" from any responsibility for food systems change, placing the onus squarely on the shoulders of the poor.
Bourdieu has shown that the poor and working people develop a taste for necessity. The most basic foods that are high in salt, sugars, and fats are the easiest to prepare and the most readily accessible; therefore, working class food culture emerges around the consumption and preparation of this sort of food. This culture is a function of the social position of the bearer of working class culture.
The best and most lasting way to change the food practices associated with working class culture is to change the social position of the bearer of that culture. In other words, wealth and prestige are far more important in transforming unhealthy food practices than somehow getting the poor to change their culture. Culture does not change in the manner that Bittman proposes - it changes in concert with changes in the social structure; also, it is quite patronizing to tell poor and working people how to eat.
What should be the focus instead is the creation of an urban food system in so-called food deserts that will increase incomes and remove the stigma of poor and working people. People's culture will then change as a result, becoming congruent with a food system that produces both good jobs and healthy food.
Bourdieu has shown that the poor and working people develop a taste for necessity. The most basic foods that are high in salt, sugars, and fats are the easiest to prepare and the most readily accessible; therefore, working class food culture emerges around the consumption and preparation of this sort of food. This culture is a function of the social position of the bearer of working class culture.
The best and most lasting way to change the food practices associated with working class culture is to change the social position of the bearer of that culture. In other words, wealth and prestige are far more important in transforming unhealthy food practices than somehow getting the poor to change their culture. Culture does not change in the manner that Bittman proposes - it changes in concert with changes in the social structure; also, it is quite patronizing to tell poor and working people how to eat.
What should be the focus instead is the creation of an urban food system in so-called food deserts that will increase incomes and remove the stigma of poor and working people. People's culture will then change as a result, becoming congruent with a food system that produces both good jobs and healthy food.
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