Syllabus


Geographies of Food and Farming

GEO/ESC 470/570

Spring semester 2012   2:15-3:40 Centennial 2102

Rachel Slocum


Office: 2024 Cowley Hall                   
Phone: 608.785.8335                                     
rslocum[at]uwlax.edu
Office hours: Tuesday/Thursday 1-2 and Wednesday 4-5:30 or by appointment.
Virtual office hours Mondays and Fridays









Food is increasingly in the global spotlight and, simultaneously, remains stuck in the realm of the prosaic—a place typically tended by women. We can follow food through globalized commodity routes, stopping along the way to consider the power of taste, food justice politics, invisible labor and ecological mayhem. At one scale the climate is threatened by our eating and growing habits and at another we inflict untold misery on pigs, chickens and cattle. In this globalized food system, who benefits? Who loses? In a localized one, would producing and eating be more fair? At the societal level, food is central to the “creation and maintenance of social relationships, [serving] both to solidify group membership and to set groups apart” (Mintz and Du Bois, 2002, 109).  Women are told that a good mother cooks “with love from scratch” (Oliver 2009 cited in Slocum et al 2010), but is it possible that “a family that eats together soon breaks up” (Probyn 2000, 38)? Do you finish one meal and immediately think about what you’re going to eat at the next one? Many do—but for different reasons. We love food—after all it is “more fundamental than sex…in the life of the individual organism…”(Richards, 1932, quoted in Mintz 1985). What is the geography of inequality and food? In the US we talk about food swamps—nutrition apartheid—where only processed fatty food can be bought while in Haiti, women sell ‘cakes’ of two parts mud, one part flour not to trick people but because that’s all there is (Carroll 2008). Through food we can understand society from the body to the world and back.
This course is taught in the College of Science and Health, serving as an option for students in the geography major and nutrition minor. Because of the emphasis on the physical and biological sciences in these two programs, it is important to make explicit that the foundational premises of the course come out of human geography which is, today, keenly interested in questions of identity, power, inequality and social change. For students taking this course to meet degree requirements in the health fields, it is essential to understand the following. First, we will not be studying food as something that is first and foremost defined by its nutritional qualities. This ‘nutritionism’ (Pollan 2008, Scrinis 2008) is an obsession that reduces food to its nutrients in the service of developing ‘healthy’ bodies. Second, though geography is greatly concerned about the environmental aspects and impacts of food production, distribution and consumption, the study of food must include a thorough exploration of the costs of our present food system on human life.  Third, I recognize that many students have been well schooled in the twin terrors of ‘choice’ and ‘education’ as solutions to food problems of today. The course will ask students to become completely familiar with concepts and supporting research that reveal how societal structures rather than a lack of good choices or sufficient knowledge are at the root of present day ills such as diet related disease and malnutrition.  These systemic processes include gender, race and class inequalities, capitalism and neoliberalism, present day geopolitical power and historical events like colonialism.

Required Readings:  There is no text for the course. Instead you are responsible for downloading and reading chapters posted on d2l. Please do the readings before the first day of class of each week unless I tell you otherwise. All readings should be printed and brought to class unless you want to read them on your laptop. 



Project: You will undertake a project where you will do research and analysis useful to those working in support of food change in the La Crosse area.

Objectives and Learning Outcomes: The goal of the course is to provide students with theoretical concepts and methodological tools that comprise a human geography perspective on food and farming.
`         Students will be able to define, describe, explain and apply terms, concepts and theories of human geography to questions of food and farming verbally and in writing.
`         Students will become familiar with the following ideas and efforts that are required of an educated person in the 21st century: food, identity and inequality (class, race, gender); global trends in farming such as the green revolution, the new green revolution, agricultural subsidies, organic, slavery, fair trade, food sovereignty and land grabs; food insecurity and hunger—why it happens and what to do about it; local food advocacy: strengths and weaknesses; the relationship between climate change, farming and eating; among others
`         Outcomes to be measured through exams, participation and a research project.

Expectations

å     Read required readings before the first day of class each week. Print copies of the readings and bring them with you (or use your laptop). Take notes on the readings and be prepared to discuss
å     Attend all classes unless excused for sickness or emergency. If you are absent more than once without a legitimate excuse (proof required), your participation grade drops a grade and continues to do so for each absence.
å     Contribute constructively in every class and make an effort
å     Submit all assignments on time

Grading:

`         2 exams: 30%
`         Participation: 25%
`    Participation in class
`    Blog contributions
`         Project/Paper: 30%
`         Poster/presentation: 15%

Plagiarism will result in an F for the course.

Academic Misconduct: Representing others’ ideas and knowledge as your own is plagiarism. Plagiarism or cheating in any form will result in an F for the course, and may include harsher sanctions. Please read the code available on the university web site and be sure to understand it.
Academic misconduct is an act in which a student:

(a) Seeks to claim credit for the work or efforts of another without authorization or citation;

(b) Uses unauthorized materials or fabricated data in any academic exercise;

(c) Forges or falsifies academic documents or records;

(d) Intentionally impedes or damages the academic work of others;

(e) Engages in conduct aimed at making false representation of a student's academic performance;
(f) Submits the same paper to satisfy course requirements for two courses
(g) Purchases a paper to satisfy course requirements
(h) Assists other students in any of these acts.

Disability Access

Any student with a documented disability (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, or hearing) who needs to arrange reasonable accommodations must contact the instructor and the Disability Resource Services Office (165 Murphy Library) at the beginning of the semester. Students who are currently using the Disability Resource Services office will have a copy of a contract on file in the Disability Resource Services office that verifies that they are qualified students with disabilities. 


Schedule


Introducing the course

These readings introduce a few of the big food problems (Roberts and Patel) and one route toward social change (Guthman) before we begin conceptually unpacking the multi-faceted subject of food and society, a subject that cannot be reduced to mere problems and solutions.

Week 1  January 24-26


Roberts, Paul. 2008. The end of food. New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Prologue, pp. ix-xxvi

Patel, Raj. 2008. Stuffed and starved: the hidden battle for the world food system. New York, Melville House. Introduction pp. 1-19

Guthman, Julie. 2004. Agrarian Dreams. Berkeley, University of California Press. Ch. 8, The Agrarian Answer, pp. 172-185
Ideally we would move from these three readings to a discussion of the past and present of the global food system (see later in the course). However, the selections that follow will better prepare you for beginning the research project.

Identity and eating: race and class

Food and identity is a key theme of theoretical analysis and empirical research across the social sciences and humanities. These readings explore the relationship between food and class as well as race identities.

Week 2  Jan. 31, Feb. 2

Distinction: food, class and status

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Pages:

Johnston, Josee and Shyon Baumann. 2009. Foodies: democracy and distinction in the gourmet foodscape. New York, Routledge. Introduction. Pp 1-30

Myers, B.R. The moral crusade against foodies: gluttony dressed up as foodie-ism is still gluttony. 2011. The Atlantic. March, pp. 1-7.

Week 3 February 7-9

Race, food and identity

Cook, Ian et al. (2008) Geographies of food: mixing. Progress in Human Geography 32(6): 821–833.
Slocum, Rachel. 2010. Race in the study of food. Progress in Human Geography. 35(3) pages 303-314 (up to Racial Embodiment and Alimentary Identities) and 319-320 (Concluding comments).


Food Revolution?

Most of the academic literature finds that the alternative food (local food) movement promotes neoliberal policies and implicitly supports existing gender, race and class hierarchies. Steve Striffler (see Meat below) puts it this way: he comes upon a river and sees babies floating down it and lots of people trying to pull them out. No one is walking upstream to stop whoever is putting the babies in the river.

Week 4 February 14-16

Race and class in the imaginaries and practices of alternative food
Readings to be divided among class members

Slocum, Rachel, Jerry Shannon, Valentine Cadieux, and Matthew Beckman. 2011. ‘With love, from scratch’: Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Radical History Review. 110: 178-191.
Guthman J (2008a) ‘If they only knew’: colorblindness and universalism in California alternative food institutions. The Professional Geographer 60: 387-397. Or
Guthman J (2008b) Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative food practice. Cultural Geographies 15(4): 431-447.
Allen P, Fitzsimmons M, Goodman M, and Warner K (2003) Shifting plates in the agrifood landscape: the tectonics of alternative agrifood initiatives in California. Journal of Rural Studies 19: 61-75.

Week 5 Feb. 21-23

Nutrition apartheid and the geography of obesity

Herrick C (2008) To the west and east of Interstate-35: obesity, philanthropic entrepreneurialism, and the delineation of risk in Austin, Texas. Environment and Planning A 40: 2715-2733.
Short, Anne, Julie Guthman and Samuel Raskin. 2007. Food deserts, oases or mirages? small markets and community food security in the San Francisco Bay area” Journal of Planning Education and Research 26, p. 352-364.
Drewnowski, Adam and Anne Barratt-Fornell 2004 “Do healthier diets cost more?” Nutrition Today 39:4 (July/August): 161-168.
Kurtz, Hilda. Forthcoming. Linking food deserts and racial segregation: challenges and limitations. In Geographies of race and food: fields, bodies, markets. Rachel Slocum and Arun Saldanha (eds).


Due February 28: Undergrad creativity event abstracts

Week 6  Feb. 28-March 1

Will men do the canning? Gender and local food

Devault, Marjorie. 2008. “Conflict and Deference,” (Ch. 16) in Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. New York: Routledge, Second Edition p. 240-258.
Deutsch, Tracey. 2011. Memories of mothers in the kitchen: local foods, history and women’s work. Radical History Review. 110: 167-177
Kingsolver, Barbara. 2007. Animal, vegetable, miracle. New York, Harper Collins. Ch. 1 Called Home, pp. 1-22, Ch. 9, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Late June pp. 124-147

Hunger present and future

After break we’re moving into the question of how hungry places have been produced by colonialism, capitalism and recent policy innovations. We link present day responses to food insecurity (food banks, food stamps) to the discussion about social inequality.  And we look briefly at a future with climate change and higher fuel costs.

Week 7 March 6-8

Responses and future threats to food insecurity
Climate change and food: TBA
Poppendieck, Janet. 1998. Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement. New York, Viking. Pp.

Week 8 March 11-17 Spring break


The Global Food System

Explores the historical shift from family farms to industrial agriculture, from seed sharing to Green Revolution hybrids to genetically modified organisms (GMO) and from ‘better living through chemistry’ to industrial organics.  Covers the ecological, social and economic impacts that have accompanied the changes in how we grow and prepare food.

Week 9 March 20-22

Global grain, papayas and green beans
Cook, Ian. 2004. Follow the thing: papaya. Antipode 36(4): 642–664.
Freidberg, Susanne 2004. French beans and food scares: culture and commerce in an anxious age. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Ch. 1 The Global Green Bean and Other Tales of Madness, pp. 1-31.
Kaufman, Frederick. 2010. The food bubble: how Wall Street starved millions and got away with it. Harper’s Magazine. July, 26-34.
Pollan, Michael. 2006. The omnivore’s dilemma, New York, Penguin Press. The Farm

 

Week 10 March 27-29

Colonialism to the Green Revolution to the new Green Revolution
Dan Rather: Trouble on the Land (film)

Davis, Mike. 2002. Late Victorian holocausts: El Niño famines and the making of the Third World. London, Verso. Preface, pp. 1-16, A Note on Definitions 17-22, Ch. 1 Victoria’s Ghosts, pp. 25-60.

Cullather, Nick. 2010. The hungry world: America’s Cold War battle against poverty in Asia. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Introduction, pp. 1-10 and Ch. 10 Present at the Re-creation pp. 263-272.
Kaufman, Frederick 200. Let them eat cash. Can Bill Gates Turn Hunger into Profit? Harper’s Magazine. June. pp. 51-59

Week 11 April 3-5

Labor: picking and procuring
Readings to be divided among class members

Freidberg, Susanne. 2010. Fresh: a perishable history. Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Introduction pp. 1-17 and Vegetables: Hidden Labor, pp. 157-196.
Ahn, Christine, Melissa Moore and Nick Parker. 2004. Migrant farmworkers: America’s new plantation workers.” Food First Backgrounder 10:2 (Spring).
Deutsch, Tracey. 2010. Building a housewife’s paradise: gender, politics, and the emergence of supermarkets, 1919-1968. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.
Mitchell D (forthcoming) “The issue is basically one of race:” Braceros, the labor process and the making of the agro-industrial landscape of mid-20th century California. In: Slocum R, Saldanha A (eds) Geographies of Race and Food: Fields, Bodies, Markets. Durham, Duke University Press.
Schlosser, Eric. 2001. Fast food nation: the dark side of the all-American meal. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. Ch. 8, “The most dangerous job.” pp, 169-190.
Barndt, Deborah. 2002. Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the tomato trail New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. Ch. 1, “Across space and through time: tomatl meets the corporate tomato”, pp. 7-30

Week 12 April 10-12   April 13 Undergraduate Creativity Event (poster presentations)

Meat

Johnson, Nathanael. Swine of the times: the making of the modern pig. Harpers pp. 1-9
Pollan, Michael. 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, New York. Penguin Press. Ch. 4, The Feedlot: Making Meat, pp. 65-84.
Striffler, Steve. 2007. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food. New Haven, Yale University Press. Ch. 1 Introduction pp 1-14.
Moss, Michael. 2009. The burger that shattered her life. New York Times October 3.

Food change

Discusses efforts to change the food system that promote alternative economies, social justice and ecological well being. Considers food justice, food sovereignty.

Week 13 April 17-19


Food sovereignty
Schurman, Rachel and Munro, William. 2010. Fighting for the future of food: activists vs. agribusiness in the struggle over biotechnology Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, Ch. 3, Forging a Global Movement, pp. 51-82.
Kloppenburg, Jack, Jr. 2008 “Seeds and sovereignty: plants, property, and the promise of open source biology.” Paper prepared for the Workshop on Food Sovereignty: Theory, Praxis and Power, St. Andrews College, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Week 14 April 24-26


Bending the bars of empire

Heynen, Nik. 2009. Bending the bars of empire from every ghetto for survival: the Black Panther Party’s radical antihunger politics of social reproduction and scale. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99(2): 406 - 422.
Preston, Julia 2008 “Iowa rally protests raid and conditions at plant.” The New York Times (July 28): A11.

Week 15

May 1-3
Alternative economies

Patel, Raj 2007 “Checking out of supermarkets.” Chapter 8, pp. 215-252 in Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the  World Food System. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.
Jaffee, Daniel 2007 “Preface” (pp. xi-xv) and excerpt from “Introduction” (pp. 1-3) in Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Gowan, Slocum and Atmore. Forthcoming. Practicing Plenitude in the Aude, France. In Practicing plenitude. Ed. Juliet Schor. New Haven, Yale University Press. Pp.



Happy summer!




















Credits: This syllabus was developed with help from Christine Hippert, Rachel Schurman, Valentine Cadieux, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Jack Kloppenburg, Antoinette WinklerPrins, The Northwest Institute’s Menu for the Future, Catherine Sands, Ted White, John Gerber.
Images taken from: Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on ABC, New York Times, C1870 Sweden Costumes Woman Farmer Colour Print, Atlantic Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Harvard University Press

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