Geographies of Food and Farming
GEO/ESC 470/570
Spring semester 2012 2:15-3:40 Centennial 2102
Rachel Slocum
Office:
2024 Cowley Hall
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Phone:
608.785.8335
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rslocum[at]uwlax.edu
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Office hours: Tuesday/Thursday 1-2 and Wednesday 4-5:30 or by appointment.
Class blog: http://geo470food.blogspot.com/
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Virtual
office hours Mondays and Fridays
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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:
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2 exams: 30%
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Participation: 25%
` Participation in class
` Blog contributions
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Project/Paper: 30%
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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.
http://www.uwlax.edu/studentlife/academic_misconduct.htm
- 14.03 For helpful information on how to avoid plagiarism go
to http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/research/plagiarism.html
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
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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