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- Convenors:
-
Thomas Reuter
(University of Melbourne)
Graeme MacRae (Massey University)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Landscapes, resources and value
- Location:
- Old Arts-124 (Theatre C)
- Start time:
- 2 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
Food systems are embedded in moral economies of shared ideas and values. Most academic analyses and industry discourses ignore this and focus instead on productivity and trade, while food activists issue prescriptive moral assertions. This panel explores moral dimensions of actual agri-food systems.
Long Abstract:
Agriculture and food provisioning systems are widely understood as managed technological interventions into ecological processes and as commercial systems of food distribution and consumption. As anthropologists, over a century of comparative analyses of human societies have taught us, however, that food systems are also embedded in moral contexts of shared ideas, values and social practices. Moral economies are thus universal aspects of all agri-food systems. As agrarian technologies, ecologies and economies have changed over the past century, they divorced themselves from traditional social and cultural contexts. The serious moral implications of these new, industrialised food systems have been obscured, especially by lobbyists from food and agricultural input industries. Much of the economic analysis of food systems too has tended to focus on productivity and trade liberalisation, leaving critical debate on moral issues to food, farmer and environmental activists or to humanitarian aid organisations. The moral arguments of food system critics, however, are generally not well supported by evidence-based understanding of how actual moral economies work in practice, or how disjunctures between different moral universes at local, national and international levels may arise, causing adverse outcomes for farmers, businesses and consumers alike. We invite papers that explore ethnographically the moral dimensions of any aspects of agri-food systems and/or that seek to apply the theoretical insights of moral-economic analysis to agri-food systems.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Graeme MacRae (Massey University)
Paper short abstract:
Food systems are moral systems. Interventions which ignore this often get it wrong. Moral economy analysis provides useful tools for taking moral dimensions into account. Revisiting and revalorising classical moral economy literature and evidence from Bali shows us why/how.
Paper long abstract:
The provisioning of human societies is widely understood in terms of nutritional, technological, ecological, and economic processes. We all eat to live, farmers farm and traders trade to live. But food systems are also, albeit less widely, recognised as social and cultural processes, and even more rarely as a moral ones. This paper begins from the position that all food systems are deeply imbued with moral dimensions and that failure to recognise these often leads to development failures. Conversely these moral dimensions are essential to understanding both successes and failures of interventions into food systems.
The concept of moral economy that drew attention to the moral embedment of agrarian economies in the 1970s has faded from view in the analysis of radically changing agrarian landscapes, and the once obvious moral dimensions of traditional agrarian economies have progressively become obscured. This paper revisits this classic moral economy literature and illustrates it with ethnographic evidence from Bali, to revisit revalorise the concept of moral economy as a tool for analysis of food systems.
Thomas Reuter (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
Local food systems in Indonesia have unique production, trade and consumption patterns. The highlands and north coast of Bali are one such system, which has been transformed especially in recent years. Some trends will be identified in this paper that may decrease Bali’s food sovereignty.
Paper long abstract:
Local food systems in Indonesia often have a long history and unique features, relating to production, trade and consumption patterns. The highland region and northern coast of Bali are one such system, with centuries of documented regional trade relations between coastal and highland communities with complementary food products. This long established food system has been transformed by modernisation in the 20th century, and these changes have really accelerated in recent years. Based on 22 years of research in this region, several long-term trends have been identified. One is a trend toward locally specific agricultural intensification based on changes in land use, cash cropping and new forms of livestock and poultry production. Another trend is the increasing use of imported inputs, some from international sources but some also from neighbouring islands. There also has been a significant decline in traditional cash-less transactions such as labour sharing and food exchange. Finally, there are very significant changes in diet and food purchasing patterns. These factors combine to produce a decrease in Bali's food sovereignty and increasing dependence on expensive food imports.
Zainil Zainuddin (RMIT University)
Paper short abstract:
An in-depth analysis into the communities of practice of a new breed of ethical and sustainable farmers in Victoria and Tasmania.
Paper long abstract:
The paper will explore the emergence of a breed of new farmers in Victoria and Tasmania. These are farmers by choice, often professional with no background in farming but who have decided to engage in sustainable and ethical farming as a fulltime occupation. It will interrogate the socio-demographic characteristics of these new famers and more importantly their motivation for taking up ethical and sustainable farming, their farming practices and the values and ethos for these choices. The paper will also explore the relational dynamic between these farmers of ethical and sustainable produce with their consumers by exploring their usage of digital medium in their business engagement, social activism and online networking.
Elizabeth Chapman (La Trobe University )
Paper short abstract:
The ever-expanding and idealised local food movement has cultivated an opportunity to explore the role of moral economy in such a movement. This paper addresses the existence of moral economy in a public housing, urban food garden through ethnographic observations, focussing on the element of reciprocity.
Paper long abstract:
The rise of urban agriculture in Australia and the ever-increasing discourse around the moral attributes of the local food movement present an opportunity to delve into a discussion on the intersection between elements of moral economy and community gardens. This paper discusses the existence of moral economy in an urban, public housing community garden as observed through ethnographic work. The hybrid, complex moral economy that exists in the garden brings gardeners' diverse cultural understandings of reciprocity into direct contact with a social welfare program in place to facilitate community gardens all within the confines of the modern Australian, capitalist system. The not-for-profit organisation facilitates community gardens throughout inner-city Melbourne's public housing estates and operates with the explicit mission to "work with diverse communities to create fair, secure and resilient food systems." This paper looks specifically at the role of reciprocity in one particular garden, how gardeners use reciprocity to create their own small-scale food system and the contradictions that exists between the moral code found in the garden rules set by the facilitating organisation and the observed social practices and actions of gardeners. Finally this paper examines the structural forces that shape this particular hybrid moral economy within a polyethnic migrant community.
Isa Ritchie
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores community building, alternative economies and holistic approaches to sustainability as practised by the Xtreme Waste community recycling centre in Whaingaroa, New Zealand.
Paper long abstract:
In light of the systemic problems evident in current global corporate capitalist practice, through which much of the world's food is produced, the complex interconnectedness of food and ecological systems must be taken into account. This requires careful analysis and reflection in order to build deeper understandings of how human beings currently sit within our wider environments and to develop more sustainable and beneficial models for practice. This applies to the production of food as well as to consumption and to how we treat refuse. This paper, which draws upon a recent ethnographic doctoral study, looks at the values, practices and achievements of the Xtreme Waste community recycling centre in Whaingaroa, New Zealand. This community focused non-profit business, started by a committed and visionary group of Pakeha and Maori ecologists and activists, has worked toward social, economic and environmental sustainability over the past two decades. Their achievements include diverting close to 80% of the local area's waste from the landfill, regenerating the local eco-system, supporting the local economy and providing as many jobs as possible. Matua Rick, co-founder of Xtreme Waste says there's no point in filling up a leaky bucket with more and more water, you have to plug up the holes first. Findings from the doctoral project suggest much can be gained from holistic approaches to sustainability, including alternative economic activities, community building and making good use of the areas which have traditionally been problematised, overlooked and undervalued such as unemployment and waste disposal.
Savannah Mandel (University of Florida)
Paper short abstract:
A presentation of the results of an ethnographic study on the commodification of workers in the Florida Food industry and their reactions to consensual servitude; an exploration on command structure and kinship relations shaped through economic transactions and corresponding patterns of reciprocity.
Paper long abstract:
The following paper is based on research on the commodification of workers in the Florida Food Industry. It provides a detailed explanation on the impact of consensual servitude on employees in our modern world and explores the daily transformation from human to a commodity available purely for exchange. Priced humanity; in a system of reciprocity based on a foundation of consensual servitude. Ethnographic research was collected, in the form of interviews with employees of varying positions and at varying locations. In addition participants were observed in their work environment through personal employment. The structure of a kinship society based in employment relations and its motives for obedience were discovered. Within this research paper the oral histories of employees- ghosts of the food industry and its current members- have been collected. Through content analysis, the underlying power structures and social boundaries were revealed, which informed an understanding of the unconscious behaviors of both consumers and employees. These observations resulted in new consideration of the foundation of Food Industry employment; uneven reciprocity based in consensual servitude.
Catie Gressier (University of Western Australia)
Paper short abstract:
With a focus on Tasmania’s wallaby industry, this paper explores the moral valences of wild meat production and consumption. A shift in moral justifications for meat eating is traced from that of animal rights, towards environmental sustainability.
Paper long abstract:
The moral dimensions of meat consumption have long been debated, with animal suffering the primary cause of ethical unease. In recent years, however, advocates of wild meat eating have foregrounded the moral prism of environmentalism in justifying their consumption practices. They posit that the lesser environmental impact of native Macropods, and the free and natural existence such animals lead prior to being harvested, renders them a morally superior meat choice to introduced, farmed livestock. Such claims are seen as unconvincing by animal right's activists, however, who condemn the anthropocentrism of meat eating generally, and the construction of our native species as pests or resources specifically, while critiquing that which they see as the inherently disorderly and cruel nature of hunting practices. This paper explores the moral valences of wild meat production and consumption, with a focus on Tasmania's burgeoning wallaby industry.
Ferne Edwards (University of Surrey)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the tensions arising from the state-led implementation of a national food system in Venezuela based on principles of social and economic justice on the needs and desires of its citizens.
Paper long abstract:
When Hugo Chavez became President of Venezuela in 1999 he re-configured the nation's identity to align with the newly instated Bolivarian Principles: to assert independence from corporate control, and to put in place strategies and infrastructure towards goals of equality, social inclusion, shared wealth and resources, endogenous development and participatory democracy. This shift from a capitalist to socialist economy sought to empower the previously marginalised majority poor and to celebrate the strengths of 'el pueblo', the people. Food sovereignty was one such pathway to attain these goals - to provide equitable food access by establishing multi-tiered, decentralized strategies supported by legislation to encompass aspects of land reform, agro-ecology, and equitable access for food for all. However, these aspirational political strategies overlay a country that remained both connected to its past and to the pulls of a global capitalist economy. This paper examines the tensions experienced from the assertion of a state-led food program over a country struggling to meet the needs and desires of its citizens. It emerges from ethnographic research conducted from 2009 to 2013 across Venezuela.
Simon Foale (James Cook University)
Paper short abstract:
I argue here that one moral imperative – the maintenance of food security from fisheries – has been retrofitted and subordinated to another – the preservation of coral reef species for their intrinsic and aesthetic values. This moral hierarchy misleads scientific and development aid discourse.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper I argue that the western environmentalist ideology of the conservation biology community has in the past two or so decades influenced tropical coastal fishery management discourse and research in ways that divert scientific attention away from a fundamentally agricultural aspect of fishery production - the availability of nutrients. In much recent scientific literature, concerns about fishery-based 'food security' have been retrofitted, using a win-win argument, to an a priori western preservationist agenda which is based on the 'cumulative intrinsic value' of the large numbers of coral and other species that comprise Indo-Pacific coral reef ecosystems - a system of valuation that means little to most subsistence and artisanal fishers. An unacknowledged problem with this idea is that corals, which prefer to live in clear, nutrient-poor waters, transmit very little of their primary production to fishery production. Consequently coral reefs, while they support large numbers of species, and can also support a high standing biomass of fish, are generally comparatively unproductive systems, especially compared to comparatively species-poor and aesthetically unappealing estuaries, lagoons and coastal waters receiving high input of nutrients from coastal runoff or upwellings. I argue that the subordination of one moral framework - fishery production and food security - to another which is based on the western-scientific intrinsic and aesthetic values of coral reefs, misleads both scientific and policy discourse, and I illustrate with a case study from Solomon Islands, and an overview of fishery production in the Indo-Pacific region.
Gina Koczberski (Curtin University of Technology) George Curry (Curtin University of Technology)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents a case study from East New Britain Province (ENBP), PNG, and examines the adaptive decisions of cocoa farmers in response to the sudden incursion of the pest, Cocoa Pod Borer (Conopomorpha cramerella), which has decimated their production and incomes
Paper long abstract:
The paper presents research conducted among cocoa producing households in East New Britain Province (ENBP), PNG. These households have suffered the impacts of the recent incursion of the pest Cocoa Pod Borer (Conopomorpha cramerella) (CPB) which has decimated their incomes from cocoa. Since 2007 when the pest first arrived in the province, cocoa production has fallen by 80%. Cocoa was the largest source of income in ENB and grown by over 70% of households in the province; thus the impact of the pest on the local economy and on the livelihoods of cocoa farmers has been enormous. While a small proportion of cocoa farmers has adopted the high input cropping system recommended to control the pest, most have been unable or reluctant to do so. The presentation examines why so few farmers have made the transition to more 'modern' intensive farming of cocoa. We draw on field data to argue that such a transition requires more than a technical fix and some training; rather it also requires a partial transformation of smallholders themselves, individually and collectively to remain in cocoa production. This involves adopting new values (more market orientated) and major lifestyle and agricultural changes that many identified as incompatible with a 'way of life' that provides status, identity and a moral order. The presentation will conclude by highlighting the need for greater engagement with moral questions and dilemmas in discussions around concepts of community adaptation and resilience.