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- Convenors:
-
Bilge Firat
(University of Texas at El Paso)
James Verinis (Salve Regina University)
- Discussant:
-
António Medeiros
(ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon, CEI-IUL)
- Stream:
- Food
- Location:
- A220
Short Abstract:
This panel maps ethnographic accounts of the cross-border circulations of olive cultures and commodities from around the world, especially from countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, probing the limits of regional cooperation and conflict in olive regions.
Long Abstract:
From the perspectives of agricultural economic regimes as well as human diet, cultural fantasies, and political struggles, olive fruit and its derivatives in liquid and solid forms have always constituted a significant ecological niche. With the opening up of alternative markets such as in the USA, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Russia and China in recent years, olive fruit and its oil experienced an upsurge in trade in recent years and are once again at the epicenter of world cultural economy, affecting the lives of olive and olive oil producing, consuming, and trading countries, regions, and their peoples alike. Behind abstracted figures and statistics on the production, exchange and consumption of olive fruit and its cosmetic as well as culinary products, however, lie a whole other world of sweat and blood of people whose lives have been touched vis-à-vis the domestication of the olive tree throughout recent millennia. This panel brings together scholars and students of the cultivation, exchange and consumption of olive tree products from around the world, especially from the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, in order to share their ethnographic knowledge of the cross-border production and circulations of olive cultures and commodities, probing the limits of regional cooperation and conflict in olive regions. Ethnographic contributions to his panel are inspired by different theoretical and conceptual approaches such as the world-system theory, political ecology, political economy, and cultural history and heritage studies and that experiment with a variety of data collecting techniques ranging from participant observation to policy analysis.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Adam Siegel (University of California, Davis)
Paper short abstract:
A survey of olive literature published before and after WWI offers new insights into national/regional identity/identification, revealing the agricultural geography of the circum-Adriatic to be a significant, albeit overlooked, component in the construction of (post-)Habsburg identitie(s).
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on the archival resources of scientific research institutes in Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and the United States, and the bibliographic and scientific record, it is possible to construct a template against which the national aspirations of ethnic groups within the Austro-Hungarian empire and its successor states can be measured at the micro-level of scientific (agriculture/agronomy) networks, particularly in the years just before and after the First World War. The historical and archival record indicates that the scholarly ambit of international and regional scientific communities in Southern and Southeastern Europe during this period was characterized by paradoxically and simultaneously complementary international and regional allegiances regarding the dissemination of scientific discoveries (against pests and plant diseases) and technical improvements (in cultivation, processing, and harvesting) of domestic agricultural commodities closely associated with areal (national and regional) identities such as olives and wine-grapes. By examining publication trends and patterns (proceedings vs. periodicals, language use, and language choice) and paying particular attention to discursive strategies most commonly employed by scholars during this period (e.g., choice of topic, venue, or language; self-translation), inferences regarding national and regional identity and identification can be drawn from a close study of the scholarly literature on olives and olive oil as reflected in the publication record and its dissemination (in Croatian, Slovenian, Italian, and German-language periodicals and articles), revealing the agricultural geography of the circum-Adriatic as a significant, albeit overlooked, component in the construction of Habsburg identitie(s).
Pinar Gungor (Bilgi University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will look at the environmental effects of a political action, The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange in 1923. Important cash-crop products of the region, olives, figs and grapes were picked to reflect that change in environment in that mandatory adaptation period.
Paper long abstract:
The Greek-Turkish Population Exchange that happened in 1923 which was a turning point for both countries with regard to its demographic, social and economic outcomes. This mandatory action brought unintended ecological change in both Greece and Turkey. The ecological consequences in Turkey will be analyzed via the comparison between the production of olives, figs and grapes before and after the exchange of populations. The demographic and social changes in western Turkey will discussed to find about what is gained and what is lost in that adaptation period from environmental perspective.
Bilge Firat (University of Texas at El Paso)
Paper short abstract:
Turkish olive and olive oil producers and environmental enthusiasts in Turkey voice survivalist discourses, in order to struggle against corporate and governmental interventions into property relations and agricultural production while facing market forces with high competition.
Paper long abstract:
Turkish government has recently passed a law allowing corporate energy companies to capitalize on land where olives were traditionally grown, in order to build small and large-scale energy plants. After the Gezi events in 2013, environmental groups and socially conscious resident populations organized public campaigns with national and international outreach, in order to stop some of these governmental initiatives. While Turkey's domestic energy and olive demands are pitched to one another, Turkish olive and olive oil production is closely tied to capitalist relations of agriculture, which are dominant in all countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea where olives grow. A unique feature of the Turkish olive market is however the fact that Turkish companies import olive oil from the countries to Turkey's South and East, and export it in bulk to the EU. This paper argues that, on the one hand, in the most recent form olive and olive oil producers and environmental enthusiasts in Turkey voice survivalist discourses modeled by slow food movements around the world, in order to struggle against corporate and governmental interventions into property relations and agricultural production. On the other hand, they have to face market forces in the EU where competition is rife in olive and olive oil production.
James Verinis (Salve Regina University)
Paper short abstract:
A new cycle of olive production is emerging in Greece in response to threats to traditional cultivation. A reassessment of the relationships between Greek and global interests in sustainable agriculture, boutique and commodity markets, as well as among Greek and non-Greek farmers has begun.
Paper long abstract:
Greek archaeologist Yannis Hamilakis (1999:48) writes that the production of olive oil in Bronze Age Crete was not a routine of agricultural practice; These '[were] cycles of consumption intensification as a response to social processes, [not simply a] Mediterranean cultivation regime' (50). The response in Greece to threats to traditional small-scale olive production regimes on semi-mountainous land with limited mechanical means in today's world of globalized and intensified agriculture takes many forms. Between land abandonment and increases in scale and intensity is also a refusal to allow such traditional olive cultivation regimes to become extinct. A renewed focus on maintaining now ancient agricultural practices often takes precedence over conventional rural development paradigms of the European core, especially as such development options become increasingly impossible in the current economic climate. Ethnic rapprochement amongst Greek and non-Greek farmers who now struggle together in these rural 'backwaters' is also an important component of this response. As Raymond Williams (1973) has written, small-scale, 'traditional', or 'backward' rural practices often seem to remain today despite progression in agricultural modernization and rural development; 'What is really significant is this particular kind of reaction to the fact of change, and this has more real and more interesting social causes.' (35). As in Bronze Age Crete this new cycle of traditional olive oil production is a particular response, weaving together disparate interests in small-scale sustainable agricultural practices, niche boutique as well as commodity markets, and Greek and non-Greek farmers in defiance of other fates.
Anne Meneley (Trent University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates how time, space and relatedness are embedded in contemporary political ecologies of olive oil in Palestine.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates how in Palestine the olive tree is understood as an actor, a kind of co-producer of its own care. There is a reciprocity between tree and farmer, an "ethics of care", which goes beyond material gain, co-generating productivity and well-being for both people and tree. Indeed, olive trees are often spoken of as kin, the older trees as grandparents and the younger ones as children, which one ought to treat with tenderness. Tawfik Canaan's (1927) rich ethnography stands witness to the erasure of prior meanings and practices enabled by the material qualities of olive oil by the threat of the disappearance of the substance itself, Palestinian olive oil, and particularly, the destruction of the trees that produce it and mark the land of the producers. To move from the fat, olive oil itself, to the tree from which it is produced is a logical transition as the land itself is under threat. Loss of oil indexes loss of land, and loss of the trees that produce the oil: in short, it indexes the contemporary plight of the Palestinians. Attention shifts from the oil to the tree. Palestinians who have their land confiscated, their trees uprooted or poisoned, lose a means of livelihood and also a means of accessing the sacred through engaging in offerings of olive oil for spiritual benefit. Under the current conditions of occupation dispossessed Palestinians become delinked from the sacred, their land, their food, and their fellow Palestinians.