Paper short abstract:

This paper examines a disconnect between local and foreign food worlds, the nature of imported food utopias, their rejection of local counterparts and a subsequent creation of, and participation in, equally imported food dystopias in contemporary Solomon Islands.

Paper long abstract:

Over 80 percent of Solomon Islanders are subsistence farmers. The majority of foodstuffs produced are organic and free-range, fertilizers and animal feed are simply unavailable or too expensive. They are also fresh and local. Any produce, given the humidity and lack of access to refrigeration, is harvested and eaten or sold on the same, and at least within the first two days. Local cuisines are essentially authentic, deeply ingrained in local customs and the particularities of any given place, and they are slow. Many are prepared in a motu, a type of stone oven that cooks potatoes, fish, meats and vegetables over hours and often over night. Nonetheless, Solomon Islands' foodstuffs and foodways are shun by foreign visitors, temporary and even permanent immigrants. Expats and tourists alike aspire and create a parallel utopian food universe with organic apples from New Zealand, gluten-free pastries and salad bars drawing from equally imported ingredients. Greens are everywhere; yet, local cabbage is rarely found on any (foreign) plate. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the urban (and expat-filled) Honiara and the rural Lau Lagoon (Malaita), the goal of this paper is to unravel (1) this seeming disconnect: two food worlds wherein one fits the utopian criteria of the other without ever being able to be satisfying enough; and (2) its consequences: imported food utopias that, in a context of significant economic disparity and capacity, appear to create the very dystopia they detest, industrial food production linked to global commodity chains.