The latest Environment and Society featured article is now available! This month’s article, “Nature’s Market? A Review of Organic Certification,” comes from Volume 2 (2011). Shaila Seshia Galvin takes a critical look at literature on organic certification from diverse national and regional contexts while incorporating her own extensive fieldwork with organic smaller holders in north India.
Shaila Seshia Galvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Development Studies (Geneva, Switzerland). Her research interests include political ecology, the anthropology of environment and development, and political anthropology.
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Environment and Society Volume 6 is now available from Berghahn Journals! To access all of the articles of this issue that specifically focuses on the Anthropocene, visit the journal’s website here. The following is an excerpt from Amelia Moore’s introduction to this issue, available as a free PDF download:
The Anthropocene is everywhere in academia. There are Anthropocene journals, Anthropocene courses, Anthropocene conferences, Anthropocene panels, Anthropocene podcasts, and more. It is very safe to say that the Anthropocene is having a moment. But is this just a case of fifteen minutes of fame, name recognition, and bandwagon style publishing? The authors in this issue of ARES think not, and we would like to help lend a critical sensibility to the anthropological consideration of the concept and its dissemination.
We recognize that the Anthropocene is an epoch in formation. As a category and as a concept, the term inspires fear, revelations, skepticism, and all manner of predictions and projects. In other words, the Anthropocene is as generative as it is contested. And as global anthropogenic change becomes an increasingly defining feature of contemporary life, the authors in this issue of ARES look beyond the kneejerk censure of the Anthropocene as an academic fad in order to locate the social and political significance of the idea while it congeals around the world.
What would we say if we heard that the troops from two countries working together were hell-bent on destroying the heritage monuments of a third? In addition to the human lives they took, they destroyed one of the most beautiful groups of buildings in the region, steeped in historical significance. As they did so, they looted fine art treasures to fill the houses of the rich and the museums of the “civilized” world—where they remain. The theft of these treasures caused as much resentment among the descendants of those who lost them as Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon marbles from Athens to Britain. The actions sound like those of the disgruntled Sunni troops of Iraq and Syria in their joint actions, reverting to beheading, blowing up the remains of Palmyra, and selling antiquities to the world market to fund their activities. They also describe the actions of the British and French armies in China in 1860.
One of the British commanders in China was the son of that same Elgin, engaged in a war in which the troops from France and Britain were supposedly trying to free up trade with China by vicious military action—bizarre though that sounds. It was he who was responsible for the destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing; his troops looted and pillaged the imperial treasures. A much restored version of the Summer Palace is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Among the features destroyed by the British but now restored is the 728-meter Long Corridor—so long, tourists are told, that it is in the Guinness World Records. In the harsh climate around Beijing, the fabric of the restored corridor requires almost continuous maintenance.
Workers repainting the timbers of the Long Corridor, Summer Palace, Beijing
The corridor was decorated with more than 10,000 paintings that have also been reconstructed. They, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, must be repainted on a regular basis. If the corridor is not original and is constantly renewed, and if the paintings have to be repeatedly restored, we might question the basis for the fame of the material heritage of the Summer Palace as it is shown to tourists. Is it anything more than a tourist attraction, a theme park of the Ming Dynasty, like that replica recently constructed 1,000 kilometers from Beijing where equivalent structures and paintings can be enjoyed by even larger masses of tourists?
Unrestored painting in the Long Corridor, Summer Palace
What we are talking about here is the “old man’s spade.” You know the story: the old man used to say that he’d had only one spade all his life, and he had only changed the handle five times and the blade twice. Is the old man saying anything other than that he is just a silly old man? This blog considers the question of the authenticity of the Summer Palace, one of the jewels of Chinese World Heritage. Is it any more authentic than the old man’s claim to have had only one spade? The issues relate equally to the much reconstructed Great Wall or the much renovated Forbidden City. Even the Terracotta Warriors have to be reconstructed before they can be displayed in their astonishing variety.
Terracotta Warriors, Xi’an, in various states of reconstruction
All over the world, important heritage places (such as the Washington Elm, where George Washington supposedly received his command, on Cambridge Common in Massachusetts) have to be renewed (the original tree died) or they lose their impact as heritage places. Does heritage tend toward theme parks, or is “real” heritage somehow different? This is particularly interesting in the light of a proposal for a park north of Sydney, Australia, where Chinese heritage buildings might be copied but would probably not acquire heritage significance. How important is it, when honoring heritage, to call a spade a spade?
In philosophy, the question of the old man’s spade is known as the ship of Theseus paradox and has been discussed since the time of the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece (Lowenthal 1989). There is even a version that relates to George Washington’s axe, presumably the one he did or did not use to cut down the cherry tree. The philosophical question turns on the interpretation if the ship carried spare timber for repairs during the voyage, and whether it would be the same ship even if it were completely renewed. Can the old man’s spade (or the ship or the axe) be considered the same one after its history of changes? Various thought experiments have been devised to discuss the relevant options. But whether these thoughts are about the use of the same materials, the way the thing was made, the shape of the thing, or the use to which the thing is/was put, the discussion has centered principally on the essence of the material “thing” rather than the relationship between it and other things, places, or people that surround it. Mike Schiffer (1999) has emphasized this three-way communication between people and things in The Material Life of Human Beings and the centrality to human life of human interactions with materiality. Although heritage values might be related to the (generally material) qualities of the heritage thing or place, the fundamental reason for heritage status of the thing or place is the interactions people have with it.
This quality of the importance of the heritage-bearing people—the consumers of heritage—enables the concept of heritage to extend beyond the material to intangible aspects of culture. The heritage is more than the material thing or place; it is also the narratives and interpretations that people bring to it, or anchor to it. But without the material anchor, who can identify the original or reconstructed parts of the intangible? We could engage in a thought experiment of our own, switching from material cultural heritage to intangible cultural heritage. Beside the ship of Theseus paradox about a materially substantive ship, there is a song of Homer paradox, through which we could debate whether the final (written) version of The Odyssey (whatever it says about ships) was the same as had been originally sung by the first person who called himself (or herself) Homer. By this logic, is West Side Story really a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, and is it the same story in the Vanuatu movie Tanna? It turns out that the legitimation of heritage turns on the interaction of these two paradoxes. There is no paradox of the ship of Theseus provided there is an attached history that sings about the history of replacement of parts. The old man’s spade has been with him all his life because he can tell the story that he has never had to replace both parts at the same time. We know the changes between Shakespeare’s and Bernstein’s stories and the one from Vanuatu because there are material versions of them.
The material cultural heritage experience is (generally) tied to a location and anchored by the materiality of what people constructed there. In all cases there is a narrative about special events in the past, which generally are of interest primarily to the people whose lives have been affected by (and are a product of) the relevant histories. These narratives are subject to the song of Homer paradox—no two versions of the history are quite the same, as in the Rashomon effect—just as the material heritage is subject to the changes of materials described in the ship of Theseus paradox. They become objects of tourist interest through the material things, whether beautiful or not, in their context of either dominated or constructed landscapes. All of these elements are needed to create the heritage experience. The Summer Palace was reconstructed in defiance of its destruction by colonial powers, and the destruction and reconstruction have become part of the narrative “song.” And it was built in the same location, beside the same lake, to which are attached singular narratives. No theme park can replicate that combination of material structure, location, and intangible heritage.
Whenever there is a contest about the preservation of the material remains of cultural heritage, we should remember that all cultural heritage preservation is a political act. It privileges the interests of people who are stakeholders in that heritage over those of others. Those stakeholders may be indigenous people, commonly in Australia and the United States, indeed in most countries that have been the victims of colonialism. Their songs will be the most powerful connection between the material and the people. There are others whose “songs” do not provide the complement to the material culture, whose attitudes, therefore, principally focus on the material. Heritage professionals on one side are key stakeholders defending material heritage, while developers or industry shareholders on the other are often not committed to the material or the narrative. Governments will always have an interest, particularly because the protections are legislated by them and most often the preservation must be funded by them. And then there are the interests of the general public. That general public often has multiple sources of narrative. If they are tourists, often that is quite separate from the dominant narrative of their own lives.
How does this discussion inform our understanding of the destruction of heritage buildings in Palmyra? Nothing can justify the murder of Khaled al-Asaad, the archaeologist most closely associated with the place, but nothing can justify many other killings in wars, nor the associated destruction of heritage. The lesson of this comparison is that the destruction of the material of cultural heritage is a common feature of the clash of ideologies. No particular side has been generally virtuous. Material culture can be restored, but the intangible songs and stories, of the people who are custodians of the heritage, may be more difficult to recover unless they survive in a material form. It is the interplay of material cultural heritage and the intangible heritage associated with it that is strongest. The changing ship of Theseus can be interpreted best when there is, in the same frame, a song of Homer, however much that too changes.
Iain Davidson is an archaeologist who also works in Cultural Heritage management. Trained in the United Kingdom, he has worked at the University of New England (Australia) and Harvard. He is working on a volume about the evolution of symbolic behavior in Australia.
His two most recent publications are:
Davidson, Iain. Forthcoming. “Stone Tools: Evidence of Something in between Culture and Cumulative Culture.” In Miriam N. Haidle, Nicholas J. Conard, and Michael Bolus, eds., The Nature of Culture. Springer International Publishing.
Tasire, Alandra K., and Davidson, Iain. 2015. A Fine-Grained Analysis of the Macropod Motif in the Rock Art of the Sydney Region, Australia. Australian Archaeology 80: 48–59.
All photos in this posted are credited to the author.
References
Lowenthal, David. 1989. “Material Preservation and Its Alternatives. Perspecta 25: 67–77, doi: 10.2307/1567139.
Schiffer, Michael Brian. 1999. The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behavior, and Communication. London: Routledge.
Cite as: Davidson, Iain. 2015. “Heritage, the Ship of Theseus, and the Song of Homer.” EnviroSociety. 14 October. www.envirosociety.org/2015/10/heritage-the-ship-of-theseus-and-the-song-of-homer.
On a map with street names, Buddy Dive Resort is on Kaya Gobernador Nicolaas Debrot, but chances are directions will include some hand waving and a “you can’t miss it, it’s the big yellow one.” On Monday nights at Blennies Restaurant and Bar (conveniently located within Buddy Dive Resort), there is a presentation on coral restoration and the work that Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire (CRFB) does around the island. Each presentation goes through the specific conditions for coral growth in the waters of Bonaire, the science behind coral propagation, and the types of coral the foundation focuses on.
The presentations offer a primer on the work that CRFB does, and hopes to garner support and interest from the people who are an otherwise captive audience at the restaurant. Listeners learn that the foundation’s mission is “to develop affordable, effective strategies for protecting and restoring the shallow water population of staghorn and elkhorn corals along the coastlines of Bonaire and Klein Bonaire.” They also learn that “CRF Bonaire, supported by the local government and the Bonaire Marine Park, is developing a large scale reef restoration program, promoting awareness and engaging tourists and local volunteers.” The foundation is young—created in 2012 after a visit from Ken Nedimyer of CRF’s United States branch to discuss conservation efforts. In February of that year, the government and marine park granted a permit for Buddy Dive to begin its work (CRF Bonaire 2015).
The last slide from the presentation at Blennies
As a leader for young adult scuba service trips on the island this summer, I saw the presentation three times, twice with a group of young adults. Both times, I brought groups for the express purpose of attending the presentation, giving strict instructions not to order anything aside from water; we were the only ones at the outdoor restaurant explicitly paying attention to the speaker.
I saw three different people give these presentations in three consecutive weeks. Yago, a handsome Spaniard with an awareness of his audience, was incredibly personable and often tried to engage us by making jokes and seeking answers to his somewhat rhetorical questions. The second week (which I attended without teenagers), Elena gave the presentation. She attempted some hasty jokes that fell on deaf ears and bulldozed through the scientific terminology with aplomb and novel pronunciation. Elena was Spartan with her words—no nonsense—and seemed as though she could not be done soon enough. She clearly cared about the restoration project but did not know how to address the lack of interest on the part of those dining. All of the coral restoration instructors take turns giving the presentation, as it is not a highly coveted after-hours job. Augusto, the head dive master instructor, gave the third week’s presentation. He struck a balance between Yago’s lighthearted banter and Elena’s direct, to-the-point information. Augusto has been in charge of diving at Buddy Dive for thirteen years and an integral part of the coral restoration endeavor for the past three. All three were highly informative presenters, and they rattled off scientific terms in English despite the fact that it was no one’s native tongue.
For some diners, the presentation disturbed their idyllic sunset dinner, and the presenter made an insincere apology and asked them to be quiet. There are no walls at Blennies, and the roof is thatched palm. It appeals to the tourists who flock here in droves for a rustic, tropical experience. For some guests, the dinner and drinks made them loud distractions. For others, dinner and drinks made them loud participants in the presentation. Either way, it was clear that the informational presentation was a surprise add-on to their tropical meal in paradise. Some were resentful while others embraced the laidback island spirit. Perhaps some of them would go on to get a coral restoration certification once they got tired of the house reef or maybe become curious about the haphazard obstacle course used for training set up under water by the shore. Maybe they would take the pictures of bleached and dying coral to heart and feel compelled to do their part to regenerate swaths of reef.
Sunset from Blennies during the presentation
Bonaire is a small island off the coast of Venezuela and a special municipality (as of 2010) of the Netherlands. It is therefore a common destination for vacationing Dutch, and several of the Dutch dive instructors grew up spending time on the island. The official language is Dutch, the local language is Papiamentu, and most everyone speaks English. The island is one of the top destinations in the world for shore diving, the access and ease of which is (so I’m told) unparalleled. Painted yellow rocks with the names of dive sites dot the roads along the shore, demarking shore dives. Especially along the southwestern shore of the island, it is hard to go more than a few hundred yards without a yellow rock.
Buddy Dive lies along a stretch of road that is home to many resorts that cater to tourists. These resorts provide all the equipment and (for the most part) instruction needed to start diving independently. In order to dive in Bonaire, one must be outfitted with a Stichting Nationale Parken (STINAPA) tag and pay a fee to the marine park. STINAPA is the nongovernmental, not-for-profit National Parks Foundation commissioned by the island government to manage the two protected areas of Bonaire: the Bonaire National Marine Park and the Washington Slagbaai National Park (STINAPA Bonaire 2011). In this way, Bonaire ensures that its natural beauty continues to exist for more tourists to visit. Every diver is therefore literally invested in conservations efforts on the island. Divers who wish to dive on their own must also do a “checkout dive” before getting this tag or diving anywhere else on coastline. They must prove that they are safe divers who will not endanger themselves, the reef, or others. On Saturdays, direct flights arrive from a handful of airports around the United States, as well as from Amsterdam. Sunday mornings at the Buddy Dive dock are hectic affairs tinged with American Southern accents, shouts in Dutch, jokes in Spanish, and slippery feet as the newly arrived prepare for a checkout dive.
Recently, some of the Buddy Dive instructors, representing a smattering of nationalities, created a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) certification specialty. The organizing certification body of divers around the world has granted its particular means of restoring coral, which is a huge boon. For some people who come to dive, this possibility and almost certainty of another badge and card to put onto their diving resume is a great draw, as divers love to collect specialties. Another tag! Another skill set! For some of these tourists, coral restoration is simply another way to get a dive in. For others, like the kids I brought to the island, the idea of saving the charismatic reefs is what brings them to Bonaire and Buddy Dive.
Coral reefs are tangible, colorful habitats and objects of conservation. The underwater landscape is vast and for the most part far more unknown compared to its terrestrial counterpart. To see pictures of coral reefs at their full resplendence is reminiscent of scenes from Finding Nemo. Perhaps this is part of the allure—to feel as though one is a part of a movie. There may not be many charismatic mega fauna in and among the branches of elkhorn and staghorn coral, but the colors and proximity of the smaller fish are almost enough to make a first-time diver gasp in her mask. Seahorses like to hang on the coral nurseries, and little, awkward trunkfish dart in and out of the branches.
A group of students hangs coral in the nursery off the shore of Klein Bonaire.
CRF Bonaire’s Facebook page shows fun pictures of newly certified divers, as well as underwater action shots of people cleaning and hanging coral in the nurseries, captioned as “coral lovers,” “coral heroes,” and “brave soldiers of the polyp.” It is interesting to note the age range of people who have gone through the course; the students I led were among the youngest, while most of the others are middle aged and retired. After they leave Bonaire, most of them will not go home to a reef to restore. This has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Perhaps they will come back, but there isn’t a direct tangible transference of skills and actions that stem from their coral restoration. Instead, they will share their photos with friends, wear the T-shirt they bought at the gift shop, and think about how relaxed they felt on the island. Hopefully the seeds of awareness have been sown, and perhaps at some point they will consider the small dent they have made in a wider global oceanic conservation effort.
Caroline Lowe is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She graduated from Harvard College with an honors degree in Folklore and Mythology, and her studies focused on the intersection of biology and folklore, specifically the role whales play in Māori culture in New Zealand. She hopes to continue educating people about how to best approach their own interaction with the natural world.
All photos in this post are credited to the author.
References
Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire. 2015. “About CRF Bonaire.” crfbonaire.org/about-crf-bonaire (accessed 24 August 2015).
STINAPA Bonaire National Parks Foundation. 2011. “STINAPA Bonaire.” stinapa.org (accessed 24 August 2015).
In the first farming settlement of the [Andean] cold country I should place emphasis on the second-rate tuber crops—oca, ulluco, and añu … They are inferior in food value and in yield to potatoes, but are maintained in cultivation by highland Indians from Colombia to Peru and are grown in the same fields as potatoes. There are numerous races of each, and all three are man-made species, remote from wild kin. It is difficult to believe that people who had passably satisfactory potatoes to hand would have given attention to transforming such wild plants into root crops which provided nothing that was not better provided by potatoes. On the other hand, if the minor tubers were developed first, they might retain a place in Indian cooking because of traditional dishes and old taste preferences. Wherever there are highland Indian communities these tubers still are much used; white people do not care for them. (Sauer 1969: 50–51)
There are few activities less charismatic than the write-up period of a dissertation. Having returned from my fieldwork in Bolivia a little more than a year ago, my days are currently somewhat fragmented. I read or reread segments of books, I search my field notes for particular experiences, or I spend hours cleaning a handful of survey variables.
But from time to time, like when I stumbled across this opinionated passage by the formidable agricultural geographer Carl Sauer, a thread linking the fragments snaps taut. I went to Bolivia to study precisely the crops that Sauer dismisses. To him they were “second-rate,” but to many contemporary Bolivian farmers, chefs, and agrobiodiversity conservationists, these crops are rare delicacies to be valued and protected.
Charismatic potatoes at an agrobiodiversity fair in Candelaria, Colomi, Bolivia. (Photo: Alder Keleman)
There are many things about this passage in Sauer that we might question today. For example, we might treat with skepticism the assumption of a simple periodization of cultivar types, wherein primitive people plant minor tubers, like oca and ulluco, and more modern ones plant potatoes. So, too, should his slippage into a simple racial binary dividing “Indian” from “white” raise warning bells for the contemporary reader.
But what interests me about this passage is not only how current anthropological thought would revise it. Rather, I’m drawn to a simpler expression therein: despite his life’s work of cataloging the diversity of American agriculture, Sauer, it seems, had little affinity for Andean foods.
It strikes me as curious that a figure who spent so much of his life understanding and celebrating the diversity of the world’s crops might also so easily dismiss a few of them as “second-rate.” But then again, perhaps it isn’t; Sauer, too, had taste buds, and surely also had his own likes and dislikes. These very human qualities tap into deeper questions: What makes people decide they like certain foods, while they simply can’t stomach others? And what turns these likes and dislikes from individual idiosyncrasy into collective preference? In other words, I wonder, what relationships link taste to culture and environment?
These musings may seem esoteric, but I see them as more than trivial. My research is on the role of agrobiodiversity in household food security and food culture in Cochabamba, Bolivia. This region presents a real conundrum. Cochabamba is agriculturally rich, both in the sense of yield potential and in the diversity of crops it produces, but it nonetheless exhibits some of the highest levels of child malnutrition in the Western Hemisphere. These problems are more marked in rural areas—seemingly anomalous, given the potential of many of these areas to produce an ample and diverse diet.
A plate of oven-baked cuy (guinea pig), prepared by a women’s group in Kayarani, Colomi, for an annual food security fair. (Photo: Gonzalo Tiñini Huanca)
While economic inequality and a long history of racial oppression are obvious culprits for these outcomes, I also wonder about the role that an oft-overlooked element of food security may play in the development of malnutrition. The FAO’s definition specifically stipulates that food security, among other characteristics, describes a diet that meets one’s “preferences.” But the idea of preferences contains a cultural wild card. It is easy to imagine what a “healthy” and “complete” diet might consist of, from the perspective of Western science, but this gives us little sense of what food security might look like (or taste like) to the average Bolivian.
Indeed, just as Sauer expressed marked opinions about Andean foods, I observed Bolivians articulating very particular preferred “taste ways.” A case in point: I am married to a South Asian vegetarian. On my husband’s first visit to the field, we prepared an Indian meal for my Bolivian colleagues, many of whom were agronomists or nutritionists from local institutions. We put together what we thought was a fine spread: jeera rice, hand-rolled parathas, mint and cilantro lentils, and a spicy chutney, accompanied by a chicken korma, in a nod to the strong preference for meat in Cochabamba. Judging by our guests’ appetites, these were mostly well received.
But the evening was colored by our choice of beverage: a homemade, sweet-and-salty lemonade, garnished with toasted cumin seeds. This is one of my favorite South Asian beverages—refreshing on a cool day and a rehydration fluid to beat any other on the market. It hadn’t occurred to me that the dark yellow liquid, complete with floating brown specks, might be quite a shock to an unaccustomed palate. Two Bolivian friends later recounted the story of how they’d arrived at my apartment on that hot afternoon, thirsty after climbing three flights of stairs. They served themselves a generous portion—and promptly gagged.
Sweet and sour and salty and crunchy? In hindsight, I probably should have warned them.
Luckily, these colleagues took it in stride, and the story of the sweet-and-salty lemonade incident became a source of amusement rather than disgust. But this was far from the only moment when it became apparent that what I liked to eat seemed quite strange to my Bolivian interlocutors. I once had a long conversation with another colleague about my “flexitarianism.” My husband was vegetarian, I explained, and I ate meat occasionally but didn’t usually cook it, mostly because I simply didn’t crave it. I could tell by her questions that there was something in my occasional approach to meat that was utterly confusing. She understood complete vegetarianism, a sacrifice she had heard of people adopting for health reasons, and as a born-and-raised Cochabambina, she certainly understood carnivory. The idea that someone might just not want to eat meat every day, however, seemed to provoke deep skepticism.
Thinking about these instinctive likes and dislikes—Sauer’s, my colleagues’, and my own—leaves me wondering about the broader issue of taste. And here, I mean taste not in Bourdieu’s sense of “social distinction” (although there is some element of that as well) but more in the sense of “flavor.” How, I wonder, does the environment we inhabit, the environment we grow up in, influence the flavors we perceive as pleasing? How does it structure the flavors that we disdain?
In the early 1980s, ethnobotanist Timothy Johns did a study with a group of highland Aymara Bolivians, testing their taste perception and classification. While the taste testers had an affinity for sweet flavors, they expressed aversions to flavors that were sour, bitter, or salty. These aversions, he found, were ranked more strongly than aversions held by populations in other regions of the world, when calibrated on a comparable scale. Comparing these data with the foods reported in dietary recalls, Johns hypothesized that highland Aymara peoples’ preference for bland foods—i.e., starchy carbohydrates—might have to do with the frequent exposure to bitter plant toxins, like glycoalkaloids and saponins, in native Andean crops (Johns and Keen 1985).
Colomi potatoes in cross-section, in preparation for taste-testing. (Photo: Alder Keleman)
Indeed, as I am exploring in my dissertation, many Andean agricultural and culinary practices seem specially designed to reduce exposure to just such bitter chemicals. Taken in this light, perhaps my colleagues’ visceral disgust with the sweet-and-salty lemonade was more deeply rooted than I might have imagined—the result, one might imagine, of a deep cultural history of avoiding flavors that, in such a high-altitude environment, might well have indicated the presence of dangerous poisons.
This hypothesis, of course, is tricky territory. Anthropologists from Mauss to Geertz and beyond have cautioned against the perils of environmental determinism. In emphasizing the role of the environment in ritual, behavior, or preference, one does indeed run the risk of pitching environmental structures as overdeterminant while minimizing the agency of the people living in them.
Nonetheless, when I look at data from my own surveys of agrobiodiversity consumption, they show native crops, like oca, papalisa (ulluco), and isaño (año), accounting for as much as 65 percent of a household’s caloric consumption in rural Cochabamba, while they make up as little as 12 percent in urban areas just a few hours away. Typically, these crops are replaced not by other vegetables but rather by pasta, rice, bread, and meat. Some of this difference may be explained by access to markets, and some might be explained by income or other household resources. Still, I can’t help wonder whether perception of flavor itself isn’t an underlying driver of these contrasting dietary choices.
Anthropologists studying the interface of society and the environment have long been interested in “traditional knowledge,” or local and place-based ways of knowing. Though heavily structured field methods, like ethnolinguistic and ethnobotanical cataloging, have largely been replaced in recent years by studies of more fluid national and global processes, I wonder whether even these processes might not be illuminated by placing them in relationship to flavor. On some level, I would argue, we all know the world by its taste.
Alder Keleman Saxena is a PhD student in a combined program hosted by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Yale Department of Anthropology, and the New York Botanical Gardens. Her research is on the role of native and traditional crops in household food security and food culture in the Bolivian Andes. Recreationally, she likes to experiment with unconventional combinations of foods, flavors, and ingredients.
References
Johns, Timothy, and Susan L. Keen. 1985. “Determinants of Taste Perception and Classification among the Aymara of Bolivia. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 16, no. 3: 253–271.
Sauer, Carl O. 1969. Seeds, Spades, Hearths, and Herds: The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Cite as: Kelemen, Alder. 2015. “Taste Environments: Linking Agrobiodiversity and Food Security in the Bolivian Andes.” EnviroSociety. 3 September. www.envirosociety.org/2015/09/taste-environments-linking-agrobiodiversity-and-food-security-in-the-bolivian-andes.
I am walking this afternoon under the burning-crisp summer sun. Limestone surrounds me: in rough rock, in hewn rock, in built houses. The vivid blue Mediterranean Sea, extending from the horizon, also peeks out from the nearby bay, which appears yet distant because it is a steep descent to beach level. I am on the island of Gozo, the second largest of the Maltese Islands. Gozo is hillier and more agricultural than its sister island, Malta. There is a rich tradition of beekeeping on these islands, extending to Roman and perhaps pre-Roman times, and this month of June finds me in Gozo to research the contemporary beekeeping tradition and understand the human–bee, flower–hive interactions.
In November 2014, Madagascar was hit by a major outbreak of bubonic plague. Its epicenter was in Amparafaravola, a midsize town with a hospital staff that was caught off guard. Public outreach was slow and disorganized, dispensaries were understocked with antibiotics, and people did not believe the new fever was the actual plague … until several deaths occurred.
The evolution of the disease into the more lethal pneumonic variety risked a cataclysmic rise in mortalities. Health-care providers feared it would spread like wildfire into the capital, Antananarivo, where it has long existed at low-grade levels, especially within prisoner and homeless populations.
This post originally appeared on the European Politics and Polity (EUROPP) blog but was reprinted here with permission from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Illegal hunting and trade in wildlife have been increasingly prevalent in news and policy dialogue, becoming an ever more important part of conservation issues. The EnviroSociety editors have included the post here, as it will be useful and important to the blog’s readers.
A sharp rise in ivory poaching and smuggling over the last five years has fast become a central focus of international concern, and was one of the key issues underpinning a vote on combating ‘wildlife crime’ in the European Parliament last year. The level of interest has been bolstered by high profile (but now questioned) claims that ivory poaching is being used to fund militias and terrorist networks including Al Shabaab, the Lord’s Resistance Army and Janjaweed; or that it sustains networks of organised crime networks.
Credit: Diana Robinson (CC-BY-SA-3.0)
But the increasing dominance of the ‘crime’ framing is not helping to put an end to ivory smuggling, nor will it save elephants in the longer term. We know from past experience in the ‘ivory wars’ of the 1980s, which halved the African elephant population, that demand reduction in consumer markets is the more effective approach. Yet arguments for demand reduction are being lost amongst calls for urgent action.
International concern is rapidly increasing: the illegal ivory trade has been the favoured topic of members of the British Royal family (especially Prince William via his United for Wildlife initiative) and internationally famous celebrities (including Harrison Ford, Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Hardy and Angelina Jolie). In 2014 the UK Government oversaw the development of the London Declaration on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, and this has been followed up with a second inter-governmental conference in Botswana this year. The UK Government has committed £10 million for conservation initiatives to support the London Declaration.
Concern is not confined to the UK either. President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13648 on Combating Wildlife Trafficking, stating that it was in the US national interest to tackle trafficking because it fuelled instability and undermined security; and in 2013 the Clinton Global Initiative announced a commitment to raise $80 million to combat trafficking and poaching as a security threat.The European Union has also identified the role of organised crime networks in illegal wildlife trade and recognises that as a significant transit point in the trade the EU has a major role to play in the enforcement of regulations. This level of interest is welcome, but it has also contributed to the ivory trade being framed only in terms of crime, which prompts a response rooted in enforcement.
The scale of the illegal wildlife trade is difficult to estimate because of its clandestine nature. But in 2007 the US State Department estimated that the global illegal trade in wildlife and plants was worth around $10 billion, but possibly as high as $20 billion, excluding timber and fisheries. In 2014 TRAFFIC estimated that it was worth $8-10 billion per year, excluding illegal fisheries and timber extraction. While these figures give a sense of the scale of the illegal trade, they do not reflect the complexities of demand and supply.
The illegal trade in ivory is highly transnational – global trading routes link source countries with end user markets via a series of complex networks, intermediaries and entrepôts. As a result, governing the wildlife trade is a complex challenge, made even more difficult when that trade is illegal. The transnational nature of legal and illegal trades means they require inter-state and multi-agency co-operation to ensure that the trade does not over-exploit particular species and risk driving them to extinction.
The International Consortium for Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) is a step in the right direction; it was established in 2010 in recognition of the need to tackle the growing influence on transnational organised crime in trafficking of endangered species. It was an initiative of Interpol, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the World Bank, The World Customs Union and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the purpose was to provide co-ordinated support to national wildlife law enforcement agencies, as well as regional networks; so for example ICCWC provided specialised training for national agencies in 2013. Certainly, better enforcement of existing legislation by CITES members in Europe, as well as engaging in multi-agency cooperation will assist in reducing the illegal ivory trade. But it will not be enough to tackle the scale of the problem.
We would do well to revisit the original ivory ban in order to gain a better understanding of what might work this time round. Ivory trading was banned under CITES (except in certain very restricted circumstances) in 1989. Therefore it might seem reasonable to view it only via the framing of crime, but the most effective approach is demand reduction in end-user markets, and that is losing out along the way.
We know from the 1989 ivory ban that the authorisation of shoot-to-kill anti-poaching campaigns across Sub-Saharan Africa had limited and localised effects. Such forceful approaches also relied on the premise (rather like current concerns) that ivory poaching was being carried out by bands of poverty stricken individuals co-opted by organised crime networks.
Yet, we actually know very little about what motivates poachers and what the role of poverty really is. It may be that people engage in poaching for economic reasons, and if that is the case then long term solutions depend on providing better alternatives, not more guns and boots on the ground – or more recent moves by conservation NGOs, working with national governments and donors, to develop strategies more commonly associated with counter-insurgency campaigns: drones, surveillance technologies and the development of intelligence networks.
We know from 1989 that a major factor in the global collapse in the ivory trade was the effective demand reduction campaigns run by several conservation NGOs. They influenced the general public and the Governments of key consumer countries (the US and the UK at that time). Currently, the rising demand for ivory originates from the increasingly wealthy economies in Asia, particularly China. The profile of demand now differs slightly from the late 1980s, Chinese consumers value ivory as a material that displays the skills of the carver rather than using it for jewellery, piano keys and billiard balls (amongst other things).
Therefore demand reduction campaigns need to be carefully tailored to communicate effectively with ivory consumers. Recent successes in reducing demand for Shark Fin soup are instructive – demand reduction campaigns by NGOs and a decision by the Chinese Government not to serve it at state banquets had a clear impact. Demand reduction is the most effective long term strategy; this is where the European Union, conservation NGOs, Governments and International organisations would be well advised to target resources and support.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
Rosaleen Duffy is Professor in the Political Ecology of Development in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London.
As a student of the University of California, I have been fortunate to engage in scholarly discussion in classrooms, offices, and outdoor campus spaces with students and professors from multiple disciplines. The University of California has not only provided me with a well-rounded education but has also encouraged me to seek opportunities to delve deeper into my passions, exercise my critical thinking abilities, and thrive in life after college. Attending higher education has provided me with the tools needed to navigate my environment with an analytical eye, and encouraged me to apply these abilities and seek positive change. Entering my fourth and final year as an undergraduate student, I have learned from various classes and conversations that implementing change is a collective and collaborative effort, one meant to reconstruct and redefine systemic institutions and hegemonic social structures and discourses, rather than just individual actions. While my collegiate involvement with environmental protests, petitions, campaigns, and resolutions has taught me a great deal about challenging dominant environmental narratives and injustices, what has been absent from these experiences is how to define and place environmental issues into context, where social, economic, and political parameters of environmental issues are considered in understanding the dynamics of environmental issues and applying effective sustainable solutions.
It wasn’t until I became an anthropology student that I began to value the importance of a holistic perspective—more specifically, the need to redefine the common definition of sustainability as an individual lifestyle and to place environmental issues into local contexts when taking into consideration how to develop sustainable institutions, communities, and futures. Ethnographies, classes, and research experiences have opened my eyes to the complexities that exist within understanding and defining the boundaries of environmental issues, eliminating my naivety in believing there is any ease in achieving a just and sustainable environment.
My previous experiences with environmental and sustainable actions have been through campus clubs and campaigns. Most notable was my experience as Riverside campus campaign director with Fossil Free UC, a student-led fossil fuel divestment campaign supported by 350.org and the California Student Sustainability Coalition and composed of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and alumni. The campaign is geared toward divesting the UC endowment pool from the top 194 fossil fuel companies and reinvesting in socially and environmentally responsible campus developments and practices. Seven out of the ten UC campuses are participating in this campaign, which has attracted a large number of students who have expressed the need for the University of California to become a global leader in sustainable and environmentally responsible investments and practices. This campaign helped me realize the power and presence that student potential, collaboration, and inquiry can hold in targeting the larger, more powerful structures engendering environmental degradation. However, my research experiences this summer have provided me with a more in-depth understanding of the intricacies involved in addressing the sources, effects, and solutions to environmental issues.
This summer I have had the opportunity to partake in my first interdisciplinary research experience. The NSF-funded LAKES Research Experience for Undergraduates program is an interdisciplinary and applied research experience aiming to better understand the root causes of phosphorus pollution in the Red Cedar Water Basin (more specifically, in Lake Menomin and Tainter Lake) located in Menomonie, Wisconsin. The program has recruited ten undergraduate students studying anthropology, biology, economics, geochemistry, and sociology who are working to understand the multifaceted complexities of lake pollution. The lakes’ toxicity is due to cyanobacteria algal blooms from phosphorus runoff, largely from the commercial agricultural land that occupies most of central Wisconsin. Human activities of all kinds on the landscape have resulted in degraded water quality and have significantly impacted the biological, social, and economic diversity, such as decreased health of lake residents’ ecosystems, lower property values, decreased tourism and local business revenue, and a significant loss of a lively lake-centered community during summer months of algal blooms. Working under Dr. Tina Lee, I have been researching and interviewing community members of Menomonie and Dunn County to identify how lake quality affects lifestyles, local tourism, and local businesses’ success. As the lake is such a central and iconic asset of Menomonie, understanding the impacts of lake pollution on local business and tourism will generate a better assessment of how various residents of Menomonie and Dunn County consider the lakes and water quality to be central for community engagement. These engagements include recreational activities, tourism, businesses, annual community events, and political decisions that shape how sustainable and environmentally responsible solutions affect Menomonie’s economy and community identity.
While my experiences with Fossil Free UC and other environmentally centered activities have educated me on the structural causes leading to environmental degradation and the need for environmentally responsible practices, these past four weeks with the LAKES REU have already granted me a range of experiences that have redefined my understanding of what moving toward a more environmentally responsible and sustainable environment entails. While the REU’s goal is to provide a cohesive understanding of the causes of and, hopefully, solutions to the pollution in the Red Cedar Watershed, it wasn’t until this research experience that I acknowledged how sustainability exceeds protecting the future of natural resources. Prior to arriving in Menomonie, I understood that sustainability is more than individual choices of reusing, recycling, and having a general care for the tenability of natural resources; however, my previous experiences in environmental involvement had led me to believe that the ambition for equitable sustainable practices and developments was an easy achievement. Research in just these past four weeks has challenged these preconceived notions and expanded my definition of sustainability to include all aspects that affect or are affected by the water quality of the lakes, including the social, economic, and political spheres that shape Menomonie as a community. Expanding on my previous understanding of sustainability, I have begun to unravel the discourses hidden within environmental and sustainable development and am exploring how Menomonie and Dunn County community members alter and create spaces of identity in relation to water quality.
When I first arrived in Menomonie, I had the naïve understanding that almost all community members were in agreement about certain solutions for the lake pollution, and that it was only a matter of discussing how to implement them. As I began my research, I quickly realized that opinions vary and disagreements are common. Within these past four weeks, I have been introduced to the language and nuances of local and state politics that either allow or prevent environmental regulation. I have conversed with local residents, business owners, farmers, and council members who have expressed different opinions about the sources of pollution, who is responsible for dealing with it, what solutions are feasible, and even the relative importance of the lakes’ water quality. Where council members have implemented policies reflecting best management practices to curb future lake pollution, financial or community resources have prevented residents and other landowners from abiding by certain ordinances. Other community members have expressed concern regarding the effectiveness of policies targeting land ownership practices instead of the larger agricultural industries. Those involved in the business and tourism industry express the positive effects better water quality may have on the economic development of Menomonie and Dunn County but see little effort being made to bridge the lakes’ water quality with the local economy. Interdisciplinary research—including the construction of farmer social networks, evaluation of the impacts of water quality on the local economy, and education about the biological and geological research of cyanobacteria—has furthered my understanding of how various residents of Menomonie and Dunn County relate to each other and identify more positively with certain solutions and environmental ideologies than others.
Whereas my previous experiences in sustainable and environmental engagement targeted larger hegemonic structures of environmental degradation and approached sustainable efforts as easy routes, my current understanding of sustainability has developed dramatically. By understanding that the environment in which I am working extends beyond the physical boundaries of a waterway, I am subsequently realizing that environmental sustainability includes the careful consideration of a community’s social, economic, and political spheres, which underlie the success of sustainable solutions. Incorporating these spheres to generate a more holistic solution toward water quality is important to the well-being and longevity of sustainable practices so that policies and solutions implemented not only address the environmental issue at hand but also positively affect the rest of Menomonie’s community. As an anthropology student, my applied research has stressed that environmental sustainability cannot exist without taking into consideration how the implementation of environmentally sustainable policies affects, incorporates, or excludes those outside of the physical environment.
Melanie Ford is an undergraduate student of anthropology with a minor in gender and sexuality studies at the University of California, Riverside. As a graduate school hopeful, she will be applying to anthropology graduate programs this fall with interests in the intersections of political ecology, gender, science and technology studies, and sustainability with particular interests in food systems and energy.
Picture an environmentalist. What comes to mind for you? For some, the word evokes an image of radicals marching through city streets to protest public policies. For others, they think of “tree huggers” who chain themselves to trunks and branches in an effort to prevent deforestation.
Next, think of how the word environmentalism makes you feel. What is your reaction? While some might praise such endeavors, others view the word through a darker lens. They see thoughtless radicals who care more about nature than they do about people, willing to sacrifice the livelihoods of many humans for the preservation of a few trees or birds.
Kay Milton defines an environmentalist as a form of identity performance in which an individual not only holds a particular belief about nature but also is active in promoting their ideology to others (Milton 1996). However, this neutral academic definition takes on a very different meaning in public consciousness. Over the past forty years, the very word “environmentalism” has evolved into a polarizing discursive tool used by establishment powers to decry what they perceive as a fringe group that wishes to preserve nature at the expense of economic well-being. In painting environmentalists as individuals who value the intangible beauty of nature over the extrinsic value it provides, they disenfranchise environmentalism as dangerous to a fundamental social institution that distributes resources for our survival. Environmentalism, they argue, often comes at the expense of human prosperity.
This argument is successful because it strikes directly at the hearts of the average American. For instance, on the imposition of stricter logging regulations in the Pacific Northwest, many workers feared losing their jobs and livelihoods and protested on the grounds of “people before planet” (Layzer 2012). However, the most common anti-environmentalist rhetoric is misleading because it focuses narrowly on only one part of the environmental movement. While early environmentalism focused mostly on conservation of resources and preservation of natural beauty, the modern environmental movement has been characterized by a shift toward the relationship between human action and environmental consequence. These consequences frequently consider the impacts of pollution and other environmental harms on humans in the form of environmental injuries and health concerns. Such a transition began with the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which drew national attention to the dangers posed by DDT and other chemicals to not only other organisms but also people (Carson 1962).
The shift has manifested in what sociologist Robert Brulle calls the environmental justice and environmental health factions of the environmental movement (Brulle 2000). Each is differentiated from other kinds of environmentalism for their focus on the harms that pollutants and other activities have on human bodies. Although small, these factions promote a holistic perspective other kinds of environmentalism lack by emphasizing the ecology of human action. In short, their purpose is to remind us that we, too, are organisms and that our behaviors can have disastrous consequences for our own survival.
Curiously, however, I find in my own research with rural environmental justice advocates that they disagree with Brulle’s categorization. Among my informants, there is a consensus that environmentalism is a naughty word laced with too much political baggage to be viable in their endeavors. The group with whom I currently conduct my fieldwork, called the Northern Ohio ALS Project, seeks an Ohio EPA investigation into an alleged prevalence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) in Ashtabula County (Northern Ohio ALS Project 2014). However, recognizing that their own culture of farmers and factory workers are likely adherent to dominant environmental discourse, they emphasize the embodied consequences of pollution in order to humanize their cause. By attaching faces and bodies to environmental problems, they hope to appeal to their society’s emotions and sense of justice.
Humanizing environmentalism is no easy task. Current environmental science and law alike make it difficult to identify the silver bullets that cause illnesses like ALS—if such bullets even exist, that is. Environmental science is complex, with many variables at play; isolating and testing those variables to determine a vera causa (“true cause”) is thus nearly impossible. Such institutions reinforce the social inequalities that make poor people and minorities more than four times as likely to experience environmental injustice and provide them with few, if any, pathways for retribution (Checker 2005). While appealing to the humanism of others may work emotionally, it remains a weak trajectory for working within the system.
This was plainly seen on June 29, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the EPA had not properly considered cost-benefit analysis in its regulation of coal plant emissions (U.S. Supreme Court 2015). The majority opinion, written by Antonin Scalia, rejects the EPA’s argument that the benefits ascribed to human life by the regulations outweigh the economic costs imposed on the fossil fuel industry. The court’s narrow rejection of the regulations affirms that environmentalist justice advocates still have a long way to go in establishing a new discourse that considers human well-being from a more holistic and ecological perspective.
Environmental justice advocates are becoming increasingly prevalent voices in environmental discourse. However, the struggle to establish a cultural consciousness that the environment can be a source of harm to humans is limited by modern science and politics. These institutions thus maintain a social order in which bodies are governed in a way that devalues individual human lives. Justice Scalia’s ruling is an unfortunate continuance of our dominant discourse, asserting that economic value takes precedence over the value instilled in human life merely because the latter cannot be readily quantified. The consequence is that those experiencing environmental injustice are robbed of the very institutional mechanisms that would allow them to seek retribution for their injuries. The social order is thus maintained until and unless environmental science can advance to such a point at which human life can be measured in the same way as other forms of human prosperity (e.g., job growth and income). Until such a time, we are resigned to live in a world where bodies mean precious little unless they can be quantified, unitized, and measured as part of a cost-benefit analysis.
Richard Bargielski is a graduate fellow in the Anthropology Department at Ohio State University. His primary research interest is the role of grassroots environmental justice and health organizations play in shaping United States environmental discourse.
References
Brulle, Robert J. 2000. Agency, Democracy, and Nature: The U.S. Environmental Movement from a Critical Theory Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Checker, Melissa. 2005. Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town. New York: New York University Press.
Layzer, Judith A. 2012. “Jobs Versus the Environment: Saving the Northern Spotted Owl.” Pp. 174–208 in The Environmental Case: Translating Values into Policy, 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Milton, Kay. 1996. Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse. New York: Routledge.
Northern Ohio ALS Project. 2014. “The Vincina Protocol: Developing a Universal Medical Protocol for the Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention of ALS/Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” https://vincinaprotocol.wordpress.com.
U.S. Supreme Court. 2015. Michigan v. EPA.
Cite as: Bargielski, Richard. 2015. “Antonin Scalia and the Environmental Politics of Human Health.” EnviroSociety. 8 July. www.envirosociety.org/2015/07/antonin-scalia-and-the-environmental-politics-of-human-health.
