Political Considerations
Pineapple Empire: Castle and Cooke and the Rise of the Hawaiian Fruit Industry
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrew Howe
The Hawaiians of Kealakekua Bay may have gotten the best of Captain James Cook, but when it comes to the colonial exchange it has been downhill for the island archipelago ever since. Europeans settled the islands, eventually overthrowing the government of Queen Lili’uokalani and aligning politically with the United States. The impetus for the coup was a political initiative proposed by the Queen threatening business interests throughout the islands, many of which involved fruit plantations predicated upon exploitative labor models. Even aspects of colonialism that derived from righteous imperative resulted in economic exploitation, case in point Samuel Castle and Amos Cooke, two missionaries who abandoned their ministry in favor of starting sugar plantations, later merging with Dole to become the biggest producers of pineapple in the world. As the indigenous joke goes: “these men came to do good, and they did well.” This paper explores how the fruit industry helped re-map the late 19th century global economy of trade. The tropicalization of American foreign policy, in particular, contributed to the Spanish-American War and resulted in U.S.-backed coups in Guatemala and Hawaii. The combination of big business and politics with the latter had a unique flavor due to its religious underpinnings and in the massive and widespread ecological devastation, including numerous bird extinctions, that resulted from agricultural terra-forming. The Pineapple Empire that was 19th century Hawaii is thus a unique historical laboratory for examining the intersection of colonialism, capitalism, religion, and ecological loss.
Rice Politics in the Importing Countries of Southeast Asia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jamie Davidson
Some pro-market economists have suggested that the reluctance of successive governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines--the three great Southeast Asian importers of rice where the crop is also grown in abundance --to open their rice sectors to allow higher quantities of cheaper foreign imports from such countries as Thailand and Vietnam, for example, is rooted in deeply held Asian cultural values and norms. Rather than relying on static, primordial cultural understandings, this paper argues that maintains that these governments’ protectionist rice policies have been the products of concrete historical experience and political-economic struggle. More critically, the lessons these governments have chosen to learn from their experiences and conflicts not only have helped shape their subsequent policy choices, but that the lessons themselves have been selective, self-serving, and constructed. In short, what ultimately matters have not been whether past policies were effective, but that these governments, at least in the public realm, believe they were. While there is a surfeit of evidence to refute their claims, there is also evidence in support of them. Therefore, to better grasp the rice politics of these rice-deficit countries, we need to understand how the production successes of the Green Revolution shaped rice policies for decades even as technological advancements of the Green Revolution faded. These production successes led to an institutional entrenchment of vested interests along with the belief that through government intervention achieving self-sufficiency in rice is an obtainable and therefore worthy goal.
Food as Power: France and Culinary Imperialism
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Allison Dorman
My paper explores the cultural hegemony of French cuisine in visual media, particularly in the show Chef’s Table: France as well as in print media like French Women Don’t Get Fat and Julia Child’s classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I briefly trace the history of French cuisine as a codified, written body of knowledge from the 14th century through to today, connecting this written history with the professionalization of chefs. The latter is still heavily informed by French notions of sauces, cooking techniques, and flavor combinations. I go on to discuss Netflix’s documentary acquisitions, in particular, Chef’s Table: France, which I analyze for its representation of the world of haute cuisine. Finally, I evaluate how the show carries out its mission of demonstrating the evolution of French cuisine and the problematic representations of French culture and cooking in the show.
