Community Shifts: Room A203
28 October - 11:20AM-13:00PM CEST Copenhagen (Aarhus University)
Cultivating Social-ecological Resilience, Harvesting Biocultural Resistance in the Southern Andes: Biocultural Heritage and Agroecosystems
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Constanza Monterrubio Solís
The fertile capacity of agro-ecosystems reveals itself in the interactions between seeds, homegardens, kitchens and native forests creating particular flavours and meanings for food as a basis for cultural identity within territories. Agro-ecosystems resilience can be understood as the balance between persistence and adaptability to change from a relational perspective. Resilience has different attributes that enable systems to respond to disturbances and to adapt, namely: diversity, redundancy, buffer capacity, modularity, self-organization, governance, learning, equity, and decision-making. Food growing, preparation, and consumption are constantly changing and adapting as expressions of agency of female and male farmers to decide what they what to eat and how they want to eat it. These interactions are the basis of biocultural memory which can be defined as the set of knowledge, practices and worldviews transmitted through generations, defining cultural ways of interaction with the territory and is elements. In this research, we explore the elements of the bicultural memory that allow mostly female peasants, in La Araucania region of Chile, to continue with their agriculture and food practices despite historic and ongoing dispossession processes. Through up to 80 informal and semi-structured interviews, participant observation and 2 focus groups we explore the elements of the biocultural memory such as affection to particular flavours and recipes, the cultural importance of seeds and reciprocity networks, as well as an accurate knowledge about the indicators of the seasons and weather, these women show resilience and resist current processes of privatization, commodification, and homogenization in local food systems.
Featured The Impact of COVID-19 in the Restaurant Industry at the U.S. - Mexico Border View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ana Garcia Escalante
El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juarez (Mex) is one of the busiest borders and ports of entry in the US. During the current pandemic, COVID-19 brought and adding the closure of the border brought a strong and negative impact on the restaurant industry. More than impacting only businesses, there is history, culture, and so much more that has been affected. Different types of aids (financial or example) had helped the industry, but only to a certain level. There is so much more that needs to be done to be able to fully recover within the next few years. This research considers what people, owners, employees, and government departments are currently doing to strengthen the future of the restaurant sector.
Culinary Food Emissions Visualization Educational Resource: A Unique Educational Resource Using Balloons to Empower the Public to Reimagine Food Choices for Environmental Sustainability View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carla Ramsdell
Our food system is a major contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) but has been under-represented in conversations related to climate change mitigation until recently. In an attempt to empower individuals to adapt their food choices to minimize GHG to mitigate global climate change, Food Emissions Visualization Educational Resource (FEVER), a visual educational resource was developed. This resource employs the use of balloons to represent the emissions from one person's dinner choices as a volume of equivalent carbon dioxide that was emitted in production and transportation. This resource has three potential distribution methods. One is designed for use in a high school or university science class to engage students in a conversation about their food production and transportation emissions while calculating the size of the balloon necessary to contain the GHGs from their food selections. The second distribution method is intended for use at a hands-on science outreach booth typical at community outreach events. Participants would choose play food items to build their plate, and the booth host would hand them a bundle of balloons representative of the GHGs of their food selections. The final distribution method is an educational display for cafeterias, restaurants or grocery stores. A bundle of balloons would provide a quick visual representation of the differences in GHG emissions from various food choices before the shoppers make their purchases. The hope is that using balloons provides a clear visual image, empowering people to make food choices for the long-term benefit of our earth’s energy balance.
Quality, Inequality, and Values in High-end Coffee: Third Wave Tastes, Maya Farmers, and Determinations of Worth
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Edward Fischer
Based on a study of the high-end (‘Third Wave’) coffee market in the USA and on research conducted with Maya farmers in Guatemala, this article examines how economic gains are extracted by translating values across symbolic and material worlds. Drawing on anthropological understandings of value and the analytic tools of convention theory, I show how roasters, baristas and marketers have developed a new lexicon of quality for coffee, one tied to narratives of provenance and exclusivity that creates much of the value added in the Third Wave market. Based on fieldwork with Maya smallholders, I show how the conventions of the Third Wave coffee market—the ways that it defines and rewards quality—have unintended consequences for smallholding producers in places like Guatemala. These coffees tend to be grown at higher altitudes than standard beans, and it happens that Maya farmers in the highlands of Guatemala occupy some of the best land in the world for growing coffee. Indeed, their control of this terroir has brought an economic boom to a number of Maya communities in recent years. Yet, I show how the quality conventions of the Third Wave market disadvantage smallholding coffee farmers, who are heavily invested in land and the material means of production but who lack the social and cultural capital needed to extract surplus symbolic value from their crops. In this unintentional way, the quest for artisanal quality in the coffee market perpetuates classic dependency patterns of global capital accumulation across these value worlds.
