New Clear Vision

Walmart, Food Deserts, and Genuine Sovereignty

by Devon G. Peña

Let us begin with a “defining moment,”  courtesy of the Oxford World Dictionary:

Commissariat (kɒmɪˈsɛːrɪət)

Definition: chiefly Military department for the supply of food and equipment.

Origin: late 16th century (as a Scots legal term denoting the jurisdiction of a commissary, often spelled commissariot): from French commissariat, reinforced by medieval Latin commissariatus, both from medieval Latin commissarius ‘person in charge’, from Latin committere ‘entrust’

How does this relate to the news cycle? Well, on January 20, Walmart announced plans to reformulate the ingredients of their in-house or private brand processed foods. An estimated 60 percent of the company’s annual grocery revenues are currently tied to the sale of processed food items. It is therefore expected that this formula change will place pressure on other private suppliers to follow suit. (more…)

Learning Peacefulness from the Zapotecas

by Devon G. Peña

Pundits and analysts have engaged in mostly thoughtful discussions of the social, cultural, and political contexts of the recent mass murder in Arizona. According to Michael Nagler, there is growing recognition of “an apparently forbidden truth: that we bring violence on ourselves when we promote it, glorify it, or legitimize it — as in this case by the extreme rhetoric associated with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, among others.” Still, for every such in-depth analysis of the issue, there are others content to remain on the surface.

Was the Tucson massacre a form of political violence? Some have argued that it was, by virtue of the fact that the principal target was an elected official. Many on the right, including Palin, have objected to this characterization, arguing that “blaming the right” or any one else is intrinsically unfair and that the mindless crime occurred simply because the perpetrator was mentally ill and unhinged. Since the assassin was ‘sick,’ this cannot be seen as a ‘political act.’ The allegedly deranged mental state of the perpetrator becomes an opening to ‘de-politicize’ the crime. This is, simply put, a ruse. (more…)

Undoing Neoliberalism through Solidarity Economics

by Devon G. Peña

Preparing for the start of a new semester at the University of Washington, I am pondering what to emphasize to students during the first day of classes. I am teaching two seminars, one focused on the study of food sovereignty movements, and the other a ‘theory’ course on the contributions of anthropology to the comparative study of social movements in the Mesoamerican Diaspora.

I already see numerous connections between the two themes: food sovereignty and theories of social movements. The first problem that occurs to me may not be at all obvious, namely the dilemma posed by the advent of what Christian Marazzi and others have called cognitive capitalism. This is the idea of a cyberspace-based realm of ‘high finance’ that profits from the construction of complicated credit default obligations, collateralized debt obligations, and other financial instruments that basically allow for the extraction of surplus value out of speculative thin air through the commodification of ‘risk.’ This development, Marazzi argues, has altered everything — including the prospects and methods needed for the multitude to escape hunger, malnutrition, and structural violence. (more…)

The Year That Was — and What Wasn’t

by Devon G. Peña

Progressive media outlets have been busy providing an end of the year retrospective on the most notable events and issues that carried the headlines in 2010. Many news services and blogs in the food- and agriculture-related areas ranked the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Child Nutrition Act at the top of their lists.

Playing up the ‘democratizing’ influence of the Web, many of the alternative source and agglomeration sites ranked the top news items based on their popularity among readers. AlterNet, for instance, gave its highest ranking for 2010 to the impact of the BP gusher on the safety of seafood coming from the Gulf of Mexico. As members of a nation largely defined (and constrained) as consumers, people reading progressive sources have in some cases reflexively expressed the greatest concern for a story on the safety of the seafood they’ve been consuming.

What is left out of this accounting is another side of the story: the growing hunger and impoverishment of seafood industry and other workers displaced by what was arguably the most significant and unjust environmental catastrophe of the year. (more…)