Politics and Culture 2009, issue 2 Special issue on Food (&) Sovereignty Edited by Max Haiven and Scott Stoneman Available online at: http://aspen.conncoll.edu/politicsandculture/arts.cfm?id=81 Table of contents: 2 Abstracts and keywords ......... EDITORIALS ......... 6 Scott Stoneman Learning to learn from the food crisis: consumer sovereignty and the restructuring of subjectivity 11 Max Haiven Food, finance, crisis, catalyst: global capitalism and the revolutionary value of food sovereignty ......... INTERVIEWS ......... 24 Silvia Federici On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics 37 Julie Guthman On globalization, neoliberalism, obesity, local food and education 45 Raj Patel On rights, sovereignty, and suicide 50 Michael Perelman On globalization, economics, and the history of food crises ......... ARTICLES ......... Neoliberalism 57 Chad Lavin Pollanated Politics, or, The Neoliberal’s Dilemma 68 Gwendolyn Blue On the politics and possibilities of locavores: situating food sovereignty in the turn from government to governance Corporate power and resistance 80 Kelly Bronson What we talk about when we talk about biotechnology 95 Bethaney Turner Corn coalitions: struggles for food sovereignty in Mexico 101 Irena Knezevic Monsanto rules: science, government, and seed monopoly New food subjects, local and global 106 Karine Vigneault Terroirs as spaces of intergenerational justice: building communities for the “food citizen” 121 Michael Mikulak Backyard survivalism: the global politics of the kitchen garden 132 Emily Johansen The political allure of the local: food and cosmopolitanism in Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park and Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats Politics and Culture 2009 (2) - Special Issue on Food (&) Sovereignty ABSTRACTS INTERVIEWS Silvia Federici - on capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics In this interview Federici shares her thoughts on the relationship between food, agricultural production, women’s work, global capitalist accumulation and struggle around the world. Julie Guthman - on globalization, neoliberalism, obesity, local food and education Among other difficult questions, in this interview Guthman offers critical perspectives on the intersection of alternative food and political subjectivity, the social, cultural and bodily impact of neoliberalism, and the possibility of responsible food criticism and radical food pedagogy in a time of crisis. Raj Patel - on rights, sovereignty, and suicide In this interview Patel considers the ideological implications of “food security,” the limits of rights discourses and technocratic solutions in talking about food politics, the obfuscations of statistical knowledge and the possibility of mass participatory democracy today. Michael Perelman - on globalization, economics, and the history of food crises In this interview Perelman offers his insights into the contemporary food and economic crises, some of their historical antecedents, and themes ranging from speculation to dependency to class. ARTICLES Chad Lavin - "Pollanated politics, or, the neoliberal’s dilemma" Keywords: Michael Pollan; neoliberalism; green consumerism; Obama; post-politics Abstract: Michael Pollan has recently emerged as an informal spokesperson for the growing movement for responsible eating. This essay examines the assumptions underlying Pollan’s recent prescriptions 2 ABSTRACTS Politics and Culture 2009 (2) - Special Issue on Food (&) Sovereignty for food reform and demonstrates how these prescriptions remain limited by the political horizon of neoliberalism. More broadly, the essay situates the recent politicization of food within a consumer society in which it is only as consumers, rather than as workers or as citizens, that Americans can imagine political action. Gwendolyn Blue - "On the politics and possibilities of locavores: situating food sovereignty in the turn from government to governance" Keywords: locavore, food sovereignty, governmentality, cultural politics Abstract: This paper situates discourses of local food activism, specifically, and food sovereignty, generally, in conversation with the themes of governance, governmentality and biopolitics. Governance, in this sense, points to the movement of politics in line with neoliberal globalization which places emphasis on the individual and its self- governing capacities, on one hand, as well as new loci of power in local networks and communities, on the other. The turn towards local eating is embedded in and reinforcing of neoliberal forms of governance. How we make sense of these political transformations and contexts is a matter of debate. To conclude, I discuss the possibilities of the locavore movement as a form of popular political engagement. Kelly Bronson - “What we talk about when we talk about biotechnology” Keywords: Agricultural biotechnology; organic farming; culture; science and technology; ethnography; social movements. Abstract: Genetic engineering (GE) of crops is an apogee of corporatized and industrialized farming and the technology threatens food sovereignty. A group of organic producers from Saskatchewan, Canada, has taken Monsanto to court because its GE canola has contaminated organic fields. An ethnography of case participants points to an impasse between the dominant framing of GE—within the logic of science—, versus farmer’s evaluations of the technology—as a set of knowledge practices that is rearranging social relationships. The case is exemplary of the need for increased citizen participation in decision- making about science and technology, and its participants represent the hope of renewed democracy around wider social justice issues. 3 ABSTRACTS Politics and Culture 2009 (2) - Special Issue on Food (&) Sovereignty Bethany Turner - “Corn Coalitions: Struggles for Food Sovereignty in Mexico” Keywords: Corn; Mexico; GM food; food sovereignty; food security; Abstract: Corn for many members of the various ethnic groups of Mexico sustains life. It is their principal agricultural crop and primary food source. However, the increasing liberalisation of the Mexican economy has resulted in greater importation of cheap, mass-produced US corn and the possible arrival of GM cultivars in the nation’s south. In response to these occurrences, many Indigenous Mexicans have joined resistance movements in an effort to protect their ways of life. However, those coalescing around corn are not simply reacting to localised fears of cultural annihilation, nor are they appealing exclusively to notions of authenticity and tradition to justify their cause. They are situating their demands within global concerns for food sovereignty and future food security Irena Knezevic - Monsanto Rules: Science, Government, and Seed Monopoly Keywords: Monsanto, regulation, seed monopoly, genetic modification A Review of Robin, Marie-Monique, dir. The World According to Monsanto. Arte/NFB Canada, 2008. Karine Vigneault - Terroirs as spaces of intergenerational justice: Building Communities for the “Food Citizen” Keywords: local food, citizenship, intergenerational justice, post- cosmopolitanism, “government through communities”, governmentality. Abstract: This article examines the “food citizens” naturalized in and through practices which identify themselves as “local food” through an exploration of the ways in which they conceive of food and of their subjects. More specifically, I argue that these practices contribute to a redefinition of food and eating as an issue of intergenerational justice pertaining to multiple spatial identities. In so doing, local food posits “food citizens” who are required to take responsibility for the many consequences – present and future, local and global – of their daily 4 ABSTRACTS Politics and Culture 2009 (2) - Special Issue on Food (&) Sovereignty purchasing practices and who are impelled to do so through their participation in moral communities. Michael Mikulak – “Backyard Survivalism: The Global Politics of the Kitchen Garden” Keywords: Slow Food, Life-Politics, Gardening, Alienation, Sustainability, Ecocriticism Abstract: This article looks at the backyard garden as a political space. Michael Mikulak draws on his own experiences with gardening and small scale organic agriculture to consider the different ways in which the politics of the everyday are being complicated by various food- centred movements such as Slow Food. The growth in popularity of food issues can be understood as a desire to reconnect with a narrative of production and consumption, a narrative that has been replaced by brands and story-less food that are forcibly disconnected from the land and people who produced it. He uses the example of heirloom seeds as a way of understanding how resistance to industrial agriculture requires a maintenance of cultural and biological diversity that begins with the simple act of eating, and which can link up issues as diverse as environmental justice, biodiversity, class, race, gender, and environmental degradation. Emily Johansen – “The Political Allure of the Local: Food and Cosmopolitanism in Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park and Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats” Keywords: cosmopolitanism; local; global; responsibility; consumption; narrative. Abstract:This article considers the potential political stasis produced through the ossification of a binary opposition between the local and the global. I consider, what I term, “territorialized cosmopolitanism”(a cosmopolitanism that emerges out of simultaneous multiple global and local affiliations) in two recent novels: Timothy Taylor’s Stanley