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Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism

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Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2015 Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism Elizabeth Perry Bullock Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/874 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] LEVERAGING CAPACITY: TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS TO HUNGER IN THE ERA OF NEOLIBERALISM by Elizabeth Perry Bullock A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 © 2015 ELIZABETH PERRY BULLOCK All Rights Reserved This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Patricia Ticineto Clough Date Chair of Examining Committee Professor Philip Kasinitz Date Executive Officer Professor Lynn Chancer Professor Michelle Fine Supervision Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK ABSTRACT LEVERAGING CAPACITY: TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS TO HUNGER IN THE ERA OF NEOLIBERALISM by Elizabeth Perry Bullock Advisor: Professor Patricia Ticineto Clough Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism takes the Global Seed Vault and the value of “global crop diversity” as a point of departure for raising questions about the influence of digital technology on the seed and about the solution to hunger known as “global food security.” Discussions about food security among food studies scholars highlight either the failures of global public health advocates to regulate the food and beverage industry or they view food security, like earlier campaigns against global hunger, as an instrument for U.S. foreign policy. On either side of this debate, the body is made to fit the conclusions of these scholars in terms of the impact of economic or state-based forces on our global food supply. But these debates are complicated by the recent turn to seed vaults promising crop diversity in perpetuity, where “value” for crop diversity is mobilized by political organizations and industry alike. Asking about the relationship of technology to the seed in this arrangement, I examine six discourses that have attended the turn to food security: nutrition, information, epigenetics, cybernetics, biotechnology, and biological diversity. In these discourses I chart instances where social problems begin to be defined as technical solutions in discourses on global hunger, iv discussions about scientific philanthropy, microbiology, and in discussions about biological diversity prospecting. While separately these discourses are inadequate to the task of understanding the turn to food security, when treated together however we can begin to see new articulations of relations of the body, the object, subjectivity, and institutionality as they are emerging in these discourses that should be considered a part of our contemporary neoliberal moment. Part of the reconfiguration of the body, I argue that we should view the turn to food security as a technical innovation and security for the “body-as-data.” v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to friends and colleagues at the CUNY Graduate Center who taught me so well what it means to be a “colleague.” Special thanks to study partners Rachel Swaner, Megha Ramaswamy, Liza Reisel, and Theresa Horvath for their early support and advice as we navigated through coursework and exams. Thank you to Sam Han, Rachel Schiff, Karen Gregory, Polly Sylvia, Kim Cunningham, Craig Willse, and Greg Goldberg for their playful exploration of questions of sociological methodology and the limits of the discipline in our “Dossiers on Methods” group. And thank you again to Karen Gregory and Mitra Rastegar for welcoming me to their writing circle and reading early drafts of chapters. Special thanks to Greg Goldberg for sharing his ideas and work on information theory and peer-to-peer networks in relation to which many of my ideas about food security were initially explored. I have an enormous gratitude and respect for the Graduate Center professors and staff who contributed time, resources, and encouragement to my work. First I want to thank the members of my committee, Professors Lynn Chancer and Michelle Fine. Their readings and comments helped to define this work in its present iteration. Thank you to Mitchell Duneier for his dedication to ethnographic research and for his support even when my scholarly interests deviated from his own. Thank you to Roopali Muhkerjee for her guidance and enthusiasm for this project in its early stages. Sincere thanks to Rati Kashyap whose direction I required for every step of this process, and to Erin Martineau for her insightful edits and comments. And a very heartfelt thank you to my advisor, Patricia Clough, for whom I have such great appreciation and affection. Without her patience, attention, and support this work would have never come to life. vi In addition to everyone at the Graduate Center, I want to thank my parents, Ervin and Jim Bullock, for their love and support. Their commitment to social justice continues to shape my relationship to politics today. Thank you to my brothers Christopher and John for sharing with me all the miseries and pleasures of our lives then and now. And thank you to Darrell, Dwayne, Robert, and Jesse whose presence and friendship has given me a greater understanding of what it means to be a family. Most of all, a very special thank you to Jerel Johnson, whose love and friendship has been a great gift without which I never would have started this journey. His interest in and support for my work lighted my way through to the end. This work is dedicated to Jasper Johnson who reminds me every day of all the joy to be discovered when trying to decide what to do next. vii CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 The Problem............................................................................................................................ 5 Methods................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1. ENERGETIC METABOLISMS AND THE BODY IN FOOD STUDIES.......... 16 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 16 GLOBAL HUNGER, THE NUTRITION SCIENCES, AND THE CALORIE ...................... 16 “Big Food”............................................................................................................................ 16 The Calorie, Heat, and Industrialized Systems..................................................................... 18 The Calorie, Economy, and Food Problems ......................................................................... 20 The Calorie, “Development,” and U.S. Imperialism ............................................................ 22 Measures of Progress ............................................................................................................ 24 Physiological Economy, U.S. Imperialism........................................................................... 26 Solving for Complexity......................................................................................................... 28 Disciplinary Institutionality .................................................................................................. 31 DIVERSITY AND INSTITUTIONALITY ............................................................................. 34 Biological Diversity and Technological Solutions ............................................................... 34 Biodiversity and Survival ..................................................................................................... 36 “Cultural Casualties” of Eating............................................................................................. 37 A MODERN FOOD SUPPLY: FROM THE STEAM ENGINE TO INFORMATICS .......... 38 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................................... 42 CHAPTER 2. INFORMATION THEORY AND BODIES OF NONKNOWLEDGE................ 43 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 43 RETHINKING INFORMATION............................................................................................. 44 Signal to Noise...................................................................................................................... 44 Information and Probability.................................................................................................. 46 Boltzmann’s Theorem........................................................................................................... 47 Information and Social Physics ............................................................................................ 48 From Infinitesimal Numbers
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