“YOU CAN TASTE IT IN THE WINE”: A VISCERAL POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF POSTSOCIALIST TERROIR by A. JUNE BRAWNER (Under the Direction of Virginia Nazarea) ABSTRACT Terroir, or the taste of place, is the unique assemblage of geology, climate, and cultural practices of a region, essentialized in endemic food products and their tastes. The linkage of taste experience with a specific geography often results in place-brand toponyms (e.g. Champagne, Vidalia onions). Today, terroir may be protected as intellectual property through a series of legal instruments, or Geographical Indications (GIs) (e.g. Josling 2006, Gangjee 2012). This dissertation examines terroir as a window onto broader questions of cultural, political, and ecological change in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Broadly, it asks: How are “hegemonies of taste” (Yung 2014) reproduced or countered through CEE terroir wine discourse and practices? This question is answered through long-term (fourteen months) ethnography in the historic Tokaj region and Budapest, Hungary, using sensuous-ethnographic methods, policy (GI) analysis, and archival/media analysis. I find that terroir-related policies shape material landscapes, becoming components of socioecological systems. This work thus reverses the terroir narrative that inert places cause specific taste experiences (from place to taste), arguing that acquired tastes are also political experiences with environmental outcomes (from taste to place). It describes how political/temporal boundaries (e.g. East/West, 1989) manifest as visceral experiences of everyday life in CEE. Through ‘blood and soil’ narratives, terroir naturalizes more-than-human communities of natives; wine in this context is thus a currency of growing ethno-nationalist sentiment in the region. Further, this work explores terroir as more-than-human networks of labor in and outside of agricultural spaces of production, and how these non-human components are increasingly authenticated through new methodologies within a framework that prioritizes simplification, purity, and nativism. Through narratives of environmental exceptionalism, a ‘counter-terroir’ emerges, which is less about “anchoring” (Demossier 2018), but mobility in the global age. This dissertation proposes a visceral political ecology approach to locate power in sense experiences. This approach evaluates how sense knowledge becomes action (Feld 2005), and how those actions materialize in socio-ecological systems. This position is an important new paradigm in political ecology, with implications for related fields, including sustainable food systems, biodiversity conservation, nationalism, and historical ecology. INDEX WORDS: Political ecology, terroir, sensory anthropology, post-socialism, food studies. “YOU CAN TASTE IT IN THE WINE”: A VISCERAL POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF POSTSOCIALIST TERROIR by A. JUNE BRAWNER BA, Kennesaw State University, 2009 BS, Kennesaw State University, 2010 MA, Central European University, Hungary, 2011 MS, University of Georgia, 2018 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2019 © 2019 A. June Brawner All Rights Reserved “YOU CAN TASTE IT IN THE WINE”: A VISCERAL POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF POSTSOCIALIST TERROIR by A. JUNE BRAWNER Major Professor: Virginia Nazarea Committee: J. Peter Brosius Jennifer Jo Thompson Hilda Kurtz Guntra Aistara Electronic Version Approved: Suzanne Barbour Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a great deal of appreciation to many people who made this project possible. Firstly, to the faculty, administration, and students of the Department of Anthropology at UGA, and to my interdisciplinary and international committee members, and especially to my adviser, Dr. Virginia Nazarea: thank you all for your patience, dedication, collaboration, and support. To my colleagues and friends in the Ethnoecology and Biodiversity Laboratory, thank you for the inspiration, encouragement, laughs, and great meals! To the Hungarian Fulbright Foundation for their support, which enabled my 2016-2017 fieldwork, thank you for this unmatched opportunity and the relationships that will endure far beyond this work. A great deal of thanks is also due to the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, who supported the writing of this dissertation through the CES-Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2018-2019). There are many, many people who helped in the navigation of fieldwork, the Hungarian language, and the practicalities of life abroad: thank you to the many locals (winemakers and non- winemakers alike) who offered their time, their homes, their knowledge, their wines, and the occasional ride! Your warm hospitality and willingness to share your history and your present with me will never be forgotten. To Claudia Moricz for her local insights, translational and archival assistance: köszönöm szépen! To Anna Veres, who since 2014 has helped me navigate the Hungarian language and been a patient and helpful teacher and friend—nagyon szépen köszönöm mindent!! Csapat munka volt! We did it!! For my friends and family near and far who have been supportive through all the weary travels, breakdowns, and crises great and small involved in international fieldwork: you are the best (looking at you especially, Savannah, Ryan, Eliza, Michael, Jim)! Thank you all. To my parents—Tim and Karen, Sam, Kevin, Anne, and Ron—and grandparents—Mane (‘June I’) and Pawpaw, Grandpa and iv Wynnell, Lynn—thank you for the unwavering support, enthusiasm, and love that keeps me going. To Grandma, if there is a library where you are (and if wouldn’t be your heaven if there weren’t!), I hope they file a copy of this away for you. With your love, unwavering support, and contagious passion for culture, history, education, and travel, you made this possible years ago, and this is as much your accomplishment as mine. And, of course, for Dan Adams (also PhD!), who has understood first-hand the work required to put ideas into action (and into dissertations) and has been by my side through it all—literally, from desk-side coffee breaks to soil and wine sampling—I hope the hárslevelű made it worthwhile. You are so wonderful! Thank you!!! v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................................iv LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE PLACE OF TASTE .................................................................... 1 Tokaj, Hungary ............................................................................................................ 1 Introduction to the study ............................................................................................. 5 Tokaj: Historical Background ................................................................................... 15 Organization of the manuscript ................................................................................. 25 2 LITERATURE REVIEW: AUGMENTING POLITICAL ECOLOGY WITH A VISCERAL APPROACH ................................................................................................. 28 Blood and soil: From terror to terroir ......................................................................... 28 Visceralities ................................................................................................................ 39 Conclusions: A multi-modal “taste” of place .......................................................... 44 3 “THE IRON CURTAIN WAS NOTHING COMPARED TO THIS”: VISCERAL BORDERS, GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS, AND COUNTER-TERROIR............. 48 The political life of taste in post-socialist Europe ....................................................... 48 Tokaj: A border wine, a wine of borders .................................................................... 56 Territories of taste ....................................................................................................... 68 4 “THE LAND IS A CAPABILITY”: THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXCEPTIONALISM OF TOKAJI TERROIR ............................................................................................................ 74 vi In vino, veritas ............................................................................................................ 74 “Studying through” terroir policy .............................................................................. 78 Unearthing distinction ................................................................................................. 80 Collectivization and cooperation ................................................................................ 89 Discussion: Undemocratic terroir ............................................................................. 100 Conclusions: Naturalizing terroir ............................................................................. 104 5 “GRAPES ARE LIKE US”: MOBILIZING NATIVE GERMPLASM ......................... 108 Multispecies authenticity .......................................................................................... 108 Territory as heritage .................................................................................................. 112 “Grapes are like us”: Identity and indigeneity .........................................................