Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
scaled to solve the particular problems they are trying to address, yet collectively
fail to cohere around a unified solution to global hunger with the power to motivate,
enrol and discipline policy responses in the same manner ahieved via the totalizing
neoliberal solution.
We will go on to argue that mobilizing the notion of food utopias (or ideal food
systems) has the potential to address aspects of this dilemma - unifying multiple,
diverse and differentially-scaled governance solutions under a coherent set of wider
values and ideas. Taking this pathway also aligns us with those who advocate that
alternative governance systems and modes cannot be ahieved through tehnocrat-
ic or policy processes and negotiations alone. Rather, we need a radical shift in our
treatment of food, both in the values we atah to it as well as in our imaginings
of more just and flexible systems. In other words, an alternative food Utopia would
serve to orient new governance systems by embracing flexibility and justice while
recognizing the benefit of a unifying framework.
Formulating responses 2: re-embedding food in sociocultural
relations
In making the call to re-vision and recover food from its commoditized, abstracted
forms we are aligning ourselves with a long tradition of social commentary and cri-
tique of market relations. Numerous social critics have already identified that the
unintended consequences of commoditization contribute to, and maintain, the oth-
erwise unjustifiable situations of excessive wealth and extreme poverty, and obesity
and hunger that have become an accepted feature of global society. For example,
Polanyi (1944) provided a scathing critique of the impact of market essentialism on
social relations. He argued that muh of the inequality experienced in 20th century
society was the result of treating land and labour as commodities and, in the pro-
cess, failing to fully value the environmental and social atributes they entailed. Fur-
ther critique is offered by MacIntyre (1981) who argued that the transformation of
goods into commodities could disassociate the product from the moral conditions of
its production and consumption.
Several notable applications of critical perspectives on commoditization of food
include those within the political economic tradition. Suh analyses expose the im-
pact of commoditization on consumers' awareness of the social and environmental
impacts of the production of food. Butler and Dixon, in this topic, refer to this cri-
tique in their discussion of the concept of 'metabolic rit'. he hapters by Campbell
