Another missing ingredient is an awareness of how access to food varies with
social class.
Let me just adress this within urban society in the U.S., though I know it
is a global issue. Quite aside from pricing structures, average distance to
travel to obtain food is a function of income. Average distance to healthy
food (fresh fruit and vegetables of any sort, let alone organic or locally
grown) is typically even greater for low income populations, leading to the
creation of "food deserts." Statistics for diabetes, obesity, low birth
weight, and lifespan all correlate to urban populations' distance from
heathy, affordable food sources. For low income populations, junk food (high
carbs and fat, prepared and packaged food) isn't just a personal choice, it
is dictated by income and access. Intervention through education alone is
not sufficient. It's essential to address root causes in unequal income
distribution and societal organization/urban architecture, transportation
and planning.
Now, art suffers from some of the same distribution issues. It tends to
offer its wares to the wealthy, the educated, and the well-located. The
internet may have some evening influence, but it's clear that access rules
there, too. Subcultures (hiphop, cyberpunk, reggae, ghetto jive, whatever)
mitigate the access issues to a degree, but barely intervene in the global
distribution networks of art except to the degree that they become
commodified and thereby loose much of their effectiveness in galvanizing
social consciousness/social action.
Briefly, in this situation food collectives may be positive, but their reach
is often limited. To the extent that they become identified with lifestyles
rather than wide-reaching social change ("organic" food, anyone?), they end
up marginalized, at best a proof-of-concept, at worst a gauche divine.
"Think globally, work locally" needs to be rethought when locality is
distributed. At what granularities, negotiated between global and local, is
social action possible?
That said, I think there is always room for some frivolity and conversation,
lumpen or haute, when that's the program. The error resides in attaching
"revolutionary" to practices that barely scratch the surface. Besides, these
days "revolutionary" sells razor blades and cell phones more that it does
social change.
centavos,
-- Paul
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:54 AM, mark cooley <[email protected]> wrote:
> back to the anarchist kitchen thing. the work has potential, but from what
> I've seen of some of these food collectives that are popping up lately is
> that they throw words like revolutionary and anarchism around while
> maintaining a typical bourgeois attitude about food production and
> distribution. Of course there's a whole lot more to this stuff than food
> science and eclectic dinner conversation. Some of these folks should get out
> of the kitchens and dining rooms and learn a thing or two from progressive
> farmers. I'm not seeing anything mentioned on the "anarchist chef's" site
> about farm labor issues (that would expand their notions of "community"
> beyond their comfort level I would suspect). Also, I see no mention of the
> importance of localism in food production and issues surrounding organic and
> the new "beyond organic" or biological farming practices. I applaud their
> efforts and I think they deserve more discussion than a simple blow off but
> again, I think efforts like these would benefit from expanding their notion
> of community to who and where their food actually comes from - in other
> words expand their notions of anarchism to places outside the pot.
>
>
>
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