"Goods are not only economic commodities. but vehicles and instruments for realities of another order, such as power, influence, sympathy, status and emotion, and the skilful game of exchange ... consists in a complex totality of conscious and unconscious manaeuvers in order to gain security and to guard oneself against risks brought about by alliances and rivalries." Pierre Bourdieu. Should First Peoples be paying a GST for bush tucker which they themselves collect? Could it come to this? What if we also take the view that the foods of First Peoples are not merely foods but also constitute a sacramental link between themselves and their living countries? Should a GST be paid when Christians receive a 'free' meal of the sacrament? There is something fundamentally wrong with this idea. There are some very real paradoxes and contradictions which run through all forms of social life, and especially so in the case of Western nation-states. I raise the question of First Peoples paying a GST on 'raw food' collected from their countries not so much in its own right. That would be worthy of debate in comparison with others who collect mushrooms, catch fish and shoot rabbits and farmers who kill their own meat. No doubt this level of debate has already taken place in other countries with the introduction of their GST's. No doubt the question of the rights of indigenous peoples in those countries has also been debated and that we could learn from those debates. But the reason i raise the question is as an effort to find where we draw a line on what we feel should be subject to a GST type of taxation � by seeking out something in the unconscious which underlies our Western culture. And ask "Where do we draw the line?" WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE? My gut feeling is no GST on 'raw' food. This gut feeling is something which i will rationalise (see below) but which i intuit comes from a deeper source than conscious reasoning. I can express it by saying that taxation is part of culture (not nature) and that the cosmos in which i consider well-tempered is one in which not everything is subject to culture. It is no coincidence, i feel, that hell is pictured as an overcooked world. Or a world in which every breath is taxed, every drink of water. The juicy bits of life are outside of the legitimate reach of our cultural masters. We object when the state interferes in that space reserved by the social contract for properly domesticated sex - the bedroom - for example. When 'culture' extends too far into 'nature' it is time for us to cry foul and to draw a line. Now is such a time. Bruce .. ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
