no ribbons please…

Yoni Freedhoff over at Weighty Matters has posted a timely bit on the connection between health organizations and the Food Industry. Timely, given my recent post about the connection between Walmart and Michelle Obama. CHECK out this quotation from the posting:

The risk is straightforward. Partnerships by definition serve to benefit both parties. For the health organizations the benefits involve some combination of money, resources and exposure. For the food industry the benefits include sales, brand image improvements (which in turn translates into sales) and spin which may serve to help deflect criticism or further political needs.
The increase in sales is problematic in that more often than not, the brands that partner with health organizations are the very brands whose images or products may be considered unhealthy. Moreover, the consumption of more food, even more healthy food, won't help with our obesity problem.

Dude its time to quit clapping for Big Food and their healthy food schemes – lets just admit it – THEY ARE JUST IN IT FOR THE MONEY!

Still unconvinced read Wendell Berry’s article “The Pleasure of Eating” or read his books…

while you are waiting for those links to load think about this…

“This is certainly true also of patrons of the food industry, who have tended more and more to be mere consumers — passive, uncritical, and dependent. Indeed, this sort of consumption may be said to be one of the chief goals of industrial production. The food industrialists have by now persuaded millions of consumers to prefer food that is already prepared. They will grow, deliver, and cook your food for you and (just like your mother) beg you to eat it. That they do not yet offer to insert it, prechewed, into our mouth is only because they have found no profitable way to do so. We may rest assured that they would be glad to find such a way. The ideal industrial food consumer would be strapped to a table with a tube running from the food factory directly into his or her stomach…As capital replaces labor, it does so by substituting machines, drugs, and chemicals for human workers and for the natural health and fertility of the soil. The food is produced by any means or any shortcuts that will increase profits. And the business of the cosmeticians of advertising is to persuade the consumer that food so produced is good, tasty, healthful, and a guarantee of marital fidelity and long life.”

Culture, nature, and mediation « The Immanent Frame

Culture, nature, and mediation « The Immanent Frame

The article/review starts like this:

"religion is about mediation. Ironically so, because it is about the divine; but because the divine is never directly available, religion must instead be about how the divine is indirectly manifest. Thus, as Régis Debray has shown in his God: an Itinerary, monotheism, which is apparently the most other-worldly and non-mediated of creeds, has had to identify itself in concrete terms, which may bizarrely include preference for some landscapes over others, or for association with some animals over others."

Here is one of the tricky dilemmas that this article points to: If as it seems Pentecostalism has done more to ameliorate the "conditions of abjection" faced by the world's poor, can a credible claim be mounted that this brand of Christianity holds legitimacy for a more just world.

"However, Pentecostalism has by and large endorsed the capitalist market and the gospel of success, even if it has also developed many compensating voluntary welfare ventures, which should by no means be despised."

The author contends that mediation is a central feature in solving this dilemma. This is fascinating stuff to be sure. But it is worth paying attention to for more than just the fun of playing on some intellectual monkey bars - no pun intended. People who care about how religion manifests real change in the world ought to think about this stuff. I'm not talking about evaluating Pectecostalism over against other denominations (although clearly that discussion is available). I am suggesting that in the efforts to affect the betterment of the oppressed masses (whom we should acknowledge are oppressed in large part due to the ideologies that support our relative affluence) religion ought to be aware of how powerfully they can entrench ideological frames that serve to reinforce the conditions of abjection.
This article and the material it reviews is well worth the read...

if we’d all just be a little more altruistic maybe this ‘system’ would work?

So our friend Mr. Crawford tells us about about his work as a ‘abstractor’ (someone who writes abstracts for articles that are published in magazines). The objective of the job on the surface appeared to require substantial cognitive ability. But in the end, he found the job ultimately unsatisfying. The work was reduced to little more than a glorified bulleter of points made in the article – repleat with quotas on the number of articles abstracted and with the only measurement of quality reduced to grammar and spelling forms.

So then he says,

“What I want to emphasize is that the presence of this third party (the conglomerate that owned the company he worked for) seeking to maximize  a surplus skimmed from my labour, in a manner not sensitive to the limitations of pace arising from the nature of the work itself, must drive the work process beyond its limits.

Yet to identify greed as the problem would be to place the issue beyond serious address, leaving only important lamentation or a tedious exhortation to altruism.While greed may indeed be the root cause of our impoverished work life, it is surely no the case that the managers who design and orchestrate the process are themselves greedy (or rather, they surely are greedy no less or more than the rest of us, but that is not he issue.)  …The problem, rather, is in the organization of managerial work within which they must operate.”

I like this guy more and more all the time…

That’s Gross

Weight Log: 218lbs (32 pounds as of the beginning of September – that is 4.5 lbs per week)

I have a number of posts that are waiting for me to post but the hectic pace here these last few days has left me rather scattered so if some of this comes off even more disjointed than usual – I suppose my excuse is that I am just trying to get the stuff out the door.

I’ve done a fair bit of reading around the discourse of food and body image. One of the things that is important to uncover is the voices that are privileged to speak about the topic – that can regulate what  can be said ‘with the true’ of any given subject. Obviously, I would be remiss to avoid the pervasive role of popular media. So I went hunting for television programs – well gosh I should say it was not much of a hunt – it was more like shooting fish in a barrel.

Television shows dealing with food and weight tend to come in several species: 1. Diet/weight loss shows (these can be stand alone shows like The Biggest Loser or my Big Fat Diet Show or incorporated into typically daytime talk shows i.e. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, etc.) 2. Cooking shows (these are basically instructional videos – a how-to manual for the do-it-yourself chef (ideas of renovation and resistance should emerge here a la Daniel Miller) In this category I would include stand alone shows like Best Recipes Ever  but also the recipe dissemination within talk shows as well) 3. Eating/Reality Shows (here the basic idea is an engagement with some ‘real’ life subject evaluating their cooking/eating habits – In here I would include Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen (sort of an Osbornes of cooking school), also Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution  which I have already talked about a little bit, and You are what you Eat) For those of you that are up on this stuff you might notice that I have left off your favourite food show – that is largely because I am clearly unable to talk about all or even most of these shows because they are so prolific. Let me focus on one group of shows that seem to form an interesting voice over what can and cannot be said about food and body image.

The Eating/Reality Shows have a routine narrative arc that seems to necessarily include a display of the amasses collection of food that the family or individual eats in one week – one day – one month – etc. Jamie Oliver even backed up a dump into a BFI bin to dump a load of congealed fat into it. The idea seems to be to create this spectacle of what is outlandish and grotesque as a way of challenging the subjects to consider how they are eating. Here are some examples:

the first five minutes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

or the last two minutes of You Are what you Eat

the following are screen captures from that those episodes…

View Full Album

So what is it about these pictures that are actually gross? Well, for one thing the food is jumbled together. If you ask my boys they’ll tell you its not cool if food that isn’t supposed to touch does touch. But even more these images are supposed to be revolting. Deep fried, pre-packaged food is displayed in such a way dripping and piled into each other panned and given close up shots that might emulate explicit illicit display. Its a virtually pornographic display of food. Food Porn! Its not that hard to see these heaped up tables as a virtual food orgy. The table is laden with immorality. Of course it can be even more gross because it can be easily equated to obesity. This is fat food that makes people fat and there is a whole lot of it…

But take a close look at the Screen shot labelled “C”. This is the healthy food display. Notice that the food in this shot is not piled up in the same helter-skelter  fashion. In fact it most closely resembles what one might expect spilling out of the classic cornucopia. Even in the way these images are constructed moral distinction is evident.

A quick trip down the grocery store aisles reveals that the food piled up on the vulgar table is in fact the cheapest. It is also the food that has the longest shelf life. Let’s also be clear that french fries, pizza, pizza pops, hot dogs, pancakes, eggo waffles, and corn dogs are tasty. What exactly is being said when tasty cheap food is being constructed as disgusting? What are we saying when we construct the highest priced food with some of the least preferred flavours ( I mean who really likes Brussels sprouts without a heck of a lot of cheese sauce to ameliorate the flavour of the vegetable). Are we not suggesting that there is a class distinction at work in the selection of food? What is of concern is not the subjects (of these TV shows) actual health but the construction of class distinction through the association of food with moral judgement? The reality is that only the rich can afford to eat healthy.

Now look at this picture. Is it grotesque? Looking at this picture you can easily imagine what this scene must smell like! You can also imagine the wet dank sweat that is dripping off of most of these items. These items form the guts of the slave master that I am chained to everyday that has allowed me to lose weight. These things make me stink. They make me tired – they put me in pain – they make me suffer. But they make me thin so they can be revered…. Right?

The silent pie

Weight Log: 218lbs

Exhibit A: Sunrise Berry Farms Saskatoon Pie

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit B: Farmer’s Market Blueberry Pie

 

 

 

 

 

Both of these products speak but in substantially different ways. The first one clearly has less information displayed than the second one does. The first one appears to be more silent than the second one. Exhibit B: Lists the flavour, the weight, the price, the fact that the berries used are wild, a notification of an ‘egg wash’ process, that the pie was baked in the store, that the pie is intended to emulate a ‘country-style’ aesthetic, – and it does so in both official languages. Exhibit A lists, the flavour, the business logo – and that’s it. Both pies do not tell you where the berries were picked. It does not tell you who made the pie (in fact exhibit A actually identifies the company while the apparent logo in the Exhibit B is actually a pseudo in house brand of the store which misdirects the consumer as to the identity of the producer).

The first pie as many of you know is one that I sell every weekend – its a small 4” Saskatoon Pie – perfect for coffee break. It is one of the most popular pies that we sell every week at the Lethbridge Farmers Market. The second pie is one that I saw while shopping at one of the local big grocery chains this afternoon. It is ironic that the second pie is called a Farmers Market Pie because it is clearly not sold either in the physical context of the Farmers Market or by a person who could legitimately qualify as a vendor at a Farmer’s Market (in fact it is not really sold by a person at all). The taste of either pie is sort of irrelevant yet I have a pretty good idea which one would win in a taste test (although I have not tasted Exhibit B:)

In the last few classes of our course part of what our discussions have led to is questions like: how do we determine what is authentic? and how does the constant onslaught of new consumer goods cause a type of cultural amnesia? All these questions have led me to another question which is closely tied to the first two: in what ways do the politics of our economic system silence certain voices while privileging others?

It has always seemed strange to me that older ladies will come to buy our pies at the market. These are women who likely have acquired the skill of making pie/pastry as a part of a fairly patriarchal social framework. These ‘grandmas’ know how to make pie. So what are they doing when they come to the market to buy our pie? One of the things they are doing is giving up the ability to claim the pie as their own product (this must be a fairly calculated move reasons their own energy level and their desire to produce something that their children/friends enjoy.) They are still retaining the ability to govern the discursive field of what type of pie is seen as worthy of eating. This is the pie that Grandma serves and as a result it must be good because she serves it. Grandma and the production of pie are synonymous with quality. Would Grandma ever bring an Exhibit B: pie home – not likely? The connection to Grandma and pie is deeper than that. Grandma after all is the repository for the idea of ‘homemade’. Homemade isn’t just about where the product is made it is about how the product is made. What is the recipe? This means that a pie can hold some very strong sentiments about what things are supposed to be like. They might also be a repository for how things used to be…

When pies get made in batches instead of 1, 2, or 3 at a time something important happens. They stop being ‘homemade’. As soon as you sell more than 1, 2, or 3 pies at a time (let’s say at a bake sale) the authenticity of the recipe can be called into question. There is a uniqueness to a homemade pie – its a one-off – like a Picasso or Monet. No two pies of grandmas will taste exactly the same. Yet when we talk about something being homemade we don’t connote the idea of variability but rather of a consistently similar product that is reproduced in the same way every time – just like Grandma used to make it. But what the artisan pie baker can do is capitalize on this idea by producing a product that is consistent every time (or at least very close to the same product). A strict adherence to recipe and method produces the same product. What is interesting is what I have come to notice at the market over the years and was said numerous times to me today as costumers scrambled to pick up their products at the last market of the Fall. - “This pie tastes just like homemade.” or its corollary “This pie tastes like nothing like those cardboardy grocery store pies – this is the real thing!” Of course that gives a guy like me the fuzzies but what is going there. Me, the pie seller is commodifying an idea which becomes the product that I can sell effectively in this context. I am selling the real thing. But in reality I am selling a product that is as un-unique as a lithograph of the Mona Lisa in your favourite poster shop.

From that perspective the pie that I sell is not that different than the one I found on the shelf of the big grocery story. That company is engaging in reproduction of something more authentic. Yet clearly their pie is not held in as high esteem as the one I get to deal. But that is not for a lack of trying. Look again at the way the packaging begs to be identified as authentic. This authenticity is not however back to the idea of homemade or to grandma but to the place that has come to take grandmas place in the social consciousness. Their pie may in fact be just as tasty as our pie is but it clearly cannot produce the same aesthetic representation in the minds of its consumers. So the grocery store pie blares out its message that it is authentic and holds all the qualities a consumer might look for in a pie. My pie just sits there and waits to be picked up.

But here is the advantage that my pie has over the one on the shelf of the food pimping giant. My pie can answer your questions. Well not directly – but through me. I have been asked all manner of questions about pies and I have at times invented things to navigate an easier sale. But that has only been because the questions have just been completely bizarre and outlandish. Did you bake this pie? When was it baked? Do you add a softening agent to make the skins of the berries softer? Is it alright if I buy this pie and say that I made it myself? (to which I answered - - yes) Why does the sugar make polka dots on the crust? Will you sell this pie for less money? Do I get a deal? Could you make a raspberry pie? The fact is that if the customer has any question at all about the product they can and often will ask me. And I will to the best of my ability deliver an accurate answer. YOU JUST CAN’T ASK THE GROCERY STORE PIE A DARN THING! You have to depend on what the box tells you.

But you can depend on one other thing as well. You can depend on the political position of the monstrous sustenance peddler. You see the giant super store has positioned itself well. It is the fount of variety, the guardian of safety in food storage, the regulator against prohibitive food pricing. As such it has come to represent reliability in a significant way. Reliability – when is the last time you went to the grocery store and found that they did not have milk? So from that position the store can make a pie and wrap it in a box that is screaming its identity like so many of the bothersome toddlers that get dragged up and down the aisle in those stores. And the consumer will pick up that pie – i tell you – the consumer will pick up that pie because it is even more reliable than the farmers market pie. The farmers market pie after all could be contaminated by the farm. If the farmers wife is doing this in her kitchen (which by the way would never pass the food inspection standards that each vendor must meet) are we going to get the farmers greasy fingers mixing the dough? This is all desperately ironic since after all we know that grandma’s pie often had mistakes built right into it. Pies were made right after slaughtering chickens and sometime grandpa got his fingers in the pie filling before it was baked. Other times grandma would run out of a certain ingredient and then you’d get a surprise chokecherry or two in your Saskatoon pie. But we sure loved grandma’s pie – and still do. But now we can dismiss all the inconsistency that made her pie awesome and we can buy the cardboard pie because it is reliable.

The consumer gives up the right to ask the pie questions and must depend on the box to do the talking. So now the pie that says the least actually holds the strongest voice. The pie that can answer any question you ask of it (through me) has a much weaker voice. And grandma still isn’t making her own pies anymore.

A number of years ago my grandmother passed away. With her died a whole set of ideas, methods, and products which to this day have strong associations in my mind with her character. My mother made a concerted effort to record some of the families favourite recipes in a cookbook. It’s the closest thing we have left to the original work of art that was the product of my grandmother’s hands for many years. Raisin chicken, butter tarts, leaf lettuce salad, jam jams, and King George Cake. There in her own hand writing is the tell tale notion of her own inconsistencies that set her kitchen – set her apart as the master artist. Now she lies silent and we stare back at her masterpieces like novices at an art gallery. We smell her, we taste her – and she in not there.

But the greater silence is that in the consumer mentality that is common to our social fabric we have traded the beauty of inconsistency for the reliability of consistent and convenient. As Paul Connerton suggests, “A handmade world, in which all things were made one by one was a slow world.” Mechanical reproduction transforms society into one that is in constant progress toward the new latest product and into a perpetual forgetting. This forgetting is not as straight-forward as I have just described but it is an important place for us investigate the influences on our consumption of food.

Jason Laurendeau wrote an article with Carly Adams on the topic of Women’s Ski Jumping in the Olympics. The authors address these silences ( or we might even be able to say at this point – the memory losses). Certain voices get to speak louder than others and as a result certain aspects of the topic get privileged and others get forgotten, “…a given discourse appears with regularity across a range of texts (broadly defined) and practices to regulate what may be said ‘within the true’ about a given subject in a particular socio-historical moment. Not only, then, does a discourse constrain what can meaningfully be said about a particular topic at a particular time, but it also works to authorize particular voices and silence others.” p. 433

From this vantage point we see our willingness to disengage with the messiness of the authentic in order to gratify and satisfy other political voices that perhaps keep us from engaging social reality that is more connected to each other. When you buy an Exhibit B: pie you don’t have to hear about the relative that passed away suddenly. You don’t have to engage with people. Perhaps food after all is the one place where we might be able to restore ourselves to each other……………

…from there let the pie speak!

Food Sovereignty, Women, and Peace

Mennonite Central Committee has come out with a nifty little button to wear instead of a poppy. The idea is that a poppy might convey the type of solidarity with war that is completely contrary to the religious ideology of the MCC. I understand that position but I am somewhat ambivalent to the use of this other symbol as a form of subtle protest. In fact there is a dull irony at work here if one considers it a little longer. It seems ironic that an agency that is ‘working toward peace’ might choose this coy-ish protest. Perhaps it is evidence that when we plead to ‘give peace a chance’ we intuitively know that that peace is not the natural state of being for humanity-that it takes a form of aggressiveness to procure peace of injustice. Please don’t misunderstand me to be unsupportive of MCC’s agenda – its just interesting how we frame what we say…

To that end La Via Campesina has come out with a statement about how food sovereignty is connected to ending all forms of injustice against women.
Women united for food sovereignty and against violence towards women

Raj Patel expands on this in his book The Value of Nothing

'”At their conference in Maputo, Mozambique, in 2008, La Via Campesina cam up with a new slogan and series of strategies around food sovereignty in which they’re explicitly targeting transnational corporations, in a move that focuses and unifies its various branches. the new slogan is the most revealing, because it put’s society's most pervasive inequality of power front and center “Food sovereignty is about an end to all forms of violence against women.”

…their latest declaration shows an understanding of hunger as the most recent manifestation of millennia of exploitation, and of the distortion of relationships around how value is set. they diagnose the problem of hunger and poverty not as a shortage of food but as a lack of power…La Via Campesina (is) organizing their countermovement in response to the spread of capitalism that not only turns land work into commodities, but turned workers themselves into private property.” (p. 124, 125)

So then I suspect that the work that MCC is doing will actually be framed with a good deal of what might legitimately be called violence as it works proactively to address the injustices of places like Nepal.

Market Vignettes

Weight Log:

Shortly after 6 am on Saturday for the last few years, I have ceased sleeping to get myself to the Lethbridge Farmers Market. Those who know will realize that this is no small feat. I love my job. I mostly love meeting so many different types of people. The farmer’s market seems to be an interesting place to investigate ideas about food and consumption. This morning I was preoccupied by a fairly singular focus – I wanted to buy an eggplant. Even if I had consulted the venerable vegetable availability chart, I would not have been forewarned that there were not going to be any eggplant available. Just last week there had been two vendors who had carried the beautiful little beasties. I got this wicked Eggplant Curry recipe from a Guyanese Canadian vendor who operates a world renowned hot sauce company producing one of my favourite condiments Basil's Fire and Brimstone. I usually get a few moments just before the market opens to wander around to the other vendors tables and check things out. This morning my ‘pre-game’ stroll left me empty handed. I really wanted an eggplant so that I could make that curry tonight. That’s when I bumped into a honey vendor whose honey we use in some of our products. We got to talking about food and this sociology course I was taking.

“I’ve stopped shopping at Wal-mart.” she confessed after we had talked for a while. Having already complained to her about the lack of egg-plant I quipped, “Yup, I try to avoid going there as much as I can but you know that if I go there this afternoon they are gonna have egg-plant.” Sure enough later this afternoon I did some grocery shopping for my family at Superstore (a no less attractive grocery giant) and they had eggplant! I didn’t pick any up mostly because they were not that nice and a little too large for just me and Char to share since the boys won’t eat it. It got me thinking about stuff again…

I am proud to work for Sunrise Berry Farms and get to sell their pies to eager customers. My bosses are some of the hardest working individuals I know and they have worked hard to produce products that exceed all the standards of value, quality and amazing taste. Sometimes I get to help work on some advertising for the company which is just way more fun for me. One of the things we often say about our products is that our pies may not be the cheapest but we are convinced they are the best you have ever tasted. I often tell the my customers that I have a money back guarantee – if they eat the whole pie and find it unsatisfactory – they should bring it back for a full refund. We’ve had no refunds. One of the curious things that happens from time to time is that people will be drawn to our attractive booth and see the even more attractive pies for sale. But when they ask about the price of the pies they either turn away or even more interestingly make a distinct frown – put the pie back on the shelf and walk away. I always wonder about these people. Frankly there are many people out there who are more than willing to pony up their cash for some Saskatoon heaven. But when I first started this phenomenon kinda bothered me – in fact I have to admit that I was inclined to offer these people a deal just to try to convince of how good this pie really is.

This morning, it happened again. After the frown-y faced lady walked away, I wondered what might have caused her to walk away. Why did the price of the pie seem to make such a difference to her? Maybe she is a lady who usually makes her own pies but this one time was considering buying one – but when she realized that she could make one for much less she thought better of her indulgence. Perhaps she usually buys pies for deserts in her family but she usually gets them at a department store where she can get them for a much cheaper price and expecting the same sort of price range she was caught off guard by the price of this pie. Or perhaps there was something else going on that couldn’t be so easily imagined.

Why do people go to farmer’s markets? It can’t be for selection since clearly the department store chains have better selection. It can’t be for price since again department stores can be substantially cheaper. It can’t be for convenience – again there are way more accessible options for getting your produce and other such things. These would be the way that a market economy approach might try to evaluate their choices. I wonder if the reason that people come to farmers markets to buy stuff (esp. food) is because they can construct themselves in a particular way as a part of society. They can use the food they buy at the market to accomplish some function of their social situation. Maybe what is going on is that individuals are able to translate the products they buy into a form of cultural capital with their friends. This might be to reinforce a notion about their ability to buy good quality products for at a more expensive rate as evidence of their social status. They might also be able to reinforce the idea of their commitment to personal health – since clearly these products are better for you. (Almost every food booth at the market is either organic this or non-hormone that) They can do this without even sharing the food they purchase with their friends. Just being able to be known to be at the market sets them apart. Growing their own gardens could accomplish some of the same things – but for these people it is important to have the farmer take at least a little bit of the farm out of the product (civilize it). I talked to the butcher in the booth beside me and he says nobody ever comes out to his farm to pick up products from there. Maybe people can get the same product that they would normally buy at any other location – but because this is the farmers market they can accomplish something socially that they could not otherwise.

This puts an interesting spin on the idea of price. Going back to that frown-y lady…can we say that her response is a form of resistance to the aesthetics that the farmer’s market can produce? Or is she like so many other people who (even though they often know better) persistently ask me for a deal on the pies? Is it really a deal they want or do they want this potential negotiation in price to also somehow construct their identity? Is a deal a way for them to demonstrate their superior status over the vendor and then also in other social space a competent customer. Imagine this…

“Sally, do you know those pies I always bring to bridge? Well, this week I told that cookie to give me a deal cause I was gonna order a bunch of them and do you know what he took a whole dollar off the price. You know Sally you just have to know how to talk to those guys…”

Of course I am not trying to leave a negative impression of these people even though you might suspect a more than sceptical tone. I think it is fascinating that people might be using this venue as a significant part of their social identity. Its almost like the market is a sort of mirror within which they can see themselves…And I should be quick to point out as you will already be suspecting that I find myself caught up in that same trap – after all here I am getting rather perturbed at not finding an eggplant at the end of October in a Southern Alberta farmer’s market.

One more thing if you would like to construct yourself as fabulously decadent individual I would love to recommend you visit our store and pick up one of the best pies in the world. In fact why don’t you pick up a frozen un-baked pie that you can bake yourself invite your friends over and tell them you baked it yourself? – I don’t mind if you lie about it even though I was a former minister – I’ll this one go this time…

Tourism: the seed bed of all evil ;)

Ryan commented on a few conversations that he had regarding the idea that people who faced tragedy or poverty got what they deserved due to their lack of faith in God.

What We Deserve « Rumblings

Comments I made on that post elicited a few questions and I will try to support my comments here rather than derail Ryan’s thread.

Leisure travel is by nature a function of wealth and an exercise in subjugating a place and people. Poor people cannot afford to travel for purposes of leisure. Poor people also are locked into service ‘industry’ (that keeps them poor) through several capitalist mechanisms. The first of which is the system of transnational capital practiced by the IMF and WMF whereby local countries provide free trade zones where foreign companies can come and set up shop without having to pay much of any kind of tax back to the host country. These companies use cheap local labour to extract significant profits while putting very little back into the local economy. Most importantly they locate and fix the indigenous population in place – drawing them to employment in these FTZs. The wages people receive are not enough to support them and they often must work many jobs to survive and they remain in poverty.

Here is a recap of the questions presented in Ryan’s post…

are you suggesting that tourism is evil because it encourages people to migrate to coastal regions where they could be killed by a tsunami? should we perhaps move these hotels inland provided they are not near a fault line or a volcano? or is it evil and selfish because it removes them from their subsistence way of life? is it evil to travel because you might indirectly influence someone to change their current vocation from one of farming to one in the service industry? should we barricade western culture from other cultures in order not influence them?

Answer to the first question:

Tourism is not intrinsically evil but the practice of tourism has significantly subjugating consequences one of which is that due to tourism there were generally more people in the areas affected by the Tsunami than there would have been otherwise. We also know that in the aftermath of the Tsunami wealthy foreigners were significantly advantaged in accessing help – but this is just obvious. We know that the poor suffered more than the wealthy did in this tragedy…

Answer to question two:

As I have already stated the damaging effect of the leisure travel/tourism are evident without them being in the direct path of an impending disaster. Moving the location of the hotels only transplants the problems.

Answer to three and four:

Like I said earlier, the economic systems that drive the tourism industry lock people in place and reduce the options available to them in order to provide for their families. This is what is so insidious since on the surface it seems that people are making a decision between subsistence and service industry employment. But let us not forget that it was not the locals decision to have foreigners come and lounge on their beaches and traipse around on their ancient ruins. And local peoples do not have the power to kick transnationals out of the country.

Answer to last question:

There are aspects of western culture and values that have created significant problems globally. There are other aspects that have the potential to provide significant opportunity to improve the well-being of people around the world. Barricading western culture from the rest of the world is not only impossible but just silly. Cultural exchange is valuable when reciprocity is mutually available and balanced. But when the cultural values of one dominate another problems exist (Unless it is somehow possible to prove that Western culture is just that much more superior to other cultures – in which case subjugate all you want!). Western cultural values hold a place of privilege and authority in the world. As such it is important to address aspects that might be damaging.

Finally, (to try to connect this back to Ryan’s post) when western ideological perspectives and consequences are endorsed through faulty logic couched as Christian values – then repentance is needed. If western Christians think that their advantaged position is somehow an endorsement by the Almighty - they are getting it wrong. If they think that poor heathen people get what they deserve when disaster strikes – they are getting it wrong. If westerners can’t recognize that their practices bear significantly harmful consequences, both overtly and covertly, they are getting it wrong.

I think that there are ways to enjoy the marvels of God’s creation in different countries. I’d be glad to entertain ideas from any of you who bother to read this as to how this might be possible…

Yikes

oh my!

Is it possible…

…to drag yourself out of bed this morning when you know what lies ahead? The wounds that regularly train track across your hands sting like they did those first few days on the line. There is no way to know just how many wiring harnesses you have strung together over the years but, today, you know that there won't be many more. How do you wake up to pink slip?

You were never under illusions that the work you did or the skills it took to do your job was more than means to a pay check. You weren't a rocket scientist, a social engineer, a medical researcher. You were number 14 in the line building wiring harnesses for the inner workings of a Ford Fiesta, then a Honda Civic, then a Buick LeSabre, and so on. The harnesses for the Cadillac's were stupid. Number 14. Tim was 13 and Frieda was 15. Last week you sold Tim one of the last of your litter of chocolate Labs and you gave him a deal. You play hockey with Frieda's husband every Tuesday night in the beer league team sponsored by the company. "It's a living" you tell your buddies and they nod.

And now it's not. No severance. No Christmas bonus.

You look down at your hands. Your fingers only know how to make money one way. They look humiliated and weak holding a pen – filling out the EI forms. Days at the plant tick away into mindless oblivion. Deft hands twisting, pulling, placing, and sending away. Rhythm and constant rhythm. Like a well worn sedative against the ghosts you've shut out. And now they've cut you off. The large screen TV mocks you with the latest news. You shrink into the pillowy discomfort of your new Lazyboy – the one she got you last month with your favourite hockey Jersey. You curse your hands.

You plot a scheme to rip out each and every CA-345TF circuit board in every vehicle on the block. You're pretty sure you know where to look. It would only really affect the intermittent windshield wiper systems…

You've spent your whole life building a product that could largely go unnoticed. But everyone needs a car. Right? Needs a car? Or three? Your work sits inside rusting, pollution spewing… Come on! What were you thinking? Can you ever get to the point of thinking that maybe you should lose your job? Maybe it's better that you are out of work? After 26 years? After pouring your life into your hands? Can you just chop them off like that?

Who is going to bail out the soul of western society that has suckled at the breast of capitalistic 'endeavour'? When wants are fed like needs to the greed drunk masses, who will be brave enough to shout over the loud speakers – "DON'T DRINK THE KOOL-AID!"?

Happy Black Friday y’all!

Today on The Current

Ah, the sounds of the holidays ... a cacophony of cascading voices, all urging you to spend. And that's just the beginning of the commercial onslaught. Which leaves me with just one question. Aren't we supposed to be in the middle of some kind of ever-expanding, global economic meltdown?

Now a financial apocalypse is as good a reason as any for a little retail therapy. But still, it all seems a little odd to be asking people to spend their way through austerity. And yet, it seems to be working because retail sales in Canada are holding strong, even as consumer confidence plummets.

Benjamin Barber has a few thoughts about why that might be and why the perils of shopping and consumption are so difficult to avoid. He's a political theorist who's best known for his book, Jihad vs. McWorld. His latest book is Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole and he was in New York City.

Here are a few quotes from the interview…

"…if socialist politics dominates every sector of society we call that totalitarianism. Nothing wrong with religion. Religion is part of our life. But when religion dominates every sector of society – the cultural sector, the leisure sector, the economic sector, we call it theocracy. But when commerce dominates every part of society we call that liberty."

"I have news for all those folks who are buying environmentally good products. If you really care about the environment just buy less."

It is surprising to me that the man still claims to endorse capitalism. Even so it sounds like a he might just make a good Mennonite…

listen to the whole thing here

The world might be ending soon...

Evidence that the freemarket and capitalism might not redeem all the ills of the world.
Starbucks will shut down 600 of its U.S. coffee shops
The Oregonian
Wednesday July 02, 2008
From now through next March, Starbucks Corp. plans to shutter 600 of its underperforming U.S. coffee shops and open fewer stores than planned.
Why: A slowing U.S. economy is dragging down the Seattle company's results. Starbucks has been hurt by subprime mortgage fallout in California and Florida, which account for nearly one-third of U.S. retail sales. The company said U.S. operating profit in fell 27.5 percent in the quarter ended March 30 from the year before.
Starbucks' wildfire U.S. growth also is coming back to haunt it. Up to 30 percent of a shop's revenue is cannibalized when another Starbucks opens nearby. About 70 percent of stores slated for closure opened since fiscal 2006; they make up 19 percent of U.S. company-operated stores opened then.