Whiteness and Farmers Markets: Performances,Perpetuations … Contestations?

Abstract: Academics and activists highlight the potential for alternative agrifood movements to contribute to the evolving coalescence of justice and sustainability. This potential, however, is constrained by what scholars have identified as the prevalent whiteness of such movements. This paper uses ethnographic research at two northern California farmers markets to investigate how whiteness is performed and perpetuated through the movements’ discourses and practices. We found that many managers, vendors and customers hold notions of what farmers and community members should be that both reflect and inform an affluent, liberal habitus of whiteness. Although whiteness pervades these spaces, we have also witnessed individual discourses and acts of solidarity and anti‐racism, as well as fledgling institutional efforts to contest white cultural dominance. We conclude by discussing the potential of farmers markets to create an anti‐racist politics of food.     

Correspondence

THE MYTH OF THE PENT CUCKOO. By JOHN EDWARD FIELD, M.A. Pp. vii+212. London: Elliot Stock. 1913. Reviewed by S. A. H. Burne.

RUSTIC SPEECH AND FOLK-LORE. By ELIZABETH MARY WRIGHT. Oxford: University Press. 1913. Pp. xx + 342. Reviewed by C. S. Burne.

THE ENGLISH FOLK-DANCE SOCIETY'S JOURNAL.

SPORT AND FOLKLORE IN THE HIMALAYA. By CAPTAIN H. L. HAUGHTON. Demy 8vo. Pp.ix+332. 12s.6d.net. London: E. Arnold. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PEMBA, THE SPICE ISLAND OF ZANZIBAR. By CAPTAIN J. E. E. CRASTER, Demy 8vo. Pp. 358. 12s. 6d. London : T. Fisher Unwin. 1913.

RELIGIOUS CHASTITY. An Ethnological Study. By JOHN MAIN. New York, 1913. 8vo, pp. xxii+ 365. (No price.) Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

DER TRAUMSCHLÜSSEL DES JAGADDEVA. Ein Beitrag zur indischen Mantik. Von JULIUS VON NEGELEIN. [Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, xi. Band, 4 Heft]. Pp. xxiv + 428. 17 m. Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann. 1912. 8vo. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE LEBENSALTER Ein Beitrag zur Antiken Ethnologie und zur Geschichte der Zahlen. Mit einem Anhang über die Schrift von der Siebenzahl. Von FRANZ BOLL. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1913. 8vo, pp. iv + 58. Two pl. 2 m. 40 pf. Reviewed by W. R. Halliday.

DIE VERLOBUNG IM VOLKS- UND RECHTSBRAUCH, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Schweiz vergleichend-historisch dargestellt. Von HANNS BÄCHTOLD. Basel: Verlag der Schweiz. Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, 1913. 8vo, pp. 219. Reviewed by W. R. HALLIDAY.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL REPORT ON THE IBO-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF NIGERIA: Part I., Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood, S. Nigeria; Part II., English-Ibo and Ibo-English Dictionary; Part III., Proverbs, Narratives, Vocabularies and Grammar. By NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS. Demy 8vo. Pp. 161,391,199. London: Harrison &; Sons. 1913. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

PSYCHE'S TASK : A DISCOURSE CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF SUPERSTITION ON THE GROWTH OF INSTITUTIONS. By J. G. FRAZER. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 8vo. Pp. viii+186. London : Macrnillan &; Co. 1913. Price 5s. net. Reviewed by W. Crooke.     

The boundary dispute between Chile and Argentina

In November 1920, James Young Simpson, Professor of Natural Science in New College, Edinburgh and Trinity College, Glasgow, was invited by the governments of Latvia and Lithuania to chair a commission which would settle the disputed border between the two newly‐independent states. Upon his return to Edinburgh in May 1921, Simpson deposited the papers and final report on the commission's decision with the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, of which he was an active member. This article will explain why and how Simpson came to be involved in diplomatic decisions so remote from his home life and work, and will analyse the significance of the results of Simpson's efforts on the arbitration commission.     

Materialism and history: Diderot and the Histoire des deux Indes

In the last years of his life, Diderot made a large number of anonymous contributions to Raynal's widely read Histoire des deux Indes. The identification of these passages over the last thirty years has led to a view of Diderot's later political thought as being far more radical than had previously been supposed. But his contributions in general are notable for their pessimism about the situation in France and in Europe generally. In part this was due to his belief in a cyclical view of history, but it was also due to his bringing to his understanding of history the materialist, and resolutely non‐providential, view of nature which he had developed earlier.