Taking back taste: feminism,food and visceral politics

Despite much thoughtful agro-food scholarship, the politics of food lacks adequate appreciation because scholars have not developed a means to specify the links between the materialities of food and ideologies of food and eating. This article uses feminist theory to enliven a discussion of what the authors call visceral politics, and thus initiates a project of illustrating the mechanisms through which people's beliefs about food connect with their everyday experiences of food. Recent work on governed eating and material geographies is brought together with poststructural feminism in order to move towards a non-dualistic, visceral understanding of (everyday) socio-political life. In showing how the mind–body whole can be conceived as a singular, albeit ambiguously-unified agent, the article prefigures a more complete disclosure of the play of power in food systems. Food is shown as a means to trace power through the body in order to understand the making of the political (eating) subject. Specifically, reconceptualizing taste and the ‘Slow Food’ (SF) movement of taste education helps to concretize what a visceral politics of food might look like. The authors conclude that appreciating how food beliefs and representations exist materially in the body is crucial to the ability of food-based movements to inspire action across difference and achieve their progressive goals.     

Wak’a/shrine making and pilgrimage tourism in Copacabana,Bolivia

Abstract

The cultural landscape of the town of Copacabana and nearby ancient sites on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, have functioned as magnetic places of pilgrimage from Inka times to the present. They are analyzed as landscape constructions through the eyes of political and religious authorities as well as through those of the common pilgrims in a bottom-up perspective from Inka to Colonial times and to the present. Methodologies used are study of pertaining archaeological data and Colonial documents complemented by ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The data demonstrate how the past is redefined in the present as local heritage in a landscape perceived as Andean as well as Christian. Throughout Andean history, Copacabana has been the land terminal for pilgrims to set over to the Islands of the Sun and Moon to visit empowered shrines (wak’as) viewed as places of emergence of the Sun and the first humans. This pilgrimage was fabricated into state ideology by the Inka from ca. A.D.1450–1550. After the Spanish invasion, Copacabana became the seat of a widely revered Virgin who attracts pilgrims from all over Bolivia and southern Peru. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in early August 2015 and 2017 during one of the pilgrimages. Most visitors identify as pilgrim-tourists and many walk to five spatially distinct but thematically related wak’ as at which the past coalesces with the present and the secular with the divine in passionate and colorful performances for family wellbeing. Discussions center on the limited spatial control of the Catholic Church and on the growing practice of making new wak’as in Andean terms to the Virgin at selected landscape features outside of town as a form of popular heritage. Findings demonstrate that local Aymara people are not passive Colonial victims but selectively adopt from their conquerors what they hope may help alleviate poverty.     

Drivers of (in)equity in collaborative environmental governance

Collaborative environmental governance seeks to engage diverse stakeholders to tackle complex challenges efficiently, sustainably, and equitably. However, mixed empirical evidence underscores a need to understand the conditions under which particularly equity is or is not achieved. Here, we use the empirical case of California Sustainable Groundwater Management to quantify the extent to which vulnerable small and rural drinking water users' needs are addressed in collaborative groundwater planning. Drawing on a diverse array of mixed method data, we then employ Boosted Regression and Classification Trees (BRCT) to assess potential driving factors including collaboration, representation, elite capture, stakeholder engagement, and problem severity/salience. We find each to be influential, highlighting their relevance for equitable planning. We also find evidence that these relationships are complex and outcome specific. Nonetheless, the overall effect on the three equity measures is modest at best. More institutional analysis of collaborative governance regimes from diverse contexts is needed to build a comprehensive understanding of how to meaningfully advance social and environmental equity in such decentralized reforms. Based on our results, we suggest the answer, if there is one, may transcend current focal domains such as stakeholder representation and engagement.     

Renegotiating the Reproductive Bargain: Gender Analysis of Economic Transition in Cuba in the 1990s

This article argues that Cuba's economic demise following the collapse of the former Soviet Union should be seen as a crisis in reproduction as well as a crisis in consumption and production. Using qualitative field research carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Havana and in the province of Matanzas, the author shows that the commodities and services required for reproduction could no longer be guaranteed through the distribution system of the Cuban state. Consequently, people began to devise a range of survival strategies in order to ensure the reproduction of their households, including trading in unofficial markets, leaving formal employment and engaging in a portfolio of income-generating activities in the informal sector. Such strategies were patterned by the existing sexual division of labour and show a reinforcement of traditional gender roles. The article argues that these changes will have important political as well as economic consequences for Cuba's future.     

The Seattle Commons

This study looks in depth at the politics, planning, and policymaking involved in the attempt to create a new “urban village” close to downtown Seattle. Beginning in 1991 with a small group of citizens who shared a vision of a major in-city park, the Seattle Commons project gradually became transformed, as result of different interests and political agendas, into an urban village with a major park at its core. This study analyzes these competing interests, the public private leadership roles, the process of organization-building, and the marshaling of opposition that characterized the Commons planning effort during its initial years.     

Digging up Unearthed down-under: a hybrid geography of a musical space that essentialises gender and place

Hybrid geographies are well developed in studies of human–nature relations and environmental humanities, but less so in geographies of music and gender. In this article, we use hybrid geographies to frame our critical engagement with Australia's triple j's Unearthed, a publically funded website and radio station that presents new music. Hybrid approaches enable us to understand gendered power relations in music by deconstructing the ways power differences are built on cultural, social, spatial and technological relations. Engaging netnographic and mixed-method approaches we critique Unearthed as a democratic music cyberspace. We identify the limited constructions of gender and geographic location, some of which are unique to this online presence, while others are shared with broader musical spaces. We argue that the interactions between technology, artists, fans and the online spaces, as mediated by Unearthed, situate emerging artists in relation to gender, geography and genre, and thus constrain possibilities for a more democratic musical space. Unearthed manifests as a musical space where rurality is exoticised while urban origins are diminished, and hegemonic masculinities remain dominant. We suggest that the potential of Unearthed can be realised if gender and geographic hegemonies are recognised and otherness is de-essentialised.     

Setting the Record Straight: Frame Contestation as an Advocacy Tactic

Policy scholars recognize that most policy arenas are characterized by competition among interests advancing different problem frames with conflicting problem definitions and/or solutions. At the same time, there is little research that empirically analyzes the dynamics of such framing contests. Using a case study of energy policy advocacy by the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund across three decades, I examine the tactics that interest groups employ when faced with agenda conflict. Contrary to what most policy research suggests, I find that interest groups do not avoid public clashes with their competitors; rather, they often willingly engage in confrontational framing techniques. I call this activity frame contestation , and it involves attempts at discrediting opponents’ factual claims, policy ideas, and/or group character. The study reveals interesting differences between groups in the specific types of frame contestation employed. In particular, the use of character frames that attack an opponents’ reputation appears to be linked to group ideology and orientation toward the business community. These findings enhance our understanding of advocacy group decision making and focus our attention on the role of frame contestation in agenda setting and policymaking outcomes.     

Teaching energy geographies via videography

In our digital age of information acquisition, multimedia information streams are constant, constantly changing and often contain multiple messages about topics important to everyday life, such as energy geographies. Recognizing that college students are prime consumers of digital information, it seems that crafting of academic engagement for and with students that is in touch with the knowledge networks they utilize and will continue to be part of today and into the future is important. Engaging students in the production of videos about important topics, such as energy geographies, aids them in becoming critical producers of knowledge.