"Strange Primitivism" Behind Local Food Movement, Says Freakanomics Poster

[hatrack]

The condescension pours from James E. McWilliams' Freakonomics post, "The Persistence of the Primitive Food Movement," with all the force and power of thousands of bushels of genetically modified corn pouring into an Iowa silo.

Americans are currently embracing a strange sort of primitivism. Bicycles are losing gears, runners are afoot in shoes designed to create a barefoot sensation (some are even running barefoot), and men are growing bushy Will Oldham-like beards. It's all very curious and entertaining. But nowhere has our love for the supposed simplicity of the past been more evident than in food trends.

McWilliams, a historian at Texas State University, has made challenging the mores of the organic, slow food, eat local movements his life work. The title of his last book: "Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly," is sufficiently illuminating. This time out, his argument is straightforward: The reaction against "industrial food" is just another time-honored manifestation of an American infatuation with a simpler life.

For all their moral impact, our linear jeremiads fail to capture the circularity of history. This is especially true with our back-to-the past reaction to "industrial food." Current calls for dietary simplicity might have a revolutionary ring to them. But what's overlooked in all the enthusiasm is this: Americans have always idealized, or at least harkened back to, an agricultural era when production was supposedly simpler, closer to the land, and unadulterated by the complexities of modernization. What we're seeing right now with the food movement is, for all its supposed novelty, a stock (even banal) reaction to broad historical changes.

Wow: "curious," "entertaining" and "banal." That's quite the triple play. I imagine McWilliams observing the customers at a Berkeley farmer's market with the bored half-smile of a late 18th century French aristocrat gracing his face. Ah, the native customs here, their very quaintness makes them both fascinating and so very, very dull! I will grant that Americans have an undeniable tendency to idealize "mythical golden ages" and McWilliams does a good job of unearthing outbreaks of such longing, as they pertain to food, going all the way back to James Madison. But this emphasis on the circularity of history plows directly into a paradox: By dismissing those who are currently pushing for healthier food and more sustainable agriculture as "primitives" he is making an implicit argument against another core American belief -- our faith in progress.

EDIT

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2010/03/10/the_attack_on_simple_food