"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

[kestrel91316]

1. ".......Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food......"

Oh, ok. So does that mean that going to the farmer's market this morning for local honey makes me an enemy of the state? How about if I buy local eggs, too???

ZOMG, what am I if I GROW MY OWN FRUITS AND VEGGIES IN MY BACK YARD?????

[glitch]

3. These people are so strange. The corporate culture they live in must be hellish.

How on earth could locavores be endangering the future of food? I can't even wrap my head around it.

[XemaSab]

2. Why am I reminded of several Simpsons episodes?

Most notably, the one where Lisa becomes a vegetarian? :P

[patrice]

4. Of course! This most fundamental and, hence, powerful of relationships MUST be attacked by TPB.

It is way too universal in its reach across political divisions.

[starroute]

5. Was it a Freudian slip for him to use the word "unadulterated"

What he says is "an agricultural era when production was supposedly simpler, closer to the land, and unadulterated by the complexities of modernization."

But of course it's not "complexities" that we worry about adulterating our food -- and what a strange term for him to use so un-self-consciously.

[patrice]

6. Good catch! That IS curious . . . as though adulteration is desirable.

[MisterP]

11. it's the same attitude of "the Enlightened" toward non-Western medicine (or anything else not West)\

or those freakish "you wouldn't say, 'You should see a WITCH DOCTOR for that'" ads
or Andrew Dickson White, Charles Mackay, or August Comte describing the "Dark Ages," when everything was bad and ignorant and prejudiced
or when the philosophe Guillaume Thomas Raynal loftily wrote that Tenochtitlan had to be "a little town, composed of a multitude of rustic huts, irregularly dispersed," because ignorant, barbarous, Church-ridden Spaniards misreported it; or that the ignorant, religion-deluded, untrained conquistadors reported a high Mesoamerican civilization were there was none (and could never have been, due to the universal iron Laws of economics).
or anything from the "New Atheists'" pens that lumps together science (which is everything and the only thing, never mind that empathy--really all that prevents us from poisoning one another--isn't logical at all, thus producing anti-abortionism), goodness, and tolerance
or the imperialist mission civiliatrice
or when people cite Amartya Sen, Bruce Ames, or Norman Borlaug to tell us how wonderful industrial agriculture is and how billions will die without it (despite the fact that it relies on oil, that population control was taboo in the Third World since 1970, and that half of India's kids are malnourished)
or Cyril Burt, Charles Murray, or other prating preachers of indisputable "real science"
or any other element of "modernity's" relentless self-celebratory PR campaign, with its relentless blatting that "people are living better than ever before, and if not, the problem is only one of distribution, because growth must be eternal" (ironically, this attitude appears in one of Leonard's cites...)

[whatchamacallit]

7. Yeah, concern over the US's obscene rates of food related disease (cancer, heart disease, diabetes)

is just so banal. Where do they find these dirtbags?:think:

[XemaSab]

8. Furthermore, it's the capitalist spirit that's driving the locavore movement

People want to support local agriculture, so they buy food from local growers.

It's not like we're talking about collectivism or state-run farms.

Actually, come to think of it, we ARE talking about state-run farms, and we're opposed. We're opposed to tax money going to big corporate farms that steal water, pollute, poison us, and destroy other species.

[nashville_brook]

9. i'm making strangely primitive taco salad and salsa tonight for dinner!

yum!

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Someone get this guy a copy of "Born to Run" ...

which includes a brief history of what Nike did to increase injuries to runners with its "high-tech", overdesigned running shoes, and why some of the best runners and coaches in the world have rebelled against that trend.

Sometimes simplest really is best. Not always. But too much to excuse mockery.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780307266309-0