Anthropology Newsletter Columns: 2007
January 2007
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
Preliminary Evidence: Social Networks and
Diet Change among New Americans (Part Two)
Crystal Patil, University of South Florida/University of Toronto
Craig Hadley, Emory University/University of Michigan
As a companion piece to last month’s issue, where we laid out a framework for understanding how social networks might influence dietary intake among immigrants to the USA, here we draw on preliminary data from our NSF-sponsored project to illustrate a few ways that social networks appear to influence dietary intake of refugees resettled in the USA.
A key node in the networks of some refugees is the resettlement center, which assists individuals as they transition into their new lives. Many participants in our study are astonished by the range of foods available in the grocery store and find it overwhelming. As one refugee woman, said “you go there [supermarket], and there is dog food, and cat food, and if you don’t know English, it’s very hard.” For this reason, caseworkers usually assist clients by taking them to the supermarket within a few days of arrival. The caseworker, another key node in a newly resettled refugee’s network, potentially can have a dramatic effect on food choice, as he or she walks down the aisles of the supermarket, pointing out and explaining different types of foods and prices. We asked a caseworker to explain how she teaches her clients to shop, she said “I explain everything, sometimes even if they don’t know the product I explain to them [what it is]. For example, they have [the] same tomatoes, but different price[s]. I show them which one is cheapest. And sometimes they ask me ‘which one [do] you buy?’ and I tell ‘the cheapest one’ because it’s very bad if you tell them I buy the expensive productâ?|just go with the cheapest one.” This relationship can occur outside of the market too. A caseworker said that caretakers often ask for her opinion; parents “..ask me, ‘Can I buy chips?’ I say, ‘yeah, they can have some chips.’” This interaction can affect subsequent dietary choices of a refugee given the extent to which the caseworker has his or her own conceptions of nutrition, economizing, or what is ‘best’ for a refugee. This also raises the issue of power.
Children, their peers, and their interactions with institutions also constitute elements in a caretaker’s network. Our research suggests that children’s preferences strongly influence what caretakers will buy and eat. One mother lamented, “My children, they don’t like the African food that I buy, they eat American foodâ?|But I can’t force them to eat African food if they don’t want to eat it.” Parents want their children to feel satisfied and suggest that their preferences are important too. One Liberian woman said, “I can worry for I [am] eating and he [is] not eating. I should have to get money to go get what he needs. I have to fix Irish potatoes [instant mashed potatoes], because he like itâ?|So, I have to find ways to get something for him to eat, then he will not go hungry.” Our discussions with caretakers continually returned to the issue of children as agents of dietary change.
We also suggested that friends and family are critical nodes in a network and may buffer individuals during periods of financial stress; this can be a common occurrence among some refugees. Consistent with the framework, we found that individuals who reported greater levels of food insecurity also reported consuming more meals at other people’s homes. We interpret this result as evidence for a protective role of social support. A caseworker reported that some groups are more prosocial than others and in reference to Meskhetian Turks, refugees from Russia, she stated, “They support each other a lot! They come and asking me, ‘Are we having any Turk family coming?’ and I tell them yes, they say ‘OK, bring [them] to our home. If it’s lunchtime, bring [them] for lunch or bring [them] for dinner.” Liberian women told us that when they go to others’ homes to eat, they eat very well. Other ethnic groups, however, limit the types of foods that guests can eat although they still provide food for those in need. This suggests that the efficacy of social support networks varies not only along socioeconomic lines but also along ethno-cultural lines.
These examples illustrate the influences social support and social networks can have on dietary intake and dietary acculturation. They also highlight the need for more nuanced investigations into the cultural and personal strategies that create structures of action in food security.
February 2007
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
A Message from Incoming SAFN President Andrea Wiley
Andrea Wiley (James Madison U)
I am delighted to be taking on the role of the new president of SAFN, although I am humbled by the example set by Miriam Chaiken, who has been a true leader and visionary for our section. A high standard has been set by all of our previous presidents, and I will try to continue in that tradition. Our meetings in San Jose were especially stimulating, and I look forward to putting that energy toward some new SAFN projects.
SAFN is a section in transition, most notably from a section with a print publication to one without one. The executive committee decided to end print publication of Nutritional Anthropology with great reluctance, but the costs of maintaining it under the new terms of AnthroSource would have meant imminent bankruptcy. We do hope that at some point in the future Nutritional Anthropology will re-emerge as a viable publication, perhaps in electronic format. In the meantime this move has freed resources that can be put toward any number of opportunities. Most notably is the development of a new website, which we envision as a portal for membership to access information about topics and events relevant to SAFN. Moreover, we hope that this will be a place for productive interaction among our members. There will be book reviews, information on graduate programs, websites of interest to members, upcoming meetings of interest, funding sources, and discussion of current topics via online forums, an archived and searchable listserv, among others. I would like to institute a series of policy position statements that will be posted on the website and also issued as press releases. These can include the USDA’s recent decision to redefine hunger as “very low food security” and the upcoming U.S. farm bill, among others. The website will also include a forum on teaching and the invaluable SNAC III syllabi set. We hope to have the website live by spring 2007 and that it will become an important resource for SAFN members, as well as a site visible to nonmembers interested in the intersections between food, nutrition, and anthropology.
There are other issues to grapple with as well. SAFN has been a small yet vibrant section of the AAA, and the question arises as to whether our interests would be better served by expanding our numbers and attracting more AAA members, or if our small size, congeniality, and commitment to biocultural perspectives is what makes the group compelling to its members. We have widened our mandate to include food studies in addition to the more traditional focus on diet and nutrition, but it remains to be seen whether this has an impact on our membership numbers. In terms of the future, it is especially important that we reach out to students and get them involved in the organization. Regardless of our size, I would like to see SAFN sponsor more diverse kinds of activities at the annual meetings, including explorations of local farmers markets, food policy institutes, and of course restaurants! Joint sponsorship of such activities and new linkages with other like-minded sections such as Culture and Agriculture are possibilities. I would also like to explore the possibility of a SAFN meeting independent of the AAA annual meeting, perhaps in conjunction with the Association for the Study of Food and Society.
Another important challenge is to make the work of SAFN’s members visible to a wider non-anthropological audience, particularly one that is involved in food policymaking. Inspired by Tom Marchione’s distinguished lecture on the role of anthropologists in global food policy at the San Jose meetings, we are working on ways of doing just that; the policy position statements are one step in that direction. If members have policy issues that they are particularly interested in and informed about, I encourage them to put together a position statement that can be sent to the membership for feedback.
In closing, I hope that the next two years will advance SAFN’s mission both within and outside of AAA. I encourage all members to get involved in some way, and if you have ideas about projects that SAFN could be involved in, please let me know. I am especially interested in finding ways to better serve our student members. We have some exciting opportunities on the horizon, and I look forward to making the most of them!
March 2007
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
GMO: Benefit or Boondoggle? Two differing perspectives provide provocative ideas about GMO crops. Tina Huey argues that GMO crops could provide solutions to food-related production problems; Barrett Brenton maintains that the problems of GMO production overwhelm the potential for equitable solutions. Part one of two.
Are GM crops a sustainable option for developing countries?
Huey: Sustainability is a concept best discussed sitting next to a working crystal ball, because sustainable agriculture has always been elusive where there is population pressure. People face myriad pressures such as war, infrastructure inadequacies, lack of markets, and inequalities of access. Do GM crops alleviate these pressures? No. Do they offer a solution to specific problems posed by pests and disease? Certainly. That makes them a useful tool in poverty-alleviation projects, provided the current problems of intellectual property, licensing, and seed price do not simply create a new system of dependency. Sustainability is over-determined, and there must be room for diverse models of sustainability in any question of how people use natural and agricultural resources.
Brenton: To date the option seems more viable for large landholders who have the capital for the inputs needed to sustain GM production. For smallholder farmers sustainability becomes a question of access to land and resources. Local traditional knowledge may or may not be at odds with GM crops within specific environmental and cultural contexts; that is why a one-seed or one-gene approach is often rejected by small-scale farmers in developing countries. Even if patent rights to these new varieties are waived in the short term, what are the long term costs? Questions of sustainability, dependency and failed top-down approaches from the “Green Revolution” seem to have been forgotten. Ultimately, basic improvements in traditional soil and water management will go much further than any “quick fix” pest resistance or vitamin enhancement from GM food crops.
Has there been any real economic benefit from using GM foods?
Huey: The benefits to a handful of seed companies have been extraordinary, of course. In the United States, organic farmers have benefited because they can command a premium for products labeled non-GM. It is currently impossible to measure the benefits to poor countries because GM crops haven’t been widely adopted in the developing world. We don’t know what might be the economic impact of disease reduction via Vitamin-A rice or banana vaccines, to take one example. Furthermore, the powerful economic benefits that might derive from a better nourished population are indirect and hard to measure, as are the costs.
Brenton: GM food crops have the potential for creating cheaper food prices if yields increase substantially. However, to date neither goal has been realized. Even with the argument for needing less inputs such as pesticides, costs for GMO remain high. Stating a trickle-down advantage that may come from future economic or environmental benefits seems to be hollow justification given trends in other global markets (e.g., oil). The overbearing aggressiveness of industry’s push in to the developing world also raises cautionary flags about potential economic benefits.
Who makes the claim that GM food is the best solution to problems of hunger, and what do you see as their assumptions? Who makes the claim that distribution can be rearranged to solve the problem of hunger, and do you see that as a viable claim? If so, what would it take to rearrange it, in your view?
Huey: Proponents of GM food largely reject the idea that global trade can be rearranged to more fairly distribute food. They also assume that population growth will require a progressively more devastating use of arable (and non-arable) land for conventional agriculture, thereby speeding up environmental destruction. Conversely, the argument that redistribution is possible goes hand in hand with the ideal of strengthening participatory democracy and national or local sovereignty. Inequitable trade policies and subsidies across all agriculture should be re-examined
Brenton: Both multinational agricultural biotech companies and research scientists clearly have the most to gain. Who could argue against a potential means of ending world hunger? But industry’s primary responsibility is profit for stockholders, not altruism. Opponents of GM foods argue that plenty of food is produced, and that equity in access to land and food distribution is key to confronting hunger, as are the political-economic forces needed to support such a change. It is a moral imperative to reduce world hunger but that need not include the use of GM crops. Ending the strong collusion between U.S. food policy on GM foods and pro-corporate interests would be a start to rearranging barriers for realizing equity of redistribution.
April 2007
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
GMO: Benefit or Boondoggle? Two perspectives provide provocative ideas about GMO crops. Tina Huey argues that GMO crops could provide solutions to food-related production problems; Barrett Brenton maintains that the problems of GMO production overwhelm the potential for equitable solutions. Part two of two.
Should consumers demand more open dialog by regulators concerning the safety of GM foods and GM food ingredients?
Brenton: U.S. regulators argue that the process is already transparent enough, yet only a handful of independent peer-reviewed studies exist verifying the safety of GM versus non-GM products. In the U.S. the industry is essentially self-regulated with oversight by the FDA. One of the primary concerns of many developing nations is that they do not have the resources or capacity to monitor GM food safety. Very few U.S. consumers are even aware of concerns or that their food contains GM ingredients. There is even less public understanding of the concept of an “acceptable risk” when regulators approve any substance that may harm human health. More open dialog is clearly needed.
Huey: Regulators seem focused on benefits to the economy and the choices offered consumers, both of which circumvent a discussion of safety. There is value in seeking some kind of peaceful coexistence, and this would be jeopardized by a demand for incontrovertible proof about the safety of GM foods. Yes, open dialogs are to be desired, but moratoria are not.
Does acceptance or rejection of GM foods hinge on the quality of information made available, or does it hinge on another factor such as cultural attachment to foodways?
Brenton: It really is both. One has to begin with two basic assumptions: 1) that quality information is even available, and 2) there is an opportunity or ability to discern data from an independent scientific community as opposed to that which is industry-based. If either of these assumptions is met they may still be filtered through a cultural lens that will determine acceptance. The transformation of a food and its impact on foodways is a cultural process that can lead to it being accepted or rejected, be it via an altered genome or culinary recipe. I agree that unfounded fears driving the rejection of GM foods should not be a part of the debate, but there must be a debate that gives as much weight to concerns about cultural attachment as to genomic salvation.
Huey: There will always be variation in the level of risk people are willing to tolerate. Improving research in agriculture, both GM and organic, will improve the quality of projections we can make about relative risks but it is harder to characterize their consequences on attitudes and behavior.
The acceptance or rejection of GM foods cannot be viewed outside the context of globalization. In Europe, safeguarding foodways has become a way to resist those aspects of globalization that are perceived to threaten broader democratic structures established and rehearsed at the national level. The needs of poor countries are often taken up, by both opponents and proponents in wealthy countries, as moral arguments to support a given stance. But the “Third World” consumer is not actually very well known.
Do you see any way that organic agriculture would adopt genetically modified food technologies? If so, which ones might be most likely to be adopted and why?
Brenton: Even though USDA organic labeling laws and the National Organic Program consider GMOs to be an excluded method, organic is not synonymous with “GM-free” (neither is fair trade or sustainable agriculture). This ambiguity leaves some legal room for the use of GM food technologies in organic agriculture. The demand for organic foods and the rising corporate organic machine may force acceptance of some non-conventional production methods. The real question for the future, mostly absent in the current debate, is why do people even buy organic if conventional foods are deemed “safe”? By extension the same question must be asked of GM versus non-GM foods.
Huey: The debate is highly values-driven, which makes it difficult to imagine a common ground. GM seed producers and farmers could listen more to the concerns of organic farmers regarding pollen drift, etc., while organic farmers could consider whether GM technologies offer a substantial improvement over conventional practices such as heavy pesticide use and whether organic and GM need to work together to solve problems of arable land intake.
Tina Huey’s book, Genetically Modified Food: The Global Context will be published by Berg next year.
May 2007
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
Janet Chrzan, Contributing Editor
An interview with Miriam Chaiken,
Nutritional Anthropologist of the Year, 2007
Miriam Chaiken is Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Janet: How did you choose to be a nutritional anthropologist?
Miriam: I’m not sure I chose it at all, it just evolved as many of my interests steered me in that direction. When I was an undergraduate I wrote my senior thesis on food taboos, which might mark the beginning of these interests.
Janet: Did you take courses in nutritional anthropology?
Miriam: Such a course didn’t exist when I was a student, at least not at Arizona State where I did my undergrad work, nor at UC Santa Barbara where I did my graduate studies, focusing on economic development. But I found mentors who supported this interest.
Janet: What work have you done that you identify as nutritional anthropology?
Miriam: My dissertation work in the Philippines examined child nutritional status as one measure of community success in a frontier relocation community. I was studying the process of social support and adaptation following voluntary resettlement. After completing our PhDs my husband, Tom Conelly, won a Rockefeller post-doc which brought us to Kenya, and there I was able to develop a project with the UNICEF Kenya office that was aimed at improving child survival and nutritional status in an area characterized by chronic under-nutrition. Our first few years in Kenya corresponded with the Horn of Africa drought and famine in the mid-1980s, so the need for addressing nutrition was very apparent. Eventually we returned to the US and took up teaching positions, but I have continued to do research and applied work that reflects those interests that I developed when we were living permanently in Kenya.
Janet: Do you now teach nutritional anthropology?
Miriam: Yes, it is one of my favorite courses!
Janet: Do you concentrate on issues related to your work in development?
Miriam: Of course that is a sizeable component of my course, but I try to address anthropology of food as broadly as possible. We look at evolution of human food patterns, the symbolic aspects of food and food restrictions (back to food taboos!), food as an example of cultural continuity, and contemporary problems. I think one of the great things about nutritional anthropology is that it bridges the four subdisciplines of anthropology so beautifully, and it provides opportunity for both traditional scholarship and applied work. I see nutritional anthropology as the essence of anthropology as a whole.
Janet: What do you see as the big challenges ahead in nutritional anthropology? What relevance does this have?
Miriam: There are so many things that nutritional anthropologists are working on that are of pressing significance. How can we live in a world where one third of the population suffers from much too little to eat, and another third suffers from a surfeit of food? Addressing global inequities in food access has to be one of the important issues of our era, for example even the UN Millennium Development Goals list this as one of the key priorities. I think there is a need to have anthropologists involved in this discussion, because we have unique perspectives that bridge the gap between macro- and micro-level perspectives, and because we understand better than others the cultural contexts of food production, allocation, and use. We need to be engaged in this process.
Janet: What do you think is the future of Nutritional Anthropology?
Miriam: I have always been an applied anthropologist, and I've always been optimistic about the potential for anthropological perspectives to be essential tools in addressing contemporary problems. I most certainly see the need to understand how our past foodways influence our evolution as a species, and how important it is to celebrate cultural continuities that foodways represent, but to me the big challenge is to take our anthropological knowledge and work to address the pervasive problems of our era. My students’ generation will be faced with the challenge of trying to figure out how to produce adequate, safe food in the face of global climate change; the safety of everyone on the planet is influenced by whether we ignore or address the growing population of hungry people; and the industrialized world is going to have to figure out how to keep people healthy and productive through their increasingly long lives. It seems to me these are just a few of the many pressing issues that we nutritional anthropologists must address, and I think we are uniquely qualified to bring our biocultural perspectives to examining these global issues.
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