{"id":33745,"date":"2011-02-26T10:59:33","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T15:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=33745"},"modified":"2015-09-20T23:30:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T04:30:09","slug":"guest-post-the-social-and-geographic-distancing-of-grocery-store-produce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/02\/26\/guest-post-the-social-and-geographic-distancing-of-grocery-store-produce\/","title":{"rendered":"The Social and Geographic Distancing of Grocery Store Produce"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harkening back to a day when grocery and \u2018convenience\u2019 stores did not exist, one was intimately aware of where one\u2019s food was coming from. This is because leading a life of subsistence meant growing one\u2019s own food. It meant raising animals and growing crops and then processing them into food.<\/p>\n

As foodstuffs began to be commodified, that is, rendered a marketable good to be exchanged for capital — and largely controlled by transnational corporations — we began to lose understanding to where our food comes from. Arguably, the dearth of this understanding is illustrated by the fact that increasingly children believe that fruit and vegetables are something that comes from the grocery store rather than from the farm or the earth.<\/p>\n

The effects of this phenomenon, known as distancing<\/em>, have social, political and economic ramifications. Typically grocery store produce is devoid of any clues as to the conditions under which it was produced, save for the country of origin. This serves to make invisible the labour taken to cultivate the produce and instead presents the consumer with the end product. The conditions under which bananas are produced, for example, are particularly problematic given their use of toxic pesticides and lack of environmental and worker protection measures.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, I was particularly struck when I noticed this produce sign at a local grocery store.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here the source of the bananas is specified in a way that might help combat distancing.\u00a0 But, in fact, knowing that these bananas are from the \u201ctropics\u201d does more to obfuscate than illuminate.\u00a0 The tropics refers to no place in particular \u2013 technically referring to parts of South America, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific.\u00a0 Instead of a concrete agricultural source, then, pointing to the tropics simply creates a false sense of understanding, one that plays on consumers\u2019 desires for (and stereotypes about) all things lush and tropical, leaving the consumers\u2019 ignorance intact.<\/p>\n

Kristina Vidug is pursuing a masters of arts degree in sociology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Her research is on post-industrial risk management with a focus on women’s avoidance of synthetic chemicals in the domestic sphere. You can follow her “adventures in thesising” on her blog,\u00a0jeez (kristina) louise<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harkening back to a day when grocery and \u2018convenience\u2019 stores did not exist, one was intimately aware of where one\u2019s food was coming from. This is because leading a life of subsistence meant growing one\u2019s own food. It meant raising animals and growing crops and then processing them into food. As foodstuffs began to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[229,23384,98,2124,64],"class_list":["post-33745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consumption","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-capitalism","tag-foodagriculture","tag-globalization"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33745"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68024,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33745\/revisions\/68024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}