APR 3

19. APR 3

Assigned Work

• Andrews, Geoff. Chapter 2: "The Critique of 'Fast Life'" The Slow Food Story (pp. 29-47). (18)

In-Class

• Launch Food Ethics Documentary Assignment.

Food Ethics Documentary Assignment

• Part of our study of Food Ethics issues will involve invited reports from you on either one of the Food Ethics Documentary on the wiki page Documentaries specific to Food Ethics and Animal Slaughter or on a Food Ethics topic that you are curious about.

• In either case, the goal is to report to the class briefly (10-20 mins) on the film or topic. Please feel free to work in pairs or a group of three.

• When you are ready, please go to the sign up form.

Small Group Discussion: How Fast is your Food Culture?

• For this short group discussion, think of times in your current or past life where you enjoyed "slow life", the kind of experience of food and conviviality described by slow food advocates. For example:

• A group house diner that lingers and leads to great conversation or other fun.
• A friend comes to dinner, maybe you cook together,
• A meal out, no hurry, lingering while the restaurant empties out.
• Coffee/tea with a friend, conversation goes on past the drinks.
• Meaningful wasting of time. Sleeping in, pottering about, seconds on coffee and breakfast....

• Share your stories (and feel free to say you don't have this sort of experience!), but then shift the group discussion to try to identify what, if anything, is valuable about "slow life"?

• Discussion questions:

• How much is it your habit already? In light of our reading, is it an aspiration?
• What is it about our culture that works against "slow life"? How much of that do you embrace or feel critical of these cultural forces?

Andrews, Chapters 1 & 2, The Slow Food Story

Chapter 1, "Politics in Search of Pleasure"

(This wasn't assigned for us, but I have these notes to share:)

• context for slow food: social movements of the 60's and 70's. (Italian counter-culture.)
• low power radio stations common means: Radio Bra Onde Rosse.
• politics at Club Tenco, also the pursuit of pleasure.
• revival of traditional festivals: the singing for eggs (Cante i'euv)
• 1982 incident: Montalcino Sagra del Tordo (thrush) Mention Arci clubs.

• in play: Is the pursuit of pleasure through healthy food and culture a capitalist bourgeoisie plot or a fundamental "right to pleasure" to be advocated politically?

• formation of an "Arci Gola" (appetite)
• projects: Gambero Rosso, wine guides, Osterie d'Italia, guides to osterie.
• 1986: wine poisoning scandal. McDonalds opens in Rome at Spanish Steps.
• Slow Food Manifesto
• Parallel movement in US embodied on story of Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse. Pollan also finds sources of these ideas in 1960s US counter-culture.
• Eco-gastronomy -- (a great sub-field of food study, by the way! cf. Dan Berber, The Third Plate) and the "politics of aesthetics" (only partly in line with Marxism). (So Carlo Petrini is another candidate for Gramsci's authentic intellectual.)
• Projects: international food exhibitions, then Terra Madre (2004), related movements in Germany (Greens)
• slow food also has a conservative dimension. Restoration and preservation of historical food systems.

• Mention experience with Guido and the ancient grains seminar. Photos.

Chapter 2, "The Critique of 'Fast Life'"

• some key dates: McDonald's in Rome, 1986, incident between the two arci chapters (a moment in which politics and gastronomy interact to great effect!).
• critique of "productivity culture"; efficiency vs. frenzy; idea that you need to live faster because other things are accelerating (financial trade volume, sale, news cycles, social media posting and communication). Especially focused on speed.
• [In terms we have been using, Slow Food manifesto calls into question the "culinary cosmos" of the industrial lifestyle when it compromises basic human modes of experiencing pleasure in authentic and just food. ]
• critique includes resistance to corporate formations and rationalizations (degradation) of taste. Slow Food is tied to leftist politics, but also has a US upper middle class "face" in the US site. [1]
• Castell's theory of time-space compression -- capitalism more and more about speed of transactions. circulation of capital. (on edge of a big discussion about the future of work - piece work is coming back).
• Counter view of Charles Leadbeater and others: fast culture is the answer, the problem is that we have all of these institutions from the 19th century and earlier slowing us down.
• Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through 20th Century Europe -- American hegemony in food expressed in "reduction" of all class and value distinctions in food. Rich and poor eat McD's.
• Ritzer's "McDonaldization of Society" -- "globalization of nothing" (social forms centrally conceived, centrally controlled and lacking in context).
• Schlosser, Fast Food Nation:

• 1970 6 billion on fast food; ("million" in the text is a mistake, I think)
• 2001 110 billion
• 2010 200 billion (not in text)

• British "trolley towns"; American suburbs. globalization of construction and architecture.
• Petrini on slowness: p. 39 read
• Slow cities: features of slow cities: "A 54-point charter was developed, encouraging high quality local food and drink, general conviviality and the opposition to cultural standardisation." (from Cittaslow wiki)

• Slow Food USA

Small Group Discussion: Slow food culture

• Does Slow Food culture require a loss of productivity or is it more about reclaiming some of your time for an essential activity, or both?
• Does the slow food movement present an attractive ideal for you? Or do you find yourself agreeing with Leadbeater that "fast culture is the answer"?
• For those of you for whom it is an attractive ideal, identify 3-5 ways that you might implement slow food culture in your life?