Earlier this week when I went out to get some coffee in a store they were advertising their coffee as high quality and they were attaining this quality to the product’s imported status. Somehow it is a social construct that we usually associate imported with high quality. I wonder if this is because independently from the actual quality of a product and its background, the ability to reach the far makes us feel powerful therefore good about ourselves. Our ability to access the global market makes us blind to the rest of the qualities of the product sometimes.
People tend to romanticize broccoli from Guatemala because they imagine the Indigenous as a distant group both physically and traditionally having remained pure of any Western influence and the industrialized food chain (Benson and Fischer, 809). A bite into our broccoli we immediately start feeling good about ourselves both physically believing we are eating clean and mentally believing we are supporting small-scale producers completely unaware of how little they get paid compared to the distributors and packagers.
Benson and Fischer explain consumption is a combination of the commodification of identity and fascination with the exotic and foreign. Romanticizing through our imagination makes us feel better about ourselves in commodifying our identity. We believe buying products from far away can make us seem special or in the case of broccoli as an organic/ethical consumer completely disregarding how in fact the Guatemalan broccoli is produced with the use of chemical fertilizers (just like the US produced) and putting the Guatemalan producers in a vulnerable position due to their underprivileged access to market information creating a double commodity fetish (804).
The second aspect of consumption, which is fetishizing the foreign as exotic I believe can be both harmful and beneficial. It might be harmful because when we fetishize the foreign, Guatemalan foodways we ignore their capability of agency and this makes us undermine their desires into needs. It is significant to decolonize our minds and acknowledge the Indigenous producers as active decision-makers in the global market.
On the other hand, Benson and Fischer mention location (Guatemala) as a positive marketing strategy which fulfills the fascination of the people with the foreign and give the example of a successful farmer who labels his products as “Exotic” and “ Producto de Guatemala” which attracts more customers for his products (812).
This made me start thinking about how most children’s stories start with: in a kingdom far far away, and how this already constructs the story in a more attractive and appealing way. In Shrek, the kingdom named far far away inspired by this traditional opening line for stories represents a place like the Rodeo Drive in California where fairytale creatures live in luxury. This kingdom of far far away which is so far away from Shrek’s swamp promises a life of happily ever after just like the consumers commodifying their happily ever afters by consuming products that are imported.
Hi Alara!
You’ve written such a thought-provoking post, I really enjoyed reading it, espesically since Shrek is one of my all-time favorite movies. Nonetheless, I do think you make a point of foreign food being romanticized to the point where we fail to differ between needs and desires, the desires of farmers turn into needs for us. In one of my readings for another course, I read that food, along with most products in the world, have been commodified, which should not be the case because unlike those other products, food is a necessity for life. We should not take it for granted, and we should definitely not forget to consider where our food came from, and the amount of work that was put into it.
Hi Alara,
I enjoyed reading your blog post! Also, the picture in the background with all the fruit is making me hungry!
In your post you question the reasoning behind the belief that imported goods are better, and this made me think of what the reason might be. I think fruits or vegetables are imported because we do not have the optimal conditions to grow them here. So we naturally think that imported goods are better since the environmental conditions where they grow are optimal for their growth.