Month: April 2013

I’ve been fascinated by ecosystems of late; by the intricate processes which often go unnoticed or unseen.  The nematodes and mites, the micorrhizal associations taking place in the soil that then provides a habitat for the trees which then capture and store carbon as well as providing various ecosystem services.  I’ve been amazed to discover about the complexities of marine ecosystems and how they have been changing rather drastically, having been greatly impacted by the over exploitation of fish stocks and a changing environment..

Everything is interconnected.  An ecosystem is an intricate web of life which is composed of many parts fit together to make a complex system.  When one part if affected, everything that it touches is affected.  The resiliency of ecosystems is greatly affected by the diversity of species present, illustrating the reality that each piece plays a unique role that cannot be underestimated.

Ecosystems disprove the notion that anything can exist in isolation.  I have found that in beginning to study ecosystems I have begun to better understand the world that I live in and be able to situate otherwise independent phenomena within a broader context.  In so doing, it becomes apparent that systems such as global health, food production, and transportation are complex rather than complicated; they cannot be understood or affected by looking at one piece alone.

The desire to understand and engage within complex systems naturally lends itself to further questions; how does one set about to understand, let alone touch something which touches everything else?  Grasp something which is infinite, changing, and dynamic?  The mystery of an ecosystem is in the way that each individual piece offers itself to the next, the way that each interaction is mediated by an enigmatic rhythm.  In so doing, individual, otherwise disconnected pieces are fit together as a whole.  The beauty of this is that a singular nematode participates equally in the glorious process of creation simply by being a nematode.

Who ever thought that a worm could change the world?

*The nematode to which I am referring is a type of roundworm that lives in the soil and helps to break down organic matter and make available needed nutrients. 

The following is an excerpt from a writing in Anthropology 330 which situates The Seed in a broader context.

Story

Humans exist in a natural world, and our interactions with one another and with our environment are mediated by our understandings of our place within it as determined by an overarching cultural or social framework. Stories passed on from generation to generation are vehicles through which that social and cultural framework is often established. In creating a sense of wholeness out of otherwise fragmented pieces of understanding, story gives meaning to our lives as social beings inextricably linked to the natural world. The story of The Seed is my own attempt to make meaning of our present engagement with the natural world. While it touches on many themes, this essay will draw primarily upon one; the food system as an expression of a society’s relationship with the natural world. It is intended to be an exploration of the stories which currently govern our interactions and mediate our relationship with one another and with our environment, and is built upon the foundation that such frameworks are integral to both environmental and social well being.  It argues that accepting a global capitalist system as our social and cultural framework has contributed to the erosion of the social relations and cultural frameworks which mediate our relationships with the environment and with one another. This has made us vulnerable to the insatiability of an economic system whose guiding principle is profit.

The following original short story was written as an attempt to explore the globalization of food and the implications on local food security.  It was submitted for Anthropology 330, Rural Peoples in the Global Economy

___________________________________________________________________

 In the space between dusk and dawn, a shape coaxed it’s way along the moonlit shore. Quietly, it moved between the rocky crags, taking note of each distinctive feature with a dangerous alacrity. Moving from shore to shore, the shape tread softly in an attempt to mask it’s presence in the slowly rising sun. In the early glow of a gray morning, the vanishing water marks of the shore was the only evidence of encounter borne by the shape as it disappeared. Yet despite the means used by the interloper to operate in the unseen, the landscape was altered by those footsteps. As time wore on, the shape returned to this place, returning to those places which it had noted so carefully, and quietly gathering fragments of the rock which had fallen to the ground. It picked up the grains of sand which had been washed up on the shores, and tucked them inside of a glass jar. Time after time, the interloper returned to these shores, and time after time, it carried away with it a piece of the land. Each time after that, it would leave a piece of itself in the places it had emptied; it would leave a seed. And this seed contained within it the essence of the interloper, it bore its resemblance entirely, and once planted would grow up into a fruit bearing tree containing infinite amounts of similar seeds. Time passed, and the quiet moonlit dawns turned into expeditions carried out in broad daylight; the tiny grains of sand grew to be rocks, boulders, foundations. And slowly by slowly, the seeds took root, plunging their hands and toes into the fertile soil of the shore. And the seeds grew up into trees whose roots spread and become strong and indomitable. The shore, the virgin shore, lost its way and became a forest unrecognizable to its former eyes.

And the trees bore fruit; the fruit was sweet to the taste of the people. They did not know from where it came; they could not see the seed of its origin. Many marveled at the ease with which this fruit grew, its trees spread easily as far as the eye could see. The trees were strong and took no care of the other life forms which lay in its way. Its roots encircled them, and slowly they vanished. As the landscape changed, the people began to forget how they used to live, and began to steal from the land, just as the interloper had done. As the fruit began to replace their former foods, its seed took root within them, and they took on the shape of the interloper. They began to forget who they were, and rather than reject the allure of the ever expanding trees, they took the seeds and began to plant them in distant lands. The fruit was sweet to their taste, and the trees began to spread into all the earth. And the trees replaced the small shrubs, the low lying bushes, and the flowers which had graciously nourished the people for generations. Some quietly mourned the slow disappearance of these old friends, but most had become enamored by the sweetness of the tree’s fruit, and the ease with which they could pick it, and ignored the pleas of the elders. Children grew up knowing nothing of the ways of the past, some did not even know where the fruit came from, for it too began to be mysteriously separated from the tree, being sent to and fro faraway places. The spread of this fruit seemed invincible; before long its roots had circumnavigated the earth, weaving an impenetrable web….

One day, the people began to notice that something was very different; they no longer knew how to care for the earth and the former harmony which had governed their interactions gave way to an entrenched chaos. They used to have enough for everyone; but despite the promised abundance of the fruit, some people began to lack. Some people grew rich, they grew in power, and took as much fruit as they could. Others did not have enough. Slowly, this difference grew, and the rich became more and more rich, while the others grew unable to live. They fled to the margins of the community. Slowly, all around the world, those margins grew and grew, until many people could not live well. The food which had once covered the shores and nourished their bodies became an inaccessible commodity. They ate the fruit, but it did not sustain them. And soon they could not eat the fruit from the trees, for it was quickly gathered by the rich. They exchanged their time, their strength, their health to be able to pick the fruits which had fallen to the ground.

Illness began to spread; it spread to the people, touching their bodies and their minds. And it spread to the earth, touching the soil, the mountains, the rivers, the fish. Even the sky and the air grew faint. All around the world, the systems which had sustained the earth and the people began to unravel until the people began to worry. They began to despair, wondering how they would ever put it back together again. They tried to recover what had been lost, digging deep into the soil to find water which had not become contaminated. They grew hopeless when all that they encountered was roots; tentacles of the seed had monopolized the subterranean world. They began to despise the seed and its fruit. They began to fear it, to distrust it. They began to long for their former days, to dream of a new seed which could replace the old, a seed which could restore that which had been stolen.