Abstract
This chapter introduces Cody’s anthropological project and research into independent organic farmers and an alternative food movement called “exemplary agriculture” in China. It introduces two legacies of state socialism that significantly effect the movement’s dynamics and functioning: the urban/rural dichotomy and exemplary morality, or leadership by example. The chapter also discusses Cody’s research methods and fieldsites in Shanghai and surrounding countryside and outlines the structure of the book.
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Notes
- 1.
Statistics available here: http://www.stats.gov.cn. The National Bureau of Statistics of China has used various definitions to define urban and rural populations over time, including jurisdiction, permanent residence (i.e. where one’s household registration is located), and complex statistical classifications. Up until the late 1990s, urban residents were defined as those with a non-agricultural household registration (regardless of their source of income). Today, factors such as population size, economic development, transportation and infrastructure—even historical and/or cultural significance—are just some of the factors used in government classification of urban localities and hence the urban population (Griffiths and Schiavone 2016). See Kamal-Chaoui et al. 2009 for an overview.
- 2.
Klein summarises three broad topics of interest. First, the relationship between production and consumption. This also includes distribution, preparation, as well as disposal, and to which I would add the act of purchasing food, or exchange. Second, the relationship between social stratification and culinary practices. And third, the importance of comparative analysis, especially regarding processes of globalisation.
- 3.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, foreign researchers, including anthropologists, required official approval to conduct research in China. Many fieldsites were out of bounds and researchers were persuaded or compelled to select both fieldsites and interlocutors from officially-approved lists.
- 4.
Such an intimate relationship between exemplarity and processes of nation-building is not unique to China. As one example, during the immigration waves to Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an image of a particular kind of pioneer (halutz) became popular. Luis Roniger and Michael Feige (1992, pp. 284–286) explain, ‘The basic core image of the halutz was that of an individual who unselfishly (and often through hardship) contributed to the collective well-being without a clear notion of compensation.’ The halutz was a ‘model for action.’
- 5.
Such an erosion is also seen in cases of exemplarity elsewhere. The image of the pioneer (halutz), discussed above, as a role model for action was replaced with that of the freier, a loser who is routinely swindled by others and who ‘mistakenly and even grotesquely contributes to collective efforts and the public good’ (Roniger and Feige 1992, p. 293). While respect, admiration and emulation were reserved for halutz, freiers are viewed as abnormal individuals, remnants of the past who lack contemporary relevance.
- 6.
When I began preparing my research proposal, I created a database of food safety incidents in China that were reported in the media. I stopped after cataloguing 87 individual incidents (many that were reported in at least ten articles) because it became too difficult to maintain and manage. This process, however, led me to Wu Heng, a young Shanghainese postgraduate student who created a successful online food safety database that became incredibly famous throughout China. His website is called Zhi Chu Chuang Wai (掷出窗外), which means ‘Throw it out the window’ (see www.zccw.info). In naming his project, Wu Heng was inspired by an anecdote of former US president Theodore Roosevelt. While eating a breakfast sausage and reading Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle one morning, Roosevelt was so appalled by Sinclair’s descriptions of the meat-packing industry in early twentieth century America, first published in 1906, that he threw his sausage out of the White House window. Or so the story goes.
- 7.
Progress was initially slow. I could only visit one farm at a time and even when exemplary agriculturalists were all together at farmers’ markets they were not immediately open to my inquiries. One of the greatest challenges throughout my multi-sited ethnographic project was maintaining cordial relations with 13 exemplary agriculturalists (and their spouses or business partners) and researching a grassroots movement that is spatially quite diffuse. Many times, I felt like I was juggling commitments. This juggling became more intense as I became a regular fixture at farmers’ markets and exemplary agriculturalists became more willing to talk with me. Furthermore, as word spread that I was helpful on farms (I worked hard as a volunteer), I became in demand. People also wanted to hear what I thought of their movement and often asked me questions about organic farming in Australia.
- 8.
Only one exemplary farm is not located in either Shanghai municipality or Zhejiang province, this being Fu You’s Organic Farm, which is in Hunan province, in southern China. In addition, while there are other vendors present at Shanghai’s farmers’ markets, I exclude those that primarily produce artisan products (e.g. soap) and those who are economically, rather than morally, motivated to take up organic farming.
- 9.
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Cody, S. (2019). Introduction. In: Exemplary Agriculture. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3795-6_1
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