Salmon Commodification

“Triggering Passages”

“The over-riding fear is that cultural, ethnic, and racial differences will be continually commodified and offered up as new dishes to enhance the white palate – that the Other will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten” (Hooks 380).

“With our liberal instinct to avert one’s gaze from the intensely raced and exuberantly racist affect of these images, my guess is that at least some of those cards that our contemporary culture would deem as most offensive have been suppressed or destroyed; thus, we have no way of knowing the scale of the distribution of these images relative to what remains in archives and collections” (Tompkins 150).

News Media Context:

“Polar Bears and Climate Change: The Photographs That Moved Them Most”

Under the Endangered Species Act—which the Republicans in Washington have said they will seek to ‘modernize’—polar bears are listed as a threatened species. http://time.com/4684019/polar-bear-photos/?iid=sr-link1

Discussion:

Native peoples culture is at the constant risk of over commodification by Euro-Americans. Non-Native fisher people continually play this out though their reluctance to acknowledge the right of Native fisher people to exercise their treaty rights. Non-native fishers want to consume the fishing quota of Natives with the idea that all people deserve fair catch of all the fish; this nullifies and consumes the treaties of Native Americans. The first people will loose their entire culture with this consumptive thinking.

It is our greatest defeat, as a civilization, to incorrectly or creatively forgets our history, or the history of our oppressive society. As Tompkins pointed out we only covet historical artifacts, which incorrectly depict life and culture, while leaving out those extremely oppressive and racist artifacts. As liberals we want to help in the freeing of oppressed groups but we don’t want to acknowledge our own continued involvement in those systems.

The same way we conveniently leave out our own history, we also leave the histories of species behind. As a species we have seen the demise of countless species, without ever recording their life cycles. The biggest loss is those species, which are directly linked to the culture of certain people or groups. As we consume those cultures, we also consume those species. Both culture and species are lost to time, to be forgotten forever.

 

Works Citied

Grabriner, Alice. ” Polar Bears and Climate Change: The Photographs That Moved Them Most”. Time. February 27 2017: Page (1). www.time.com. Web. February 27 2017.

Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992. Print

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19^th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

“Triggering Passages”

“Alaska alone has some 700 used military defense toxic sites, which tell a story of the Cold War and every war since. The levels of radioactive and persistent organic pollutants remaining in the environment impact people who are dependent upon the land for their subsistence way of life. Then, there are the impacts of economic colonialism and underdevelopment to consider” (LaDuke 147).

“Ranchers have long associated cattle with money. The dairy cows might as well exude the jingle of coins with their milk, while the freeloading beef cattle (or “beeves,” for short) become moneymakers only after slaughter” (Newman 91).

News Media Context:

“Groups sue EPA to protect wild salmon from climate change”

U.S. fishing and conservation groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, seeking to protect wild salmon threatened by rising water temperatures attributed in part to climate change in two major rivers of the Pacific Northwest. mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N1G90ID

Discussion

            Winona LaDuke points out a troubling issue among the use of toxic waster and where we decided to store it. The issue of pollutants remaining for decades within ecosystems is an ongoing problem affecting salmon populations, among other species. As I explore my issue of Salmon commodification, there is a real threat of water quality degradation, which will create an inhospitable environment for salmon, thus our ecosystem loosing its key stone species on which it builds its foundation.

Salmon like the cattle are seen as dollar signs to most non-native fishermen. As we see in Wionna’s book salmon can be a great economic resource, but above all the spiritual connection to salmon outweighs economic gains. What if we could come to view all wild and domestic life as more than dollar and cents? I believe that’s when we would no longer need commodity markets for life, because their value would be worth more than a single transaction.

As our climate changes, our rivers grow warm and the cool temperatures salmon need for survival cannot be found. Our earth is warming precisely because of the toxic materials, commodification of animals, and wide use of fossil fuels. All three of these books are connected by the idea that life is not a commodity. The salmon’s habitat is just as precious as the humans; in fact the two are on in the same. If we want to see the salmon, and people save actions like these are methods to create change.

 

Works Citied

LaDuke, Winona. Chronicles: Stories From the Front LinesiIn the Battle for Environmental Justice. Ponsford, Spotted Horse Press. 2016. Print

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print

Zuckerman, Laura. “Groups sue EPA to protect wild salmon from climate change”. Reuters. February 24 2017: Page (1). mobile.reuters.com. Web. February 25 2017.

Triggering Passages:

“As in the passages of Work that open this chapter, bread does not just signify surrender to the patriarchal diktat; it is an portentous product that signifies, as well, an emergent form of independent female subjectivity, although one still caught up in what readers of Alcott’s other books will recognize as her particular nostalgia for the traditional” (Tompkins 133).

News Media Context:

The enduring portrait of Myspace Tom, the Mona Lisa of profile pictures

Picture Myspace founder Tom Anderson in your head. What do you see? A man, 20-something, with short hair, looking over the shoulder of his white T-shirt. And his face, well, his face is slightly pixelated.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/17/14647596/tom-from-myspace-profile-picture-twitter-instagram

 

Discussion:

Once again Tompkins is right on the mark by using the image of bread as a tool for oppression. Women have been confined to the kitchen for centuries, forced to follow the husband’s commands. But the black woman has been chained to the white kitchen, which is a more oppressive form of bread making than the white mother and wife. For me I try and visualize this passage in connection with the use of salmon to enslave the Native Community’s, and force them into assimilation. As the salmon have been overtly exploited almost into extinction, they have been forced to assimilate in to the Patriarchy society of white settlers, a lot like African slaves, and all women.

This article relates directly to Tompkins article, as the image of a white man is still popular and circulated though the Internet. This image reinforces the concept of male dominance in society though deep roots of Patriarchy.

Works Citied 

Plaugic, Lizzie. “The enduring portrait of Myspace Tom, the Mona Lisa of profile pictures”. The Verge. February 17 2017: Page (1). www.theverge.com. Web. February 20 2017.

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

Triggering Passages:

“Meanwhile , ‘frozen eggs’ took the concept of egg preservation one step further. Frozen eggs started life as storage eggs, which then were sold to ‘egg-breaking’ companies”(Newman 68).

“Sugar and molasses were thus inextricably linked to the slave trade, both in colonial British North America and in the early republic…Sugar, then, seems to have been linked to the slave body securely enough that Hawthorne could casually turn a popular image of blackness in popular culture into a sweet” (Tompkins 97).

News Media Context:

Where the Salmon is From

 The man behind the counter put it on the scale, and I asked him: “Where is this fish from? He looked over, pointed behind him and said, “the aquarium”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/nyregion/metropolitan-diary-where-the-salmon-is-from.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSalmon&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Discussion:

The passage speaking to the process of freezing eggs, cracking, and then selling to shops that have use for it triggered me because of its connection to Salmon. In the fisheries industry there is always a long process of keeping the meat fresh for as long as possible: smoking, salting, canning, and freezing. In this way fisher people can receive the best price for their catch as possible a lot like the butter and egg men.

The same way black bodies have been sweetened by the comparison to sugar; Native American bodies have been tied directly to the salmon, either by their culture itself or by the exploration of salmon and native culture in conjecture. The market of salmon, and health of stocks are directly linked to the health of Native Nations.

For me this article ties both of these concepts together though the idea of where does our food come from? Selling, tracking, and commodifying food is a long process that starts at the source. If the source is being exploited than the all parts of the market it is connected to is most likely being exploited.

 

 

Glickmen, Suzanne. “Where the Salmon is From”. The New York Times. December 1 2016: Page (1). www.nytimes.com. Web. February 20 2017.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

Triggering Passages:

“…mother’s departure from the bland diet that republican reformers took such pride in to the conspicuous consumption of excitants and rich and savory food…making clear the relationship between female domestic pride and skill, the eroticized diet, the young woman’s licentiousness, and the decadence of an era that has overturned the primitive and healthy diet for the modern saturnalia of foods” (Tompkins 2012, 80).

“raw sugar prices surged to a record 60 cents a pound, a nearly fivefold increase in a span of less than ten months. Consumers started to resist, cutting back on purchases of sugar and sugar-laden products. And then something called high-fructose corn syrup entered the fray” (Newman 2013, 39).

News Media Context:

Humans Almost Drove These 6 Animals to Extinction. But We Saved Them Instead.

In recent years, humans have managed to pull a weird parrot, a tiny fox, a rare tiger, an ancient tortoise, a threatened gorilla and a rather handsome mountain goat, among other creatures, from the jaws of extinction.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/animals-saved-from-extinction_us_58807961e4b02c1837e9cf7f

 

Discussion:

In this passage, and the story of the young lady who cannot seem to quit touching herself, Graham correlates the extravagant undisciplined lifestyle of the family to the incessant need to masturbate by the young woman. The male figure is seemingly left out of this unfortunate telling, and in fact of all the blame is shouldered by the mother and female child. Tompkins mentioned that this is directly linked to the shifting responsibilities of the household to the woman, as the woman is given more duties such as buying the food, she is expected to be frivolous in her spending. In this manner the husband must step in and teach or control spending, thereby controlling the families habits as well.

We can see in the absence of one commodity, there will always be one that is cheaper and more easily made. This substitute product is usually highly manipulated and usually less healthy than its counterpart. High fructose corn syrup could be considered the evil twin of natural sugar, but it can be easily controlled in commodity markets therefore is much more viable substitute than the more volatile market of sugar production.

In my individual project, of looking into the commodification of salmon, I have found that the anthropogenic forces on the earth are devastating the other species we co-habitat with. It is exciting to see that humans can reverse our own wrong doing, but we are only protecting those animals and those species that have zero utility to human economic livelihoods.

Works Citied

Mosbergen, Dominique. “Humans Almost Drove These 6 Animal to Extinction. But We Saved Them Instead”. Huffingtonpost. January 26 2017: Page (1). www.huffingtonpost.com. Web. January 29 2017.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19^th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print