Nothing New

Blanchette, Alex

doi:10.1002/nad.12083

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It was directed towards devising temporary measures to keep this biological experiment afloat (see Blanchette, 2020). At a moment when agri-food corporations project themselves as smoothly occupying and stitching together the entire planet, it is time to take more seriously the fragility and even the pathetic nature of how food firms maintain a hold on life (Lien, 2015;Blanchette, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Afterword: Temporary Measures

Blanchette

2022

Beyond Global Food Supply Chains

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The disruptions that wracked food supply chains amid the COVID-19 pandemic were not exceptional circumstances so much as they were events that intensified and clarified the routine norms of a capitalist system of sustenance that operates in a state of permanent emergency. The capitalist food system is one that develops through temporary measures—acts that seek to patch structural weaknesses before they explode in ways that could destabilize the system itself. Looking via the lens of US animal agriculture, this concluding chapter asks if viewing the food system in this way might open up alternative ways of thinking about political agency in times of mundane crisis, highlighting the messy contingencies of capitalism’s own persistent efforts to foreclose the realizations of other, fuller visions of nourishment.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Afterword: Temporary Measures

Blanchette

2022

Beyond Global Food Supply Chains

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Little seems unworthy of saving during our contentious present. In a time when nothing is new (Blanchette 2018) yet everything feels at stake, and when being an accomplice is the barest minimum for protecting what one holds dear (Gomberg‐Muñoz 2018), what do we save?…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reckoning with Saving

Cromer

Hardin

Nyssa

2020

Journal for the Anthropology of North America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Everything seems to need saving. Rarely a day passes without a headline, speech, campaign, or policy to save something precious and at risk, something worthy of protection. Save trees by naming them, Jane Goodall encouraged this year at Davos, an annual gathering of global business and political elites (Pomeroy 2020). The 2020 meeting, typically dominated by talk of economics and high finance, chose "Saving the Planet" as one of its themes. Climate striker Greta Thunberg reminded attendees that "our house is still on fire" and, in speeches delivered around the globe, wonders pointedly why youth should bother "studying for a future that soon will be no more when no one is doing anything whatsoever to save that future" (NPR 2019). Global health initiatives promise to "save lives and money" while some US policymakers lament the "racial savings gap" for black Americans nearing retirement. Saving is having a moment as a key term for our time, so how should we come to terms with it? Saving entered English via the Latin salvare, steadily picking up new meanings and applications over millennia, as an ever-expanding necessity for someone or something "to deliver, rescue…afford salvation,…heal,…preserve,…protect,…salvage" (Oxford English Dictionary 2020). On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, with the words of Dr. King's moving oratory circulating around social media, we were reminded that he found utility in saving, saying it was black Americans who would "save the soul of America." Though these examples show the life-affirming capacities of saving rhetoric, it can also be a preamble to violence. Just weeks after 9/11, President George W. Bush justified the invasion of Afghanistan as no less than "a war to save civilization itself" (CNN 2001). Nearly two decades later, the current US president described the extrajudicial killing of Iranian General Suleimani as a "bold and decisive action to save American lives and deliver American justice."

show abstract

Nothing New

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Afterword: Temporary Measures

Afterword: Temporary Measures

Reckoning with Saving

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About