Rationale for Sustainability Course
Manjari Chatterji
I began my interest in Food, Culture and Environment about five years ago when we
moved to theme-based composition courses, with optional content. At that time the word
environment conjured up images of unshaven tree –huggers exhorting the unenlightened
to save the spotted owl, or the smelt or some benighted species no one gave a hoot about,
and as such students were skeptical about what they has signed up for. The word food, on
the other hand, suggested a class with a goof –off teacher lightly skimming over topics
such as family holiday celebrations, handed down recipes, and at its most challenging,
some foray into a social issue: the demise of the family dinner, and perchance some
interrogation of the fast food industry. So when I foisted readings of Mary Douglas,
Marshall Sahlins, Claude Levi-Strauss, Marvin Harris, Sidney Mintz and Clifford Geertz
on them (in very small, carefully excerpted doses) and asked them to see food through the
lenses of cultural materialists vs. symbolic anthropologists they had to quickly abandon
all hope of an “easy” semester. I was very impressed with what students can do if you
expect them to.
However, my interest in the cultural aspect of food began to wane as the ecological
imperatives of our times, and the inconvenient truths about global warming became
urgent. Our campus also became invested in ecological literacy and suddenly terms like
ecofootprint and LEED certification, and cob houses and programs such as E2 were
everywhere. It is a testament to American popular culture’s pervasive power that
Farmer’s Markets and aisles of “organic” foods, and Green energy are now well
understood by everyone-well almost. However, there are underlying links between ideas
and actions and policies and our everyday lives which are less understood.
I really wanted to show my students connections(I wish I could do it brilliantly like
James Burke) where none seemed to exist; for example, how can Iowa corn hurt the
Mexican’s diet and trigger “illegals” across our southern border? Enter Michael Pollan’s
book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a work that clarifies much about the politics of food, in
a readable, non-polemical way. I also did not want “sustainablity” to become a trope of
daily life: turning off faucets while brushing teeth, turning off lights and computers,
recycling cans and sorting garbage, or even choosing a healthy diet, which is all very
well, but easily create an illusion of business as usual with a dash of conscientious green
sensibilty. I really wanted to show how unsustainable our lives are in terms of resources
used and waste created. I wanted to show how the third world’s massive population while
certainly straining earth’s carrying capacity, also consumed less, and that our efforts to
become more sustainable must engage us in a global think. I want students to realize that
our convenience culture and predictability of food supply comes at a staggering process
of genetic uniformity, corporate consolidation and loss of biodiversity world wide. I want
students to challenge developmental discourses that repackage exploitation of
“developing” nations under the guise of green business, carbon offsets and export-led
agriculture.
To this end, my class is now less about the “good-to-think” school of food literature, and
more about sustainablity. And it is much less against the flow of student expectation, as
we all now accept the fact that a SUV is not a status symbol and that maybe a Prius or
next year a Volt maybe the way to go. As spectacular chunks of ice keep calving off the
Arctic shelf, and mega weather events keep occuring, even a Gore-hater is willing to
concede something is up.
It is with these aims in mind that I have fashioned a revised syllabus.
 First we will examine why oil is so important: what we depend on it for, how it is
enmeshed in a geopolitics that we must extricate ourselves from, and what
alternatives mean in the short run.
 When we recognize that our corporate food system is thoroughly oil-dependent,
we tackle the sacred cow –meat eating—good or bad for the environment? (This
too is a connection normally opaque to the meat eater).
 Next we ask what impact such corporate agriculture has on American labor, the
third world farmer, and third world labor.
 We read Michael Pollan and consider alternative agriculture/ranching etc.
 How local can we get? What limits are there?
 Why is biodiversity important? What changes in food policy will help conserve
world resources?
 What is sustainable consumption?
In other words, will we have to redefine progress? (a useful website) Will we compete
with the Joneses not with our possessions but by the lack of them? Not with our chemical
green lawns but with our xeriscapes? Not with our spa-like bathrooms but with our
composting toilet? I could go on, but you get the picture.
On the first day of school, I like so many others, ask the students to introduce themselves
and share a little something about what they like to do for fun. So many used to say they
love to shop. Well of course they would in a society where it is presented as a patriotic
duty! Perhaps the recession will bring out the better angels of our nature.