On My Mind: Grains, Progress, Food Riots, Food Fixes, and More
The Texas Mexico Border. The McAllen Ranch in mid 19th century. (From their site).
Grains and Civilization: Good or Bad?
A great step forward or not? The agricultural revolution that many of us grew up learning about is being reconsidered.
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest Civilizations by famed political scientist, James C. Scott of Yale University is basically agin’ it.
George Gale really likes Scott’s book and says so in his recent review of Against the Grain for Metascience. George does a great job of outlining the entangled history of the agricultural “revolution,” civilization, and progress and of explaining Scott’s skepticism about that progress.
I, on the other hand, still find a or various progress narratives just fine. Perhaps not the grand “sure from the first step” progress narrative that was already criticized in the Enlightenment. Smaller, halting, narratives that include backward steps and losses, yes.
So I have troubles with Scott’s critique:
partly because I spent years writing about world history so that Scott’s critique seems a bit stale;
partly because I think he underestimates the advantages of the grain;
partly because I think he oversells the joys of hunting, gathering, and nomadism;
and partly because I think that states from the start were constrained by their promise to guarantee provisions.
I wrote all this up for the Breakthrough Journal in With the Grain: Against the New Paleo Politics. Scott’s is one more voice in a chorus of condemnations of grains in particular and carbohydrates in general.
Even though grains are not for all, without the grains there is little hope of feeding a growing population.
Food Riots in Early Nineteenth Century West Africa
Technological Fixes and More
What’s Life Like on the Texas-Mexico Border?
Speaking Truth to Food Writing
Delighted that Mae’s Food Blog is popping up in my Feedly once again. Food writing–in novels, cookbooks, the media, and elsewhere–is so often off in some never never land. Mae has no hesitation in calling out authors.
“Rhys Bowen’s book The Tuscan Child was highly recommended by at least a couple of food bloggers, who particularly enjoyed the detailed accounts of fabulous Italian meals.”
Mae dissects the white asparagus, the mushroom risotto, the aubergine parmesan, the panna cotta and the limoncello supposedly served by a peasant woman in a Tuscan village in 1973.
She concludes that “the author used modern sources about Italian food, not historic ones” and the descriptions of the meals depended on “now-popular food jargon and . . . cliches about . . . Italian cuisine.”
Using Social Media to Record a Conference
Thanks so much for mentioning my blog! I’m really flattered and delighted.
Best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
Rachel, here’s an interesting sidetone: As it happens I’ve been reading a bit about the history of beer which, in many parts of the ancient world (e.g. Sumeria, as you know) precedes wine as the alcohol of choice. One writer suggests that grain was domesticated precisely for the production of beer. Or at least that beer provided a persuasive reason for growing as much grain as possible. Your thoughts?
A quick answer, Nancy, is that I think it’s not an either/or question but an and/and/and question. One of the many great advantages of the grains was that they could be toasted, popped, ground, sprouted, malted, fermented to make a whole host of different products. More soon.
I just read My European Family by Karin Bojs. Although it mostly deals with genetics and genealogy, there are many rational thoughts on cereals and agriculture. She thinks that hunting and gathering was healthy while the ice receded and humans were few and far between but agriculture helped to sustain larger populations. And she totally blasts the paleo myth.
(Estonia has its own paleo star, a young male Oprah with a haircut like an enormous turd and known for the quote ‘that is what we ate in dinosaur time’ as well as his painful remarks at our local equivalent of the Proms. A poster face for Paleo Makes You Stupid.)
What’s the name of the new paleo star?
You won’t know him, Marko Reikop is Estonian. But he sure is dumber than a dinosaur, and he hosts the daily newstainment show on our national TV, and comments on any music events from Eurovision to Young Classics Interpreters. ‘Is playing the cello awkward for a woman,’ from an interview with a brilliant female cellist, ‘because you have to sit with your legs apart, or is it sexy?’ Straight on air, too. The lady smiled and answered, ‘Good music is sexy, yes.’
Love your comments on Estonian life past and present.
Your “With the Grain” article is confirming all my happily-held biases. I have been cooking my way through Ken Forkish’s Flour Water Salt Yeast and tremendously enjoying this summer of amazing bread and pizza. Looking forward to my daughter’s 2nd birthday, I’m dreading having to conjure up gluten-free alternatives to birthday cake. I don’t know why I let it bug me so much. I’m convinced that people just want to feel guilty about something. Probably some kind of Judeo-Christian head complex…I don’t know, being neither a historian nor a psychologist. The topic of collective guilting is somewhat discussed on this podcast http://www.econtalk.org/jonah-goldberg-on-the-suicide-of-the-west/, which I enjoyed. I tried reading Goldberg’s book and didn’t enjoy it as much as the discussion with Russ Roberts. You may be interested to check it out.
Well, you biases about grains are part of most of the great world traditions!
Toddlers do not care about cakes. Just find a lot of healthy finger food, arrange it into something resembling an animal, a cartoon character, a house, or a car, stick two candles into it and the kids will have a party to remember.
Gluten free cakes taste like sawdust mixed with powdered sugar. If deluded grandparents insist on a cake you can serve them any kind of sawdust.
Although my three daughters are all over 21, they still remember the kitties, pandas, sharks, and Spidermen they had for birthdays. Although I am no artist and the panda, at least, was meant to be a ladybug except I ran out of tomatoes . . .