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In this original and provocative study, Zsuzsa Gille examines three scandals that have shaken Hungary since it joined the European Union: the 2004 ban on paprika due to contamination, the 2008 boycott of Hungarian foie gras by Austrian animal rights activists, and the "red mud" spill of 2010, Hungary's worst environmental disaster. In each case, Gille analyzes how practices of production and consumption were affected by the proliferation of new standards and regulations that came with entry into the EU. She identifies a new modality of power—the materialization of politics, or achieving political goals with the seemingly apolitical tools of tinkering with technology and infrastructure—and elucidates a new approach to understanding globalization, materiality, and transnational politics.
In recent decades, the governance of the environment in agri-food systems has emerged as a crucial challenge. A multiplicity of actors have been enrolled in this process, with the private sector and civil society progressively becoming key components in a global context often described as neoliberalization. Agri-environmental governance (AEG) thus gathers a highly complex assemblage of actors and instruments, with multiple interrelations. This book addresses this complexity, challenging traditional modes of research and explanation in social science and agri-food studies. To do so, it draws on multiple theoretical and methodological insights, applied to case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It elaborates an emergent approach to AEG practices as assemblages, looking at the coming-together of multiple actors with diverse trajectories and objectives. The book lays the foundations for an encompassing theoretical framework that transcends pre-existing categories, as well as promoting innovative methodologies, which integrate the role of social actors – including scientists – in the construction of new assemblages. The chapters define, first, the multiplicities and agencies inherent to AEG assemblages. A second set tackles the question of the politics in AEG assemblages, where political hierarchies interweave with economic power and the search for more democratic and participative approaches. Finally, these insights are developed in the form of assemblage practice and methodology. The book challenges social scientists to confront the shortcomings of existing approaches and consider alternative answers to questions about environmental governance of agri-food systems.
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.
Communism in Eastern Europe is a ground-breaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies and the legacies that persisted after their fall. Written from the perspective of the 21st century, this book shows how Eastern Europe’s trajectory since 1989 fits into the longer history of its Communist past. Rather than focusing on high politics, Communism in Eastern Europe concentrates on the politics of daily life, melding political history with social, cultural and gender history. It tells the history of this complicated era through the voices and experiences of ordinary people. By focusing on the complex interactions of everyday life, Communism in Eastern Europe illuminates the world Communism made in Eastern Europe, its politics and culture, values and dreams, successes and failures. This book is an engaging introduction to the history of Communist Eastern Europe for any reader. It is ideal for adoption in a wide array of undergraduate and graduate courses in 20th century European history.
What can a focus on “food projects” in Europe tell us about contemporary social processes and cultural debates? Valeria Siniscalchi and Krista Harper show how food becomes a marker of identity and resistance to social exclusion, and how food values become tools for transforming power dynamics at the local level and beyond. Through the comparison of food-centered movements across Europe, the book explains how these forms of mobilization express ideologies as well as economic and political objectives. The chapters use an ethnographic approach to focus on the transformation of values carried by individuals and groups in relation to food in Portugal, Greece, Latvia, Moldova, Denmark, the UK, Italy, and France. Contributors analyze food values, as expressed in daily life and livelihoods, through specific practices of production, exchange, and consumption. Topics covered include Prague's urban agricultural scene, the perception of poverty in Moldova, shepherds' protests in Sardinia, and organic food cooperatives in Catalonia.
In Remains of Socialism, Maya Nadkarni investigates the changing fates of the socialist past in postsocialist Hungary. She introduces the concept of "remains"—both physical objects and cultural remainders—to analyze all that Hungarians sought to leave behind after the end of state socialism. Spanning more than two decades of postsocialist transformation, Remains of Socialism follows Hungary from the optimism of the early years of transition to its recent right-wing turn toward illiberal democracy. Nadkarni analyzes remains that range from exiled statues of Lenin to the socialist-era "Bambi" soda, and from discredited official histories to the scandalous secrets of the communist regime's informers. She deftly demonstrates that these remains were far more than simply the leftovers of an unwanted past. Ultimately, the struggles to define remains of socialism and settle their fates would represent attempts to determine the future—and to mourn futures that never materialized.
Lying on the political fault line between East and West for the past seventy-five years, the significance of Hungary in geopolitical terms has far outweighed the modest size of its population. This book charts the main events of these tumultuous decades including the 1956 Uprising, the end of Hungarian communism, entry into the European Union and the rise to power of Viktor Orbán and the national-conservative ruling party Fidesz.
This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the European Union and the United States, these geopolitically and economically in-between places illustrate ways that international treaties have created contradictory pressures for organic farmers. Organic farmers in both countries build multispecies networks of biological and social diversity and create spaces of sovereignty within state and suprastate governance bodies. Organic associations in Central America and Eastern Europe face parallel challenges in balancing multiple identities as social movements, market sectors, and NGOs while finding their place in regions and nations reshaped by world events.
“First-class, rigorously researched, richly documented, and thought-provoking” essays on the consumer experience in socialist Eastern Europe (Graham H. Roberts, author of Material Culture in Russia and the USSR). As communist regimes denigrated Western countries for widespread unemployment and consumer excess, socialist Eastern European states simultaneously legitimized their power through their apparent ability to satisfy consumers’ needs. Moving beyond binaries of production and consumption, the essays collected here examine the lessons consumption studies can offer about ethnic and national identity and the role of economic expertise in shaping consumer behavior. From Polish VCRs to Ukrainian fashion boutiques, tropical fruits in the GDR to cinemas in Belgrade, The Socialist Good Life explores what consumption means in a worker state where communist ideology emphasizes collective needs over individual pleasures.