{"id":1430,"date":"2018-05-07T21:22:40","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T21:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=1430"},"modified":"2018-05-07T21:28:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T21:28:55","slug":"coc-oa-no-how-the-food-system-exploits-some-and-benefits-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/05\/07\/coc-oa-no-how-the-food-system-exploits-some-and-benefits-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Coc-oa No: How the Food System Exploits Some, and Benefits Others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blog Post 2: Contemplative Practice<\/p>\n

Contemplative practices have been integral part of the learning experience for Political Ecology of the World Food System. Making students engage in these practices has proven to be a unique teaching style, and in a course that is so ecologically integrative, these techniques have allowed the cohort to both understand the system better, and to attempt to place themselves within it.<\/p>\n

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Particularly, the contemplative practice using chocolate and cocoa seemed to have a profound impact on the students, and myself. We were asked to first eat and savour the cocoa (chocolate in its rawest form), making note of the complexities of taste and texture, its bitterness and crunchiness. Then, we tasted the chocolate, focusing particularly on its sweetness in contrast to the cocoa.<\/p>\n

The practice gave better understanding to a topic explored broadly throughout the course: how some individuals benefit from the global food system, and how some are disenfranchised by it. For me, really experiencing the transition from cocoa to chocolate gave me a clearer perspective of the process that food production undergoes, and the ramifications that it may have.<\/p>\n

Specifically, this practice drew my attention to how some people benefit from the labour of others\u2019 within the world food system. Relating this to the week 7 reading, Nation Built on Slavery<\/em> (Yes! Magazine), the cocoa reminded me of how Western industrialised societies so often benefit of the back of poor labourers, just how exploited workers launched the modern capitalist American society (p. 26), and how food industries today continue to disenfranchise minority groups economically and culturally (Raj Patel, p. 3).<\/p>\n

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It also brought my attention more towards the food chain, specifically \u2018free trade\u2019, and made me question whether trade in a global economic-political context could ever be \u2018free\u2019 (Carolan, p. 53).<\/p>\n

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Blog Post 2: Contemplative Practice Contemplative practices have been integral part of the learning experience for Political Ecology of the World Food System. Making students engage in these practices has proven to be a unique teaching style, and in a course that is so ecologically integrative, these techniques have allowed the cohort to both understand the system better, and to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}