{"id":391,"date":"2018-04-14T22:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T22:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=391"},"modified":"2018-04-14T22:04:25","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T22:04:25","slug":"michael-pollan-wants-us-to-hide-from-our-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/04\/14\/michael-pollan-wants-us-to-hide-from-our-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Pollan Wants Us To Hide From Our Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sociology professor Andrew Szasz came up with the term \u201cinverted quarantine\u201d to describe people who seek to isolate themselves from exterior ecological threats by way of individualizing environmental responsibility. Similarly, according to Michael Maniates, Americans think that the environment can be spared as a result of smart consumer action done by individuals. Such an idea is also the main focus of Michael Pollan\u2019s <\/span>In Defense of Food<\/span>. At the end of his novel criticizing industrialized food, Pollan\u2019s answer to readers about how to eat more healthily and sustainably largely entails individual actions and solutions. He urges cooking at home and avoiding processed foods, but does not recommend any form of political participation or any desire for regulation. But will a bunch of people eating organic kale save us from rising sea levels and global warming? Not likely.<\/span><\/p>\n

This principle of the individualization of responsibility that Pollan advocates for is dangerous because, as Maniates points out, Americans are experiencing less willingness to participate in collective political action as a result. Shopping is more accessible than political participation so we choose buying \u201cgreen\u201d products as our preferred form of dissent to let the government know that we care about protecting the planet. While changing policy measures is viewed as \u201cidealistic,\u201d consumption is easy and is something we are good at. But easier does not always mean better. <\/span><\/p>\n

Experts agree that this is merely a trap that is keeping us from reaching real progress which could only be achieved through political action. Individuals can try to change the system, but they will not succeed until they become a collective, and until their voices become too strong to be overlooked. At this point individuals are easy to ignore so, Maniates argues, we need to vocalize and assemble in favor of the action we want to see, rather than quietly funnel money into companies we think will do the work for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael Pollan\u2019s suggestions are ones that perfectly illustrate the principles of inverted quarantine. But quarantine will not solve a problem. It merely traps it and allows it to fester.<\/span>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sociology professor Andrew Szasz came up with the term \u201cinverted quarantine\u201d to describe people who seek to isolate themselves from exterior ecological threats by way of individualizing environmental responsibility. Similarly, according to Michael Maniates, Americans think that the environment can be spared as a result of smart consumer action done by individuals. Such an idea is also the main focus… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,12,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change","category-industrialized-food","category-movements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","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\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}