{"id":636,"date":"2018-04-15T04:48:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-15T04:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/?p=636"},"modified":"2018-04-15T04:48:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T04:48:07","slug":"buying-green-a-conscience-cleanser-for-the-western-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/2018\/04\/15\/buying-green-a-conscience-cleanser-for-the-western-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"“Buying Green”; a conscience cleanser for the Western Elite?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second and third part of Micheal Pollen\u2019s book In Defence of Food, <\/em>he prescribes his audience to eat pre-industrially; to forage, hunt and cook meals ourselves so that we are in full conscious of what we are eating. However, this prescription merely reinforces the \u2018individualisation of responsibility\u2019 and exacerbates the ecological problems which manifest from it. Individualisation refers to the mentality that any person should be able to do as they wish as long as no harm is brought to others. This mode of thinking inherent in green consumerism is limited in-so-far as it fails to consider the potential long-term harms.<\/p>\n

Put simply, it is not an affordable reality for most people to buy \u2018green\u2019. Pollen\u2019s recommendation does not inspire the collective citizen action which restructuring the world food system would require. The green consumerism Pollen espouses of, merely shifts the market towards green products instead of incentivising reductions in individual consumerist behaviour. Green consumerism tells us that we are consuming the \u2018wrong\u2019 products, but not that our level of consumption is exploitative. By going shopping and purchasing green alternatives, the wealthy indulge themselves in false sense of satisfaction that they are \u2018doing their part\u2019 for the environment. Given green consumerism is a luxury option, it merely functions to cleanse the conscious of the rich whilst demonising the poor for purchasing cheaper \u2018unethical’ food products. Rather than idolising green consumerism and stupefying fat people in the process, we need to cultivate a collective sense of responsibility which will empower citizens to challenge the very system which make healthy food exorbitant to start with. By championing his ability overcome \u2018King Corn\u2019 and sustain a \u2018perfect\u2019 organic diet, Pollen undermines the agency of overweight and obese America whom he portrays to \u2018consume uncritically\u2019. By reducing \u2018fat\u2019 and \u2018poor\u2019 Americans to mere subjects of the industrial food system, Pollen politically disempowers the population groups it effects most.<\/p>\n

Given green consumerism involves the same institutions producing different products, buying green will not restructure the institutions themselves. As aforementioned, this would necessitate collective political action. Apolitical in its orientation, the \u2018consumer-choice\u2019 based approach currently embraced by Western elite is thus unlikely to be successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the second and third part of Micheal Pollen\u2019s book In Defence of Food, he prescribes his audience to eat pre-industrially; to forage, hunt and cook meals ourselves so that we are in full conscious of what we are eating. However, this prescription merely reinforces the \u2018individualisation of responsibility\u2019 and exacerbates the ecological problems which manifest from it. Individualisation refers… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","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\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385s18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}