Final exam terms

Question 1

ethnic revival

Answer 1

a period in the 1970s when many Americans sought to reclaim a distinct ethnic heritage as a response to the hegemonic process

Question 2

neo-ethnicity

Answer 2

a consciously reinvigorated cultural heritage that had been previously lost

Question 3

corporatization of ethnic food

Answer 3

a process in which products and practices that exited outside the mainstream increasingly become produced and promoted by large corporations

Question 4

status symbol

Answer 4

an object that represents one’s social status, most often used to refer to social class status

Question 5

Foodways

Answer 5

the patterns that establish “what we eat, as well as how and why and under what circumstances we eat”

Question 6

food system

Answer 6

the set of vast, interlinked institutions and processes that transform sunlight, water, and soil into meaning laden foods

Question 7

Health halo

Answer 7

when the focus on healthy ingredients influences consumers to regard an entire product containing those ingredients as healthy

Question 8

medicalization of obesity

Answer 8

the dominant view that defines overweight and obesity as medical issues and high rates of overweight and obesity in a population as a health crisis; this model promotes individual weight loss as the appropriate solution

Question 9

obesogenic environment

Answer 9

settings such as families, neighborhoods, and schools that encourage overconsumption of foods believed to contribute to overweight and obesity

Question 10

upstream approaches to diet and health

Answer 10

an approach that focuses on the social and structural context that shapes the food and lifestyle available to different social groups

Question 11

downstream approaches to diet and health

Answer 11

an approach, such as the medical model of obesity, that focuses on the behavior of individuals

Question 12

consumer sovereignty

Answer 12

the revered idea in the capitalist culture that consumers should make their own free consumption choices based on their own unique tastes and wants, favoring the best and cheapest among competing selections

Question 13

brand

Answer 13

a commercially developed symbol

Question 14

food icons

Answer 14

a brand or food item that constitutes an especially powerful symbol of group identity

Question 15

technology treadmill

Answer 15

a process in which falling unit prices force farmers to adopt costly new technologies to garner higher yields to replace lost income; however, the technology also creates an over-supply of products that pushes prices down even further

Question 16

productivism

Answer 16

the relentless effort to increase output with the assumption that greater output is inherently positive

Question 17

commodification

Answer 17

the process of shaping products to be interchangeable mass-produced goods that take their value from the prices they fetch on the market

Question 18

biotechnology

Answer 18

A form of technology that uses living organisms, usually genes, to modify products, to make or modify plants and animals, or to develop other microorganisms for specific purposes.

Question 19

nutrient pollution

Answer 19

when excessive nitrogen and phosphorus enter bodies of water, prompting the overgrowth of algae and aquatic plants

Question 20

Substitutionism

Answer 20

the corporate practice of designing food value chains that enable flexibility in sourcing primary products; for example, being easily able to substitute beet sugar for cane sugar, or cocoa from Ghana for cocoa from Brazil

Question 21

Appropriationism

Answer 21

the corporate practice of selling inputs (such as seeds) to farmers that were previously produced on the farm itself; enables corporations to avoid the risks of farming

Question 22

international division of labor

Answer 22

the pattern, established under colonialism, in which countries of the global South produce primary products and countries of the global North produce manufactured goods

Question 23

Global South

Answer 23

the set of low income countries in Africa, the Americas, and Asia; most were formally European colonies; the term as largely replaced the “third world”

Question 24

development project

Answer 24

the global effort to modernize the societies and economies of the South

Question 25

free trade vs fair trade

Answer 25

Free trade operates within the traditional market economy, with little concern for the welfare of producers and workers. Fair trade operates outside of the traditional market and seeks to ensure fair wages and better working conditions for producers

Question 26

Food insecurity

Answer 26

limited access or lack of access to a nutritionally sound and culturally appropriate diet from reliable mainstream sources

Question 27

food deserts

Answer 27

communities that lack full-line supermarkets, forcing typically low-income residents to make do with fast-food restaurants and convenience stores or travel long distances to access a supermarket

Question 28

scarcity fallacy

Answer 28

the false assumption that hunger is caused by insufficient food production

Question 29

food activism

Answer 29

food activism is about making empowered choices around food, in the widest sense

Question 30

social movements

Answer 30

an organized collection of people working to change key features of society and culture by challenging of defending existing social structures

Question 31

food democracy

Answer 31

the idea that people can and should be actively participating in shaping the food system, rather than remaining passive spectators on the sidelines

Question 32

food sovereignty

Answer 32

the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

Question 33

embeddedness

Answer 33

the notion that all economic activity both draws on and impacts the broader society and its relationship with nature

Question 34

organics

Answer 34

produced or involving production without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents

Question 35

geographic indication

Answer 35

a form of placed-based labeling and intellectual property; only qualifying producers in a defined geographic region can use particular protected labels