Toward a Global Organic Culture: Ethnographic Perspectives on Wwoofing Practices in Peru and New Zealand

In this thesis, I explore the meaning behind sustainable living among organic farmers and their families in two countries. It is based on original, ethnographic research that I conducted in New Zealand in fall 2012 and Peru in summer 2012 with support from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology Meerwarth Undergraduate Research Fund. In carrying out my research I relied on participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Drawing on contemporary scholarship in the anthropology of food and the environment, my thesis contributes to cross-culturally understandings of sustainability and local and global foodways. Specifically, I will interpret the meaning and significance of my informants’ decision to live sustainably through their participation in wwoofing. The global network of wwoofing aims to connect volunteers interested in learning about organic farming techniques with farmers looking for labor assistance. Volunteers exchange work for food, accommodation, knowledge, and experience. As a method of farming and a subjective ideological orientation, this global movement allows travelers from all over the world to experience organic lifestyles worldwide. In my thesis, I connect my experiences of organic living in Peru and New Zealand. In comparing wwoofing practices in these two field sites, I argue that despite observable differences in organic practices, a global organic culture is emerging. Here I highlight some shared features of this global organic culture, such as food authenticity, sustainability of the earth, and a personal connection of individuals to the land. The global organic culture emphasizes a conscious awareness of what is going into one’s body and why. Using food as an expression of values and beliefs, organic farmers reconnect to the land and their food in attempts to construct an alternative identity. By focusing on food authenticity, my informants develop vast relationships with the land, which shapes their identity and creates new forms of self-enhancement.

Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany / Bacchus und die bürgerliche Ordnung. Die Kultur des Trinkens im frühneuzeitlichen Augsburg

Lining the streets inside the city's gates, clustered in its center, and thinly scattered among its back quarters were Augsburg's taverns and drinking rooms. These institutions ranged from the poorly lit rooms of backstreet wine sellers to the elaborate marble halls frequented by society's most privileged members. Urban drinking rooms provided more than food, drink, and lodging for their guests. They also conferred upon their visitors a sense of social identity commensurate with their status. Like all German cities, Augsburg during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a history shaped by the political events attending the Reformation, the post-Reformation, and the Thirty Years' War; its social and political character was also reflected and supported by its public and private drinking rooms. In Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany, Ann Tlusty examines the social and cultural functions served by drinking and tavern life in Germany between 1500 and 1700, and challenges existing theories about urban identity, sociability, and power. Through her reconstruction of the social history of Augsburg, from beggars to council members, Tlusty also sheds light on such diverse topics as social ritual, gender and household relations, medical practice, and the concerns of civic leaders with public health and poverty. Drunkenness, dueling, and other forms of tavern comportment that may appear "disorderly" to us today turn out to be the inevitable, even desirable result of a society functioning according to its own rules.