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Our Land of Milk and Honey: Spirituality in the Transformation of Ecological and Heritage Production

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Hart Nadav Feuer at Kyoto University
Hart Nadav Feuer
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Abstract

Many facets of globalisation are contested on ethical or humanitarian grounds but the defence of local food and agriculture often borders on the spiritual. In particular, the decline or homogenisation of local food and agriculture is often acutely felt because it embodies a spiritual violation of cultural identity and sacredness of the land. The essence of this crisis has been newly characterised in Pope Francis’ latest encyclical Laudato si’, which captures the spiritual relevance of agriculture by characterising the human response to contemporary ecological decline and culinary shifts. In trying to understand how we arrived at our present state, sociologists of faith, such as the late Jacques Ellul have long described how technology comes to dominate over nature in processes such as agricultural development. In his argument, by incrementally drawing humans away from nature and into technological spheres (by engineering tractors, producing agri-chemicals, and genetically modifying plants), alienation from nature is amplified and the scope of ecological crisis broadens. This phenomenon is not new; indeed, most religious texts and creation myths caution against this alienation through parables and commandments. In light of the new public attention being drawn to the spiritual dimension of the ecological crisis, this chapter explores content from Judeo-Christian texts and Cambodian myths that specifically speaks to this phenomenon. The valorisation of the land found, for example, in the book of Exodus referencing Israel as the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’, is typical of religious and pseudo-religious narrative that are integrated with political narratives such as nationalism and cultural patrimony. In this chapter, I address how national metanarratives built on these spiritual-historic characterisations play a role in shaping agriculture and food policy and evaluate the spiritual dimension of a few Cambodian initiatives that attempt to moderate the alienation brought about by industrialisation and globalisation.
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Our Land of Milk and Honey: Spirituality in the Transformation
of Ecological and Heritage Production
Hart N. Feuer
Abstract
Many facets of globalisation are contested on ethical or humanitarian grounds but
the defence of local food and agriculture often borders on the spiritual. In
particular, the decline or homogenisation of local food and agriculture is often
acutely felt because it embodies a spiritual violation of cultural identity and
sacredness of the land. The essence of this crisis has been newly characterised in
Pope Francis’ latest encyclical Laudato si’, which captures the spiritual relevance
of agriculture by characterising the human response to contemporary ecological
decline and culinary shifts. In trying to understand how we arrived at our present
state, sociologists of faith, such as the late Jacques Ellul have long described how
technology comes to dominate over nature in processes such as agricultural
development. In his argument, by incrementally drawing humans away from nature
and into technological spheres (by engineering tractors, producing agri-chemicals,
and genetically modifying plants), alienation from nature is amplified and the
scope of ecological crisis broadens. This phenomenon is not new; indeed, most
religious texts and creation myths caution against this alienation through parables
and commandments. In light of the new public attention being drawn to the
spiritual dimension of the ecological crisis, this chapter explores content from
Judeo-Christian texts and Cambodian myths that specifically speaks to this
phenomenon. The valorisation of the land found, for example, in the book of
Exodus referencing Israel as the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’, is typical of
religious and pseudo-religious narrative that are integrated with political narratives
such as nationalism and cultural patrimony. In this chapter, I address how national
metanarratives built on these spiritual-historic characterisations play a role in
shaping agriculture and food policy and evaluate the spiritual dimension of a few
Cambodian initiatives that attempt to moderate the alienation brought about by
industrialisation and globalisation.
Key Words: Heritage, national cuisine, spirituality, Pope Francis, globalisation,
agriculture, laudato si’.
*****
1. Introduction
As a multifaceted phenomenon, globalisation is often contested along
numerous practical, ethical and humanitarian grounds; on the issue of food and
agriculture, however, the arguments often border on the spiritual. While the various
direct responses have ranged from the erection of trade barriers and the
... As the physical landscape changes to accommodate settlers and their market crops (Figures 3 and 4), it brings with it numerous changes to the symbolic landscape for local people. Notable among these are individual and community relationships with lok ta and arak, which are powerful non-human agents, "guardians of the territory" (Work, 2019, p. 75), that mediate local access to natural resources, adjudicate social relationships, and engender a different kind of gastropolitics in which food is both physically and morally connected to the cosmos (Feuer, 2016; see also, Appaduari's discussion of Hindu conceptions of food, 1981, p. 496). Feuer argues that the homogenization of food culture can emerge as an "existential threat" to the "uniqueness of cultural identity and the sacredness of the land" (p. ...
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At the resource frontier of Prey Lang Forest in Cambodia, a new food regime marks multiple rifts in the social fabric. As the forest gives way to rural road development, migrant incursions, and cash cropping, long-term residents lament the paucity of available food. At the same time, new migrants suggest that there is now more food than ever. Based on how food is defined, we find one food, motofish, that emerged as a significant semiotic sign. It is a fish, regardless of species, that is farm-raised and carried from the market to the village by motorbike. It is opposed to a real fish that grows by itself in a river or stream. Long-term Kuy and Khmer residents of the forest see the fish as a sign of destruction and loss, because there are so few fish in the rivers and streams. New migrants see motofish as part of a new abundance coming to this remote corner of the world where there used to be no food. 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