And then after class said that she would like to teach another one where the question is "should we even have a livestock industry at all?". I told her that I'd love to teach one where I just make the students repeatedly read The Jungle and Grapes of Wrath until they start burning shit down and she replied that it already seems like we're heading that way.

wholesome My only good professor.

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[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Agroecology people have always, without fail, been the coolest people in food studies events or conferences. Something about working with the land rather than forcing it to give food just soft radicalizes you.

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm going the ecology route because it's just getting paid to be a Marxist. Nature is the proof of dialectics and the most interdisciplinary field I could find in urban ecology is the most intersectional political project at the root of eco-Marxism. Agroecology consulting is one career track I considered because it's turning dialectical materialism into a fun little puzzle with tractors.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I couldn't hack the biology of it all, so I went the social sciences/humanities route, and now I'm looking to go to grad school for Food and Rural social Geographies.

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 2 points 9 hours ago

The hard science classes were so difficult for me, only proving that I'm not a biologist/chemist/physicist/programmer/mathematician. My only scientific skillset is what made me good with medicine or the humanities. I can apply a bunch of analytical angles to a messy subject that I understand contextually and spot the contradictions as part of dynamic processes. Geography seems like it'd be such an amazing field for that. David Harvey's work was huge for me refining those skills.

[–] Inui@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How much of that field is just working with uncaring wealthy livestock farmers? I ask because I have a friend who went into Environmental Science and struggled to find work that wasn't just appeasing those people.

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

That's what kept me from going into it. The separation of town and country is important to me from either side of it, but rural communities here are extremely reactionary and the businesses are mostly wealthy landowners. I don't want them to stay in business and I want their land to be public, so sustaining what exists just feels like repainting hell. In urban ecology what I want just makes the city more pleasant to live in and my customer base is every taxpayer. It's a lot easier to feel good about most of my work and advocate against the greenspace I don't like.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago (4 children)

the jungle is extremely shitty agitprop.

iirc updog sinclair himself said something about aiming for the heart and hitting the stomach

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago

Sinclair:

Conditions were so brutal that workers fingers were routinely severed by the machinery

WASPs:

Oh dear me! Having to eat human flesh unintentionally!? ACTIVATE THE STATE TO PROTECT BORGER

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I like it as a graphic social history that centres on otherwise invisible workers. We were discussing the JBS slaughterhouse strike where almost nothing has changed except for the nationalities of the workers. Across all of my agriculture classes, the labour conditions only ever got a passing mention without ever being connected to that larger primary contradiction. They never draw the links between commodification, industrialisation and market consolidation, and the externalities of production as one unified feedback loop resulting in those students becoming the most wretched of commodities. The Jungle really explicitly links everything together and shows it in prose as horrifying as a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

Grapes of Wrath didn't make a dent in public consciousness either, but it's a socioecological history linking dysfunctional food systems to graphic human suffering. If the eponymous quote doesn't enrage someone they're ontologically stupid. One of my course plans is just using that quote as a foundation for a critical geography study of one of our regional commodities, tracking all of the alienation involved in its production and consumption/waste. Learning the cost of a 10 cent banana should make someone a communist.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

grapes has a few banger passages but overall i found it incredibly tedious, even at a time in my life when i was a voracious reader of nonfiction. considering how even more addled everyone's brains are these days i'd expect you'd have more success assigning the excerpts rather than the whole text.

[–] happybadger@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

That's what it would be. The Okie dialect alone is a hard thing to read through and I assume everyone is going to be cheating with AI summaries now. I'd want to highlight the broad themes of land use, population displacement, commodification, and the demographic dimensions to apply them as the leading question in a discussion elective where the only real grade is participation/a brief presentation.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 9 points 1 day ago

And littered with unquestioned racist stereotyping of all kinds of people

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

"people completely missed the point of this anticapitalist story" was the seed that eventually turned me to communism tbf

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i mostly couldn't stand to read his awful prose. he failed as an author prior to the jungle, probably on the merits, and whatever writing award he won was many years later.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

He was no John Steinbeck, that is for sure. I always point people towards Cannery Row for Great Depression story telling personally, though it can be abit nostalgic at times.

[–] ChaosMaterialist@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

The students can have a little fire, as a treat. lenin-cat

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

Somewhat off topic: Have you noticed the flood of publicity around animal rights that started when the Effective Altruism movement has made it a cause celebre? LinkedIn has become a strange place as a result but maybe it'll result in some positive movement.

[–] JustSo@hexbear.net 1 points 22 hours ago

waow-based