From abnormal to normal: hoping agricultural production returns to normal soon

On September 24, when a headline appeared in the media saying "Radioactive seafood may show up on the table," I was glad to see that the control yuan members took the initiative to propose an investigation. After several weeks, however, the radiation food crisis caused by the Fukushima nuclear disaster seems to have fallen back into a spiral of silence. It is only natural that humans must eat in order to survive, but the abnormal "additives," "radioactive food," and "pesticide and nitrate residues" created by technology leave people either terrified or completely numb.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred, my Japanese friend Emiko wrote to tell me she was getting married. She had once been someone who did not want to marry, so her sudden announcement of a May wedding had a touch of the "fall of a city" feeling from Eileen Chang. I booked and issued my plane ticket, my friend offered lodging, and I looked forward to visiting Emiko's grandparents in Japan, whom I knew best. However, because of the Fukushima radiation leak problem, in the end I still did not go to Tokyo.

Then, because I became pregnant, although a Japanese university invited me to attend a seminar and offered lodging and a plane ticket, I still did not go, because I had once done research on the history of comfort women, and I could not fully agree with Japan's attitude toward political and business accountability. In addition, I had to take care of my child myself, and I worried that bringing my child there would mean eating radioactive food, so I never again set foot on Japanese soil. For a scholar fully trained to do Japanese anthropological research, I was as if placed in Benedict's situation of that earlier era, doing fieldwork outside the borders of Japan.

Whose problem is it, really? Blaming risk entirely on individual choice is the irresponsible logic by which capitalist society evades responsibility. Blaming the problem entirely on poor government management, on the other hand, ignores producer responsibility. Ordinary people live their everyday lives and leave the problem to NGOs, yet Japanese imported products are so diverse that even with more capital and patience, how can NGOs be expected to sample and inspect every single item one by one to screen things for everyone?

This week I saw that RT-Mart set up a food safety testing station at its Zhongli store, where consumers can send freshly purchased vegetables for testing on the spot. This is a creative breakthrough, but the "I love American beef" label on the flyer leaves people at a loss. These businesses have made some progress after all, and perhaps they should be encouraged, but I also feel that they should be a little braver in their moral judgments.

"Ethical consumption" is an important theme in contemporary Western anthropological research, including farmers' markets that support farmers, all of which fall under this term. In the course of my research on food safety, I kept thinking about what new viewpoints and new action plans there should be, so that our food culture can "return to normal." By examining and reflecting on those social conventions and institutional loopholes that have surfaced as "abnormal," we can rediscover an essence of life that carries social concern.

Foodway is a mirror of the social system, meaning the human cognition, behavior, and material creations related to food production and consumption. It brings to the surface the various risks and present perspectives of the social spectacle that is gradually becoming more and more dramatic in everyday life. Another angle of returning to normal is the hope that food safety can become the long-lasting norm, and that environmental sustainability can be incorporated into the considerations. I got inspiration from the "Return to Normal" Asian Biennial planned by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. In class, the students expressed that they very much looked forward to seeing this Asian Biennial. I asked the students to think about how to design a set of board games for food and agriculture education.

The well-known international law expert and legal anthropologist Sally Falk Moore held that law is a social process, and that historical context must be considered in order to examine law's role in society, as well as how cultural, social, and economic conditions, among others, have influenced a new generation of jurists, sociologists, and anthropologists. From the perspective of political-economic history, the marketing rhetoric of globalized capitalism after World War II has brought us diverse commodity choices, but it has also narrowed consumers' choices for food safety, as well as their alienation from food production and from the land and environment.

The food culture crises and risks faced globally and in our country make us rethink what kind of "appropriate technology" we need. A region's technological choices should closely echo that region's cultural, social, and economic conditions, including the region's natural and social resources, human composition, cultural practices, and even political conditions. How should law intervene in the blending of technology - biotechnology, medicine, food, health care, and the chemical industry - whose way of using "aesthetics" and "technology" as marketing discourse has already penetrated deep into Taiwan society? Because of the high threshold of technological expertise, the NCC (National Communications Commission), the Department of Health, and the biotechnology industry (health foods) often end up in tug-of-war over advertisement review, creating difficulties for both professional administration and the general public.

What more creative approaches can we still have? I recently saw that excavation had begun at the site of National Chung Hsing University's Second Student Restaurant, and I remembered that a restaurant I visited in Nantou had designed an archaeological site for children to play in and use as a stage. In fact, I really hope that the design of the Second Student Restaurant can combine green food education (intangible cultural heritage) with the preservation of tangible cultural heritage. That would be the best kind of everyday life education.