Blog Post 4 Shiffrin

            Food holds a significance in everyone’s lives that extends beyond the obvious need for nourishment. It plays a role in the economics of a community, it plays a role is the social construction of a community, and is an indicator of how strong a community in many regards. As more prevalent yet frivolous aspect of our lives are stripped away, such as computers, internet, technology, you are left with more basic day to day requirements that being to play larger roles in developing these relationships between the people around you. This is clearly prevalent in the California Jail system where inmates use spread for many reasons. One of which is to elevate their quality of living. This may not be a conscientious decision to them however their motive in creating these “Spreads” are to make live in the hole a lot more bearable. As a consequence of this creation and entirely new economy has been created within the jail system. Inmates are now able to use spread as a unit of exchange between one another in a simple bartering system. Spread is also now used as a signal of social stature within a jail. And arguably the most important role spread plays in the Jail system is that it creates a community between the inmates within the jail. It allows for one another to relate on more immediate terms that are more directly comparable such as whether or not an inmate prefers a beef spread or a tuna spread. This is not to say that all of these aspects of life would not carry on without spread. It is clear that there were social structures within jails long before spread came around and that social structure is still prevalent. For instance there are still groups based largely around ethnicity and these groups almost add another level of identity with their spread. Inmate Joseph Watkins, better known as chef BamBam described that the Latinos in a jail prefer spicier spreads that more resemble their desired foods on the “outside” and those of African-American descent prefer a spread that does its best to represent jambalaya.

            Another instance of this same scenario where food is a marker of economics is in the northern and southern regions of China. The northern region is more suited for raising cattle which are easier to kill and require less “sneaky thinking” and there is plenty of cattle to go around. This means that the farmers are inclined to be honest due to the fact that they are not concerned about whether or not they are going to eat that day. As opposed to the southern region of China which is primarily based around fishing, which requires more intellect, cunning, and “sneakiness.” This was realated as more similar to capitalism, which requires all of the same qualities. Whereas the cattle farmers of the north were related to socialism which is a system where everyone is provided for and is regarded as a more “honest system” even though it does not yield the same monetary benefits. As the Chinese leaders changed hands the new leader Deng Xiaoping “proclaimed that the goal of socialism was to provide every Chinese person with a basic standard of living (xiaokang), explicitly invoking food as an index of good government.” With this new declaration it was clear that fishing and by extension capitalism was the future direction of the Chinese government as it did in fact yield a high standard of living.