Review of Imagine Otherwise Podcast "Lila Sharif on the Settler Colonial Politics of Food"
The episode begins with a discussion of Sharif’s research and plan for her book which looks at struggles of land sovereignty in Palestine, food sites, and historical memory through what she calls a “transnational feminist perspective”. Her research traces the mobility of the olive from its production in Palestine through different “checkpoints” to its circulation to members of the Palestinian diaspora in the United States, specifically in large Palestinian communities in Chicago and California. Sharif explains her interest in the Palestinian diaspora by pointing out that “most Palestinians live and die outside of historic Palestine. It’s a largely refugee and diasporic population”. One linkage that allows those in the diaspora to connect back to their homeland is through cooking practices and importing products from Palestine. The olive is symbolically important throughout much of the Levant, and Palestinians often refer to the tree as holy. It is central to Palestinian cuisine as well as traditional medicinal practices that often continue to be used in diasporic populations.
Sharif also discusses the implications of companies like Lush cosmetics and Dr. Bronner’s using Palestinian olive oil in their products through fair trade and bringing these products to the United States. The olive is central to the Palestinian economy as well, and it has been well documented that a form of settler colonial occupation and erasure has been the destruction of Palestinian olive groves. The olive has transformed into a multifaceted symbol of the history and struggle for Palestinian sovereignty.
Her work manifested out of ethnographic research in Palestine regarding historical memory in relation to 1948; however, she saw how harmful it could be for individuals to relive trauma, so she began to focus on more mundane questions on food. These conversations proved to contribute to her research on memory through a new lens, thus she decided to continue the work of looking at the social, political, and cultural histories of food. Sharif is very interested in using this lens to understand the layering and scales of colonialism that map onto places, whether local or transnational. The final question of the interview asked Sharif what kind of world she is working towards, requesting her to “imagine otherwise”. She responded that she would love to see an understanding of settler colonialism that conceptualizes sovereignty in relation to the environment, food, and culture in order to begin to imagine decolonization.
This podcast touches upon various important ideas that encompass “development”. In her unique framework of analyzing food and its linkages to settler colonialism, Sharif brings forth the idea of food sovereignty as essential to Palestinian resistance and historical memory. The olive cannot be perceived as apolitical when it is a tangible connection between diasporic Palestinians and their homeland as well as the Palestinians who remain living there under occupation. Using food as a framework is particularly useful because it crosses so many different fields - economic, political, social, cultural - allowing for a multilayered and intersectional understanding of what sovereignty can mean.
In her discussion, Sharif briefly brings up the point of American and UK companies such as Lush cosmetics and Dr. Bronner’s specifically using fair-trade olive oil in their products from Palestine in order to make a statement on ethical consumerism. It would have been useful for her to touch upon this dynamic in more depth considering the weighty politics of fair trade and the actual benefits it provides to farmers. Fair Trade associations have different reputations and standards in different parts of the world and have often been criticized for furthering tropes about the Global South without providing much tangible assistance to the farmers it is intended to aid. It would have been interesting to have been given some background on the Palestinian Fair Trade Association. In addition, this economic relationship through fair trade may be forcing the Palestinian economy into a neoliberal agenda, which could greatly influence the trajectory of development. It was also a bit unclear how the lived experiences of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories were being utilized for her research; were they used to provide insight into the day to day lives of those under occupation, or just to explain linkages to the broader diasporic population? What are the implications of this decision?
This Imagine Otherwise podcast provides valuable insight into Lila Sharif’s innovative work in food studies and how this scholarship is a powerful intellectual approach to work towards decolonization. The olive as a site of analysis has subverted more traditional approaches to spatial understandings of sovereignty in relation to land. The mobility of the olive is key to its ability to reach the uniquely large Palestinian diasporic population, which was an intentional, direct forced displacement during the Nakba in 1948. Sharif has truly encapsulated the “imagining otherwise” nature and focus of this podcast.
Sharif, Lila and Cathy Hannabach, host. “Lila Sharif on the Settler Colonial Politics of Food.” Produced by Ideas on Fire. Imagine Otherwise. May 31, 2017. Podcast audio. https://ideasonfire.net/39-lila-sharif/.