zoom visualizing globalization

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PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE This article was downloaded by: On: 9 February 2011 Access details: Access Details: Free Access Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Visual Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713689928 Zooming out/zooming in visualizing globalization Deborah Barndt a a Teaches Critical Education, Creativity and Communications, York University, Toronto, Canada To cite this Article Barndt, Deborah(1997) 'Zooming out/zooming in visualizing globalization', Visual Studies, 12: 2, 5 — 32 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14725869708583778 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725869708583778 Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

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Page 1: Zoom Visualizing Globalization

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by:On: 9 February 2011Access details: Access Details: Free AccessPublisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Visual StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713689928

Zooming out/zooming in visualizing globalizationDeborah Barndta

a Teaches Critical Education, Creativity and Communications, York University, Toronto, Canada

To cite this Article Barndt, Deborah(1997) 'Zooming out/zooming in visualizing globalization', Visual Studies, 12: 2, 5 — 32To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14725869708583778URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725869708583778

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

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Visual Sociology, 12(2), pp. 5-32, © International Visual Sociology Association, 1997

Zooming Out/Zooming InVisualizing Globalization

Deborah BarndtThe challenge of 'visualizing globalization'requires analytical frames that engage thelocal-global dynamic as well as a variety ofvisual methods. The article reflects on twouses of photography in a cross-border re-search project tracing the journey of a to-mato from the Mexican field to the Cana-dian fast food restaurant, and the role ofwomen workers within the various stages ofcontinental food production, distribution, andconsumption. To examine globalization fromabove, the ubiquity of corporate advertisingimages is exploited, and their messagesdeconstructed and reconstructed to exposethe production processes behind the com-modities being promoted. Globalization frombelow is explored through photo-stories ofthe daily lives of Mexican women agricul-tural workers as food producers at work andat home; Teresa's story illustrates how sub-sistence and market economies co-exist andhow family economies remain the survivaland social base for Mexican peasants. Thejuxtaposition of two classic forms of imageproduction—social documentary and corpo-rate advertising photography—raises ques-tions about the social construction of realityand creates new kinds of visual dialoguesoffering multi-layered interpretations of thelocal-global nexus.

In the 1970s, Canada's National Film Boardproduced a charming animated filmed called

Cosmic Zoom. The camera initially frames aboy rowing a boat, while a mosquito alightsupon his arm. Then it zooms out, within a fewmagical moments, from the mosquito and thearm into the galaxy and universe. After a briefpause, we return to earth and the arm, and justas seamlessly, the camera zooms into themicrocosmic worlds inside the skin and themosquito's stinger. The process of zooming outand zooming in appears effortless, and theviewer is transfixed by this imaginative artistic

construction (supported by scientific knowledge),seemingly transported to locations that offerperspectives not available to the naked eye: froma God's eye view to the innermost chambers ofhuman and insect life. Photographic technologyin the past two decades has made it even morepossible to 'see' and frame such macro andmicro perspectives, from spectacular views ofspace iconicized in the film Apollo 13 to a micro-scopic exploration of intimate insect life of ameadow on a sunny afternoon in a less commer-cialized French film called Microcosmos.

Visual sociologists have their own versionsof macro and micro interests, and have used avariety of visual techniques to zoom in and outon issues of social structure and processes, frompanoramic photos to map land use (Collier andCollier, 1986) to video studies of the intimatenonverbal communications between mother andchild (Birdwhistell, 1969). Rarer are the attemptsto make connections between the two. Yet weknow that the challenge of zooming out andzooming in does not depend solely on techniquesor tools; it requires analytic frames, too, whicheither remain implicit or are made explicit. JohnGrady (1996) suggests that sociologists 'visual-ize' "in order to create new concepts; to identifyand order logic and metaphoric relations be-tween existing concepts; and to clarify expres-sion." As well, they use visual methods to re-search, produce, teach, interpret, and explicatethese concepts.

Tracing the Trail of the Tomato

In a collaborative and cross-border researchproject, 1 have been grappling with ways tounderstand 'globalization'; the project challengesme both conceptually as a sociologist, in 'visual-izing' a key social process, as well as method-ologically and technically as a visual sociologist,

Deborah Barndt ([email protected]) is a mother, popular educator and photographer who teaches Critical Education, Creativityand Communications at York University in Toronto, Canada. She has been using photographs in social research, education andaction since the early 1970s, when she organized one of the first conferences on Visual Sociology.

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Barndt

in finding ways to 'make visible' the dynamics ofthis process. Ostensibly, the project employsthe device of following the journey of a tomatofrom the Mexican field to the Canadian table asa code for the process of globalization as mani-fested in a globalized food system whichtouches us all daily through the food we eat. Thetomato is called 'Tomasita,' a Spanish andfeminine name, thus foregrounding the fact thatunder NAFTA both Mexicans and womenworkers are the most marginalized. The re-search attempts to weave together two kinds ofstories, the corporate stories or globalizationfrom above, with the stories of women workersin the various stages of production, distribution,and consumption of the tomato, or globalizationfrom below. There are different kinds of chal-lenges in developing either of these two per-

spectives, in zooming out and in zooming in onwomen, food, and globalization. Framing bothexplorations, however, is an analytical frame-work of power relations, drawing upon politicaleconomic, ecofeminist, and cultural studiesperspectives.1

The journey of the tomato reveals a foodsystem in which decision-making is increasinglycentralized, while production is increasinglydecentralized. Brewster Kneen (1993) suggeststhat the 'distancing' between the production andthe consumption of food, illustrated by themovement of tomatoes from Mexican field to theboxes in Canadian supermarket warehouses, isthe key characteristic of this process (Photos1-2) which has left most of us unaware of whoplanted, picked, sorted, packed, processed,transported, prepared and sold the food we eat.

Photo 1: Field tomatoes in Mexico Photo 2: Mexican tomatoes in Canada

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Nor are we aware of the economic or healtheffects of this process: "Distancing in the foodsystem means a decline in the real nutritivevalue of the food as well as an increase in itscosts," asserts Kneen.

I do not want to dwell here on the debatesconcerning 'globalization,' which has emerged asa catchall term for this new phase of integrationof economic, political, ecological, and culturalforces. I tend to agree with Maria Mies andVandana Shiva that:

"The 'global' in the global order meanssimply the global domination of local andparticular interests by means of subsumingthe multiple diversities of economics, cul-tures, and/or nature under the control of afew multinational corporations, and thesuperpowers that assist them in their globalreach through 'free' trade, structural adjust-ment programs, and, increasingly, conflicts,military or otherwise..." (Mies and Shiva,1993:9)

Nonetheless, in most stages of productionand consumption of food, no matter the location,women are clearly "at the centre of the foodcrisis" (Dankelman and Davidson, 1991). Forexample, indigenous women in Mexico areincreasingly shifting from subsistence agricul-ture, joining a burgeoning migrant labour force inthe lowest skilled and paying jobs (Barron,1994), while poor campesino women becomemajor players in a growing maquila industry(Fernandez-Kelly; Kopinack, 1997). And againin the north, women predominate as cashiers inthe supermarket industry (Kainer, 1996) and asfast food workers (Reiter, 1991). At the sametime that women remain most engaged with thismost "intimate commodity" (Winson, 1993), oursense of what we eat is less and less intimate.The globalization discourse, however, oftenmakes these processes seem very distant,massive and uncontrollable. Visual sociology canperhaps challenge this abstraction and exposethe workings of a system that has seemed notonly out of reach, but out of sight.

I chose to focus on one commodity, thetomato, as a starting point for understandingglobalization, because it grounds what manyhave sensed as a very abstract concept and

distanced process.2 The Tomasita Project, as itis called, involves popular education centres inthe three NAFTA countries, which are commit-ted to engaging a broad public in debates aboutglobalization and creative responses to it.3

'Popular education' A based on the theories ofBrazilian educator Paulo Freire (Freire, 1970,1993), starts with the everyday experience ofmarginalized people, represents their socialreality in the form of 'codes' (i.e., the story ofthe tomato), deepens their critical conscious-ness about that reality, and prepares them to actcollectively to change it.

The Location Behind the Lens

The story of the journey of the tomato isframed by a critical perspective on powerrelationships between the north and the south,specifically on the asymmetry between Mexico,the (J.S., and Canada. Our research dynamicsare not immune from such a power analysiseither. Borrowing from the work of Maria Mieson feminist research, we are declaring a "con-scious partiality" (Mies and Shiva, 1993: 38),acknowledging that we start with a criticalquestioning of north-south relations, of a global-ized and exploitative food system, built on thenatural resources and cheap female labor of thesouth.

Starting with such a position does notdeny, however, the complexity of the experi-ences of the women workers, whether they bepickers or packers in agribusiness, assemblyline workers in food processing, cashiers insupermarkets, or fast food women workers. Inanother paper, I have played with the metaphorof the 'chain' to explore the myriad ways thatwomen are at the same time bound, freed, andconnected through their roles in the 'food chain'(Barndt, 1997). Young women packers inMexican agribusiness, for example, are movedfrom one production site to another. This'moving maquila' phenomenon takes themaway from their families and communities, butalso frees them from strict family surveillanceand broadens their horizons through meetingyoung people from other parts of the country.5

Closer to home, Canadian women cashiers are

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Photographer/Researcher as Shadow

The early morning sun pours over the fields

in rural Jalisco in western Mexico

as I approach with my camera in hand

my shadow meeting the shadow

of a woman tomato worker.

Northern researcher/photographer

coming South

just like the agribusinesses,

the managers and technologies,

the hybrid seeds and pesticides.

I come to take stories and images

to find out where the food we eat comes from

and what happens to it along the journey

from Mexican field to Canadian table.

How is my taking any different

than that of the companies

who import most of the inputs

and export most of the produce...

taking advantage of the available land,

cheap labour, and ever-present sun...?

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'bound' to many years of unpredictable work atconstantly changing shifts until they gain theseniority which 'frees' them to choose the part-time hours that best suit their other personal andfamily needs, where the concept of"flexibilization" can finally serve their own andnot just the company's interests.

Both postcolonial theory and feministmethodology (Patai, 1991) have reclaimedsubjectivity and made transparent the role of theresearcher. As implied in the musings on myshadow, I am compelled to locate myself in thisstudy, as both photographer and researcher, aswell as my complicity in some of the powerdynamics that the project claims to challenge.Through each encounter with women workers-whether under the hot sun of Mexican tomatofields or in the lunch room of Canadian super-market cashiers-1 must confront my own rela-tionship to this global food system as well as tothe women participants in it. This researchneither pretends to be neutral nor does it pre-tend to change the structural inequalities thatunderlie food systems and knowledge systems;but it does acknowledge them and it aims tomake them more visible. As we build collabora-tion at various levels and across borders, wedeal with and discuss questions of power andprivilege within which we are immersed, and wetry to honor the specifics of each context andrelationship, i.e. not to fall into facile generaliza-tions about either exploitation or oppression.

The Camera as a Power ToolEver since that moment in 1969 when 1

took my first people picture and got threatenedby my subject/victim (who, in self-defense,wielded over me the butcher knife she had beenusing to carve her toe nails), I have understoodthat the act of photography is imbued withissues of power. The challenges of researchingcorporations' roles (globalization from above) inthe global food system are different, of course,from those arising in examining women workers'roles in that system (globalization from below).In the process of this research, then, I have hadto find different strategies for visualizing theprocess of globalization as revealed by the

women workers' lives than for making visiblethe actions of the more powerful corporateactors and the global forces they represent.

The presence of the camera in itself canreveal power dynamics, even before the shutteris opened. Thus the absence of photos frominside McDonald's or Loblaws or Del Monte's(three of the four corporations included in thestudy) is revealing: the fact that corporate giantsare nervous about visual documentation mustsay something about both their power and thecontestation of their power by those who ques-tion its morality. When I first tried to take apicture in a Burger King outlet in Mexico City, 1was stopped and told that it was companypolicy to prohibit photography, because of "lareceta," or "the recipe!" I don't really believethey were concerned that 1 would slip a photo ofa Whopper to their competitors, producers ofthe Big Mac, and threaten any hamburgerhegemony. My hunch is that the increasinglycritical gaze on their operations, in terms ofworking conditions, wages, environment, etc.was more the motivation for blocking mypotentially critical lens. And, as evidenced bythe McLibel trial which lasted 314 days inEngland, multinationals such as McDonald's willgo to great lengths to defend their image andcorporate practices.6

Ironically, while it has been nearly impos-sible to capture photographic images insidethese sanctums of power, I have found in almostany locale seemingly infinite numbers of imagesproduced by these very corporations, ubiqui-tously framing their products and seducingconsumers into their own ideological construc-tions. This is one of the ways that globalizationmakes itself present and concrete in our dailylives and local contexts. Even if these compa-nies do not want critical eyes surveying theiroperations with cameras, they have no hesi-tancy to cover the world with images of theirown making. These, at least, we have accessto,7 and the images can be deconstructed,revealing important aspects of global processes.

As an integral part of the system of pro-duction and consumption, advertising reflectswhat Marx called "commodity fetishism," a

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process which "imbues products with meaningswhich have no relation to the production pro-cesses of these objects" (Ramamurthy, 1997:154). And so the decoding of these imagesrequires an analysis of the functions of "iconiccommunication" (Grady, 1996: 14) within abroader social context. 1 will draw from twoexamples here, one from the fast food sector andthe other from the supermarket sector, two of thepoints of distribution of the tomato in Canada.

Nation Subsumed or Consumed?While sales and stock prices in McDonald's

restaurants are dropping in the U.S.8, the multi-national restaurant chain further consolidated itsglobal cultural hegemony in 1996 with a specialdeal with Disney Corporation makingMcDonald's the sole promoter among fast foodgiants of all new Disney movies, so that Disneytoys, TV and movie characters are now gracing

Photo 4: "McDonald's Canada: maple leaf meetsgolden arches."

billboards, cups, place mats, T-shirts and con-sumer items accompanying Big Macs in over100 countries. The production and diffusion ofimages has become as important to McDonald'sas the production of hamburgers (Photo 4).

In the globalizing 1990s, the Golden Archeshas achieved super-icon status in Canada: themaple leaf is now couched within the goldenarches in every outlet and billboard across thecountry! Thus while in 1995 Disney got theexclusive rights to reproduce all replicas of theCanadian mounties, McDonald's Canada hasnow integrated the symbol from our flag into itsover-arching logo. My Mexican co-researcherswere shocked at this appropriation, suggestingthat their government would never allow such apatriotic symbol to be used for commercialpurposes. Another more nationalist interpreta-tion,9 however, might suggest the Canadian leafat least distinguishes restaurants north of theborder from those south of the border, where themultinational is based. Through a differentreading from the perspective of globalization, themaple leaf subsumed within the golden archesspeaks volumes about the eroding role of thenation-state and the increasing meaninglessnessof borders in an era when multinational corpora-tions are more powerful than many nationalgovernments, and are less bound by nationalregulations than they are shapers of nationalpolicies. The two icons are, each in their ownright, ubiquitous in Canada; now merged in theeye and mind of Canadians, both can appear ona billboard in rural Ontario with absolutely nowords of explanation needed, the only textdirecting the consumer from the highway to thenearest McDonald's restaurant.

Appropriation of the Global 'Other'The other example of a 'zooming out' image

of globalization comes from a recent billboard adproduced by Loblaw's, the largest supermarketchain in Canada's food retail sector (Photo 5). Atraditionally robed Arab heads across the hotdesert pushing a shopping cart. "Food Means theWorld to Us," Loblaws proclaims. How do thesewords and this image illuminate our understandingof global food production/consumption?

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Photo 5: "Food Means the World to Us, President's Choice."

In a global food system that is increasinglydriven by the demand of more affluentnortherners for more variety and fresh "exotic"foods brought daily by plane, boat, and truckfrom far-away countries, the quantity of north-ern supermarket items has almost quadrupled inthe past two decades (Cook, 1990: 67). Ourshopping carts may be full; but those who grow,pack, and transport the foods don't have suchan array of choices of 'world food' to consume.

The Arab-in-the-desert image plays clearlyinto the romanticization and appropriation of the'other' that has been classic in advertising suchas Benneton and, in the case of Loblaws,through a variety of product lines createdaround multicultural themes.10 The stylizeddesert panorama is reflective of the increasinguse of sensuous scenes of 'nature' (that appearanything but 'natural') to evoke a connection to

the earth and the body, a kind of ecological anderotic seduction.

It is commonly understood that corporateadvertising images are highly constructed, i.e.,they are not assumed to be documenting reallife. Raymond Williams (in During, 1993)considers advertising the "official art of moderncapitalist society" and suggests that there is akind of "magic" in its construction which pro-motes social and personal values almost morethan products themselves. In fact, in theLoblaw's ad shown here, there are no foodproducts at all: the shopping cart is empty! The'other worldly' consumer moves into the worldas a market which promises the exotic, thesensuous, and the natural.

The absence of any products is notable.Even in cosmetic ads, famous for their selling ofa look or a lifestyle, one can usually find in a

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corner or a box one tiny sample of the productbeing sold. Without any product, it is evenharder to imagine the people behind the prod-ucts who have created the goods. Marx's notionof the "fetishism of commodities" suggests thathuman labour is no longer apparent in the focuson products. The invisibility, then, of the agricul-tural workers in a post-NAFTA food system,further deepens our sense of alienation from theproduction of food, and our sense of the 'dis-tance' between production in the south andconsumption in the north. The Tomasita Projectaims to make visible these workers as well asother actors and stages within this complex anddecentralized production process.

Just as corporate advertisements areelaborate constructions, we can engage criti-cally with these images by reconstructing oraltering them slightly. In a tradition called

'adbusting,' developed to a fine art by the MediaFoundation in Vancouver, British Columbia,11

'subvertisements' or doctored ads, play on theubiquity of advertising images and our commonsense interpretations, disrupting them so thatthe viewer is forced to reconsider both themessage and its construction. When we takeapart and reconstruct these representations, wecan probe their ideological assumptions as wellas the political economic arrangements onwhich they are built. With the Loblaw's ad, forexample, we could emphasize the local-globalconnections by using the words "Food Meansthe World to Us" with images of the globalworkers behind the products or by making acollage on top of the existing image (perhapsfilling the shopping cart with agricultural work-ers or pesticides) to tell a fuller story.

The reconstructed ad (Photo collage 6)

FQQD

Photo collage 6: "Food Means the World to Us."

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reveals the processes of picking, packing, andtransporting tomatoes over long distances; thewomen workers most responsible for thesestages of production become visible to us."Food Means the World to Us" resonates differ-ently from the workers' perspective; sinceNAFTA, the Guadalajara based Santa AnitaPackers, once primarily a domestic producer,have increased their exports to 80% of totalproduction. While the Loblaw's ad touts the'President's Choice' line of products, the recon-structed ad asks (within a box of tomatoesmarked in English rather than Spanish): 'Whosechoice?'; the question could probably be appliedto the managers as well as the workers inMexican agribusiness, as neither have had muchchoice in whether or how they enter the globalmarketplace.

As representations of corporate control andas tools for promotion of dominant culturalideology, then, advertising images can bedeconstructed and reconstructed to suggest thelayers and levels of globalization. That theyhave become integral to a process of multina-tional expansion also means that their readingsin such diverse contexts will be multiple andvaried. But they also represent a kind of com-mon landscape, or 'mediascape' (Nelson, 1992)among communities questioning the impact ofglobal corporate power. So these images areuseful starting points for cross-border dialoguesabout the meanings within and behind them, acatalyst for shared analysis of the global foodsystem. That dialogue can continue through theconstruction of documentary images that tell adifferent story than the corporate constructions,though not without its contradictions, as Idescribe below.

Exposing (Exploiting?) the PowerlessI first became aware of the complexities of

photographing power dynamics when I turnedmy lens on the sociology department where Iwas a doctoral student in the early 1970s. Itseemed much harder to get into the space of thepowerful than into the space of the less power-ful: the (primarily female) secretaries in thedepartmental office were easier prey, for ex-ample, than the (usually male) full professors;

you had to pass through two doors and get theirpermission before you could photograph them.In parallel fashion, then, I found it harder toenter the domain of the corporate power bro-kers, and easier to photograph the less powerfulactors in the food system. So in entering Mexi-can tomato fields, I was aware that photograph-ing women workers already reinforced thistradition of easier exploitation of the poor andthe female.

Nonetheless, one of the objectives of thisproject was to show the workers who brought usour tomatoes, to counter a general ignoranceabout where our food comes from and throughwhose labor we eat. The visual representationscreated by food corporations, as we have seen,don't tell us about the production processbehind the food products (they, in fact, deliber-ately obscure them). Thus, 'exposing' was aprimary purpose of this project. But exposing forwhom? Primarily, as indicated, for a northernaudience of unaware consumers, to raise theirconsciousness about the processes behind thefood we eat. And, secondly, for the workers inthis food chain, to enable them to see wherethey fit in this bigger picture, and to connectwith other workers linked to them by this com-plex process of production, distribution andconsumption.

At the beginning of this tomato journey, asa northern gringa researcher/ photographerdocumenting poor Mexican women workers, Ihad to pass through company gates, i.e., Ineeded the permission of those at the top tophotograph those at the bottom. During my firsttwo visits to Mexico, such permission wasdenied, and so, when in December of 1996, thevice-president of the large domesticagribusiness in our study invited me to tour thepacking plant, and the plant manager allowedme to photograph the women pickers andpackers, I went wild; like an investigative re-porter who had one toe in the door, 1 snappedfuriously as we were led through the plant andthen into the fields. I was afraid that there wouldnever be another opportunity, and I was deter-mined to take advantage of this one. When wewalked up and down the rows of tomato plants,and briefly interviewed women picking toma-

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toes, I continued shooting. This entry, while anawkward reminder of our power differences,nonetheless, introduced us to some womenworkers who invited us to visit them later in theirrural community.

Returning to Mexico four months later, (thepicking season abruptly ended by a prematurefreeze), 1 found these women in their homes, nolonger salaried workers in a multinationaloperation. Now they struggled to survive withother forms of casual labor, such as makingstraw mats for sale. The off-season rhythmoffered me time for longer conversations withthese women, and we sat around a table usingthe photos from the fields to elicit stories abouttheir work days and their home lives.

With camera and tape recorder, 1 followedTeresa through her day as she prepared food forher family. The accompanying photo-storyexplores key themes of our tomato/womenstudy: the relationship between production andconsumption, salaried work and subsistencework, work and home, and the local and theglobal. This sequence attempts to ground ideasof the feminization of labor and of poverty thatare central to understanding the shifting role ofwomen in the new global economy. Teresa is asalaried worker for an agro-export companybased on monocultural (one crop) productionwhich has an impact on the health of both theland and the people who work it. Her storyillustrates how subsistence and market econo-mies co-exist and how family economies remainthe economic and social base for Mexicanpeasants.12 In a broader sense, the photostoryexposes one piece of a globalized food system:Teresa doesn't know where the tomatoes shepicks end up, and she can only contribute to asmall part of the story about where they comefrom. This has been one of the most powerfuland recurring themes in our efforts to trace thetrail of the tomato: no one has the whole picture,and most actors in the system only understandtheir small piece of the long and complexprocess. Nonetheless, Teresa's story begins tofill a void in our distanced, northern understand-ing of where our food comes from, and whatimpact its production has on other people andlands.

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Teresa, Food Producer—At Work At Home

When 1 first met Teresa, in December of 1996, shewas picking tomatoes and supervising workers in anagribusiness tomato plantation outside of Sayula, inthe state of Jalisco, Mexico.

With 40 pails to fill for the 28 peso ($5-6) daily wage,she couldn't talk much then so she invited me to visither sometime in her village, half an hour away.

When 1 returned to Mexico four months later, thetomato harvest had prematurely ended due to afreeze. I found Teresa, her family, and many co-workers at home in Gomez Farias.

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LA

/ was born in 1930 in a familly of 5 kids. My papa died when I was 2, so my mamahad to raise us on her own. I never went to school. They brought books into therancho and my brothers taught themselves to read. But not me, I didn't learn; I'm likea burrito (donkey).

You need reading for everything-to read the prices when you buy things. If youdon't study, you can't get work. I helped my mother sweep, carry water to thehouse, and so on. When I was older, I made tamales and sold them in the market.

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Teresa:

We got married when I was 17, and I kept doing thesame work. Now I'm 67, and Pedro's 72, flue yearsolder than me.

We had 16 children-imagine! The oldest is 47 and theyoungest is 21. [iine of them are still alive; seven diedof illness, of bronchitis (from the cold).

Our two oldest daughters are married and live inTlapapa; three married sons and two daughters livehere. They visit often and help; we share what wehave. While we are alive, as long as God offers us thegift of life, we help each other.

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Pedro:

I come back from working in Sayula at 2:30 p.m. andgo to work in our milpa (cornfield). This corn in thebags here lasts us for the whole year.

I work in both places, and 1 see something good inboth. But the land in Sayula is not mine. 1 feel morerelated to the land here because it is mine, I use it forwhat we need at home.

When my wife has time, she comes with me and wework together.

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Teresa:

Now many women buy tortillas already made at thetortilleria, but when I'm not working in Sayula, Imake my own.

X *

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We all feel the economic crisis. The work in Sayula stopped in February because ofthe freeze. There is no chamba (work) now. We can't keep working, so we don'tearn any money. It's very depressing; we're sad when we're not working.

When we find work, we're happy.

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Our grandchildren are studying, but when they're not in school, they cometo work in the fields on the weekends and during vacations; they get thesame pay as others.

Everyone has their job. My husband and I are the cabos (foremen) for ourtabla (field). Some are piscadores (pickers), others are vaciadoras (whoempty the pails), others are aquadoras (they bring us water), and apuntadoras(who record the number of pails).

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Pedro:

Before, we worked harder, we worked with animals. We cultivated 3 cropstogether-corn, squash, and beans-in the same field. We rotated from one lotto another.

Before, the tomatoes and corn grew well without chemicals. We used thewaste of animals as fertilizer, we put it on the plants; it was very good andwould last for 2-3 years.

The fertilizer we use now only lasts for one season. It's expensive and verystrong. It kills the squash and the mi\pa(field) becomes very sad. The corngrows well, it grows tall, but the fertilizer damages the squash and the beans.

i •

Teresa:

The chemicals bother us, if they get into our lungs.Those who don't cover themselves suffer more. Weput one handkerchief in the back, one in the front,just leaving a slot open for the eyes. This protects usfrom the pesticides, the insects, the sun.

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We get eggs from our chickens. From time to time, weeat beef, chicken, squash, carrots, lettuce.

When the day dawns, with God's blessing, we findthings to eat, even if it's just beans.

We always grew beans in the monte (mountain field).I don't know why we don't grow them anymore.Now we buy them.

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(When I showed these photos to Teresa, shewasn't aware of the work of the 500 womenworkers in the packing plant just five minutesfrom where she picks tomatoes.)

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I've seen big trailer trucks on the highway, I'vewondered where they're going. They come from faraway, and they go far away, we don't know where.

The tomatoes don't stay here.

(The boxes on the left, with second rate tomatoes thatmay be bruised, are for the domestic market; the besttomatoes, labelled in english, are for the exportmarket.)

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/ haoe seen a lot of changes. Now women don't workas much. When I was growing up, we worked more-making tamales, washing diapers (for 16 children!)going to the stream to fetch water.

Now there is water in the house, tortillas in thetortilleria, washing machines...

But many women also must leave the house towork...

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Photo-Stories Connecting AcrossBorders

One purpose of this study is to compareand exchange women's experiences acrossborders. This is happening in several ways:through video letters, through discussion of filmsabout the women in the global system, andthrough the sharing of popular theatre, cartoonbooks, and photo-stories. Most recently,Teresa's photo-story became a catalyst forconversations with Susan,13 one of the CanadianLoblaw's cashiers we interviewed. Her responsesreflect her curiosity about and empathy with thewomen working at the other end of the foodchain, those who pick the tomatoes that, a weekor two later, she punches in at the supermarketcounter. After reading the story, Susan muses:

"We live in different cultures, with differentclimates and different life experiences, andyet we're going through the same things.[For example,] Teresa used to make her owntortillas but now she has to go and work.And she's feeling that pull just like the NorthAmerican women are: should I stay at homewith the kids? Should 1 go to work? She'sfeeling the economic thing, obviouslybecause everybody has to survive, every-body has to eat. She's taking care of thefamily, that's a priority in her life; I'd like tothink that in my life that's a priority."

When Teresa mentions the freeze that cutshort their harvest season and left them unem-ployed, Susan remembers the impact the freezein the south had on prices in her store, thatsigns were posted in the produce departmentexplaining why the vegetables were suddenly soexpensive. She has some sense of the broadercosts of global food production, too:

"How can you sell a head of lettuce for 75cents? All the costs incurred along the way,you know. If you think of shipping thosetomatoes up from Mexico, how are theyshipped? By truck. Look at the price of gas,the companies have to maintain theirvehicles, they have to pay their employees."

At the other end, Susan is concerned aboutthe impact of monocultural cash crop produc-tion on the Mexican land and the health of the

workers. She admires Pedro's deeply rootedunderstanding of the land:

"He's saying that [the agrochemicals] areexpensive and that they're ruining the soil.And you feel like this man has so muchknowledge, he's so in touch with what'sgoing to happen, he can foresee in threeyears this soil will not be any good. This guyshould be in a management position.They're really knowledgeable, they know theland, they're in touch with it."

Nonetheless, she also expresses someempathy for the Mexican companies (and theMexican government) caught in this new globalspiral of restructuring to meet the demand forexports:

"When the companies come and say theywant to do business, they have to have someresponsibility over the environment they'reusing. But then because they're so desperateand they need the jobs and they're welcom-ing this American money, they sort ofbecome lax on [the environmental regula-tions]...."

One of the ways that the globalizingpressures play out in the daily work rhythms ofwomen workers is through the control of theirproductivity. Susan is interested that Mexicanworkers must pick 40 pails a day, but are notoffered bonuses for exceeding that quota.

She compared their experience to her ownof scanning items through the supermarket line;she has seen computer print outs which indicatehow many items per hour she has scanned.While there are no monetary rewards for in-creased productivity, Susan likes to challengeherself to beat her own record, and thus scansfaster and faster, perhaps increasing the overallstandard for cashiers. This comparison, whilereflecting technological differences in twodistinct stages of the process, reminded me ofan interview with a French engineer responsiblefor organizing production in one of the Mexicangreenhouses. As we observed the womenpackers moving tomatoes from the computer-scanned conveyor belt and into boxes, heremarked: "We are trying to increase theirspeed, but they will never be as productive asEuropean workers." 14

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Swasti Mitter, in the now classic CommonFate Common Bond: Women in the GlobalEconomy (1986), documents the shared experi-ence of women workers in all sectors of the newglobal economy, and suggests that the majorimpact of new technology, whether in theindustrial, commercial, or service sector, seemsto be in the intensification of the work processand the casualization of labour. At the sametime, she observes a "new sense of solidaritythat brings female white-collar workers closer totheir manual counterparts," (1986:146). WhatMitter calls the twin effects of the new technolo-gies—automation and fragmentation—affectwomen in the food system in similar ways. Andas part-time workers feeding the corporations'flexibilization of labour' strategy, they alsoshare a common vulnerability. The exchange ofthese stories across borders can contribute to astronger sense of this shared precariousness,can deepen women's analysis of the structuralconstraints shaping their double work days (inthe field, plant or market as well as at home),and can help consolidate global networks thatcan act more effectively in response to multina-tional phenomena that shape their lives. Thevisualization of women's experiences (theirdifferences and their similarities) as well as oftheir collective actions feeds this 'other global-ization,' bringing a positive twist to the notion of'globalization from below.'

I am currently working with Susan on herphoto-story, which will present another piece ofthis puzzle and will be shared with Mexicanworkers. While recognizing that these singlestories cannot claim to represent the realities ofthe many different kinds of women who contrib-ute to this continental food system, we hope thephoto sequences will resonate and suggestconnections rather than explicitly make them.The Mexican pickers, when hearing about theCanadians who receive and sell the fruits of theirlabor, raised the question: "I often wonder whathappens to our tomatoes. I wonder if theyrealize the work we have done so they can eattomatoes." This, in the least, is a connectionbetween women workers that can be nurturedby this red fruit that makes the long journeypassing from one hand to another. As a photog-

rapher of both ends of the process, 1 become aconduit, and the photographs a medium forconnecting them.

Another role that I consciously play as acommitted researcher/photographer is to returnthe photo-stories 1 make of people to them. Thisis extremely important to me, not only as part ofwhat I often feel is an unequal exchange in theresearch process. Working with women onstories of their lives is an intimate experience;the hours I spend with the transcripts andmaking images in the darkroom deepens myfeelings about the women and draws me evencloser to them. When 1 return my edited versionof their stories to them, it is an expression of afriendship and hopefully, a memory of anexperience shared. But more importantly, thesephoto-stories can affirm the histories and dailylives of these women, allowing them to seethemselves in a new light.

Nonetheless, it is also and always a riskybusiness to represent others and to return thoserepresentations to them. At that moment, I mustacknowledge my own biases and subjectivity,the fact that 1 have named and framed themwith my photos and my editing of their words.Will they recognize themselves? Will they agreewith my interpretation of their lives? In the caseof Teresa, I had a very recent experience ofreturning to her the photo story that appearshere (Photo 7) exactly one year after I firstphotographed her in the fields. It was not asimple task: first I had to fly to Mexico, toGuadalajara, then take a bus to Sayula; the roadto her village was closed for repairs, so I set offto find her among the 1,500 migrant workersworking in fields that spread for miles aroundthe town. After one futile afternoon of wanderingup and down rows of tomato plants, I went tothe company office, gave the field manager aphoto I had taken of him, and was offered helpin my search. Early the next morning, he tookme in his pickup to three more fields before weactually found her. In the process, he also askedto see the story, and perused the first few pages,apparently without any problem.

Teresa herself was happy to see herphotos, and tucked the book into her lunchsack, for safe keeping, so she could go on

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Photo 7: Teresa receiving her photo-story.

picking tomatoes. She is unable to read, and soonly with help from her literate children will sheget the full story; and for now, I am not sure howshe feels about it. I am glad that at least she hasit, yet the encounter raises anew all the stickyquestions of power and difference in research. Isit mainly my own conscience that I soothe intaking it back? What difference can this story orthe larger study possibly make to the workingand living conditions of migrant women such asTeresa? Very little, I know, but I was able to offercopies of the story as well to a group in Sayulaorganizing around health and environmentalissues related to the tomato workers. In thatway, these images can be integral to localefforts to challenge and improve these condi-tions.

Making the Connections ConceptuallyWe have thus far explored two visual

strategies for examining globalization fromabove (through corporate advertising) and frombelow (through photo-stories of women work-

ers). A further challenge is to more explicitlyconnect these themes of globalization and formsof storytelling. The reading of these images is, ofcourse, also dependent on the viewer, primarilyNortherners who must interpret these imageswith their own limited experiences and variouscultural biases. When I recently exhibited someof these images in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Iwas concerned that the documentary imagesmight be read uncritically. On the one hand, 1wanted to play with that illusion sometimesperpetuated by documentary photography: itserved my purpose of exposing what I wasframing as unjust. On the other hand, I didn'twant to leave the women workers alone on thewall, to be interpreted out of context, as isolatedvictims; and I wanted, to integrate in some way,the corporate presence that I had not beenpermitted to photograph. And so, I chose tojuxtapose clusters of black and white photo-graphs, in classic documentary style, with onecolor image which disrupted that tradition, bothvisually and analytically. With three images of

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(original in color)

A Family Affair

When I entered the Guadalajara McDonalds

with my 10-year-old son, Joshua,

he found Ronald's Playland familiar territory,

except for the barred gates.

One hour away in Sayula, extended families,

grandmothers to grandchildren,

rise early to get to the fields,

work under the hot sun,

fill at least 40 pails to get their $5 daily wage,

take all the risks,

and never taste the tomato they picked

when it's sandwiched into a MclSifica,

The Arch Deluxe, Mexican style.

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tomato workers, for example, a child, a grand-mother, and a man spraying the field withpesticides, I placed a brightly colored image ofMcDonald's taken from behind the heavilybarred black gates that limit the entrance toRonald's Play Place in the fast food restaurant inGuadalajara, just an hour away from the fieldswhere these peasant children work. The vieweris invited to challenge his/her own reading of theblack/white documentary images and to makethe connections with the corporate icons repre-senting the global process within which theworkers operate.

The juxtaposition of the two classic formsof image production—documentary and corpo-rate photography—raises questions as wellabout the construction of 'truth'; neither traditionhas been immune from the post-modern de-bates reclaiming subjectivity and emphasizingthe social construction of reality. Perhapsjuxtaposing them can create new kinds ofdialogues that raise questions and offer multi-layered interpretations of the local-global nexus.As viewers, too, we are invited to acknowledgeour own locations and subjective responses tothese images as generative tools; our voices jointhe cacophony of other voices trying to makesense of globalization as we experience it in ourdaily activities and perceptions of the world.

Notes1 Ecofeminist perspectives suggest a relationship

between the exploitation of nature and the oppressionof women in the context of colonization and thecurrent manifestations of global economic restructur-ing. See Mies, M. and V. Shiva, 1993.

2 Commodity chain analysis has become both aconceptual and methodological tool in world systemstheory, linking micro and macro processes byfollowing a commodity from raw material productionthrough processing, packing and transporting, and tomarketing and distribution. See Gereffi, G., and M.Korzeniewicz, 1994.

3 This study applies principles of critical peda-gogy and popular education, engaging the creativetensions of the personal/political, critical/creative,nature/culture, reflection/action, and local/global.Photographs are central tools in this process. SeeBarndt, D., 1996.

4 "While the historical roots of popular educationare in Latin American social movements, the etymo-

logical roots in the word "popular" mean "of thepeople" with a clear class connotation, referring to themarginalized poor majority. See Barndt, D., 1991.

5 One very visual indicator of this phenomenon,for example, was the way women packers "dressed tothe teeth," complete with high heels, for their 10-12hour days of work standing up; the plant (with a ratioof 1:10 male/female workers) was also their onlysocial milieu, a site for seeking potential husbands.

6 BilIed the McLibel suit, the longest trial inEnglish legal history caught world-wide attention as aDavid vs. Goliath battle. A British judge ruled thatleaflets two environmental activists distributed 13years ago libelled the global burger chain by sayingthat McDonald's destroyed rain forests, sold un-healthy food, and contributed to starvation in theThird World; the judge sided with the activists,however, in their statements that McDonald's ex-ploited children in advertising, paid low wages toworkers, and was responsible for cruelty to someanimals. See Drohan, M., 1997.

7 Not only do corporations spend millions ofdollars in the production and dissemination of theirimages, but they also restrict the reproduction ofthose images by us who consume them. When I triedto produce a transparency for the Visual Sociologyconference, the Kinko's employee hesitated incopying a photograph I had taken from the outside ofa Mexican McDonald's, suggesting that I might becontravening copyright laws, even though my photowas taken outside the building in the public domain.

8 This phenomenon has been developingsteadily in the 1990s, just as global restructuring hasopened up new markets for McDonald's abroad. Yetinvestors are finding McDonald's Corp. stock "aboutas appetizing these days as a week-old French fry."See Northfield, 1997.

9 Stuart Hall suggests images can be decoded inthree ways: as a dominant or preferred reading, anegotiated meaning, or an oppositional reading; inthis case, while the 'preferred' reading intended byMcDonald's Canada might have been playing with theambiguity of this nationalist interpretation, my ownreading, emphasizing the erosion of the nation-statein the code of the encased maple leaf, reflects a moreoppositional reading. See Ramamurthy, 1997.

10 Sacchetti and Dufresne, 1994, argue thatLoblaws epitomizes "image colonialism" in itspromotion of products "conditioned by the conten-tious appropriation of the exotic Other."

11 The monthly magazine, Adbusters: Journal ofthe Mental Environment, is available from The MediaFoundation, email: [email protected].

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12 Kathryn Kopinak, 1997, suggests that globaleconomic restructuring in Mexico's maquila sectorhas not created 'family consumer economies' (aspredicted with economic liberalization and NAFTA)but rather perpetuated a 'family wage economy' inwhich several members of the household, oftenincluding women and children, must work in salariedpositions outside the home to support the family."The number of minimum-wage salaries needed tobuy a basic basket of goods for a family of five was1.8 in 1981 and 2.7 in 1988, and had jumped to 5.4.

13 Susan is a pseudonym for a Canadian cashier,interviewed on October 3, 1997, in Toronto, Ontario.

MInterview with Yves Gomes, San IsidroMazatepec, Mexico, July 24, 1996. Greenhouseproduction is increasing in Mexico since NAFTA, asfavourable climate and cheap labour permit year-round production of tomatoes. In this particulargreenhouse, all the infrastructure and the manage-ment is foreign, and 100% of the production isdirected to export.

References. 1991. To Change This House: Popular Edu-

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. 1996. "Tracing the Trail of Tomasita the To-mato: Popular Education around Globalization."Alternatives Journal, January/February, 24-29.

Barndt, D. 1997. "Women in the Food Chain: Bound,Freed, and/or Connected?" Presented to Interna-tional Conference on Sustainable Urban Food Sys-tems, Toronto, Ontario.

Barrón, A. 1994. "Especialización de la Fuerza deTrabajo y Migraciones en los Mercados de Trabajode las Hortalizas." El Cotidiano, No. 62. May/June.

Cook, R. L. 1990. "Challenges and Opportunities inthe U.S. Fresh Produce Industry." Journal of FoodDistribution Research, February, 67-74.

Dankelman, I. and J. Davidson. 1991. "Land: Womenat the Centre of the Food Crisis." Sontheimer, S.,ed. Women and the Environment: A Reader—Crisis and Development in the Third World. Lon-don, England: Earthscan Publications.

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