Quinoa rose to global stardom pitched as an unparalleled sustainable development opportunity that heralded a bright future for rural communities devastated by decades of rural-urban migration, civil war, and state neglect. The Quinoa Bust is based in a longitudinal ethnography centered around Puno, Peru, the main quinoa production area in the world's chief quinoa exporting country. This book traces the social, ecological, technological, and political work that went into transforming a humble Andean grain into a development miracle crop and also highlights that project's unintended consequences. The Quinoa Bust shows how even efforts based in the best of intentions—counteracting the homogenization of global food supply, empowering small-scale farmers, revaluing local food cultures, and adapting agricultural systems to climate change—can generate new kinds of oppression. At a time when so-called forgotten foods are increasingly positioned as sustainable development tools, The Quinoa Bust offers a cautionary tale of fleeting benefits and ambivalent results.
By:
Emma McDonell
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Volume: 84
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 23mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780520401709
ISBN 10: 0520401700
Series: California Studies in Food and Culture
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 26 May 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Note on Names and Places Quinoa Timeline Introduction: Quinoa’s Promise Part one Miracle Crop 1 • Reimagining the Future of a Neglected Crop 2 • Whitening a Comida de Indios: Culinary Bioprospecting and the Inca Superfood Part two Boom 3 • The Quinoa Frontier: Making a Productive and Orderly Landscape 4 • Producing Good Quinoa: The Moral Politics of Quality Standards Part three Bust 5 • Disarticulations: Uneven Risks and Fragile Relations in the Quinoa Bust 6 • Fragmented Knowledge and Intractable Residues in the Quinoa Supply Chain 7 • (Re)building Reputation: Origin-Based Labels and the Elusive Promise of Differentiation Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix: Quinoa Production, Export, and Price Charts Notes Bibliography Index
Emma McDonell is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and coauthor of Critical Approaches to Superfoods.
