Article ID: CBB413280713

“Famine Foods” and the Values of Biodiversity Preservation in Israel-Palestine (2022)

unapi

This essay considers the preservation of prickly alkanet, a wild plant that is a constituent of Palestinian cuisine. While tracking the dominant practices of biodiversity preservation that justify the documentation and collection of plants in national and international systems, it ultimately suggests recipes rather than seeds as targets of preservation. For, in seed saving oriented toward community control of resources, knowledge of the plant begins with the ability to prepare it for the table, not with the ability to analyze it in a lab or cultivate it in a field. As a logic of biodiversity preservation, cooking thus serves as an expression of community solidarity and a counter-hegemonic form of knowledge, prioritizing the local sharing of resources and rituals above floristic nationalisms and the extractive complex of international food security. Such an approach calls into question the orientation of modern agricultural development, which has prioritized increasing yield in primary cereal crops.

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Article Prakash Kumar (2022) Introduction: Seeds and the History of Science. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 581-587). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB413280713/

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Authors & Contributors
Curry, Helen Anne
Borghini, Andrea
Bixler, R. Patrick
Margaret H. Friedel
Cobcroft, Wendy
Sigrid Vertommen
Concepts
Cooking and cuisine
Cookbooks; recipes (food)
Food and foods
Biological diversity; biodiversity
Nutrition; dietetics
Conservation and restoration
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Early modern
Modern
20th century
19th century
Places
United States
Palestine
Israel
England
Europe
Mexico
Institutions
Field Museum of Natural History
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
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