The social life of the tortilla: Food, cultural politics, and contested commodification

Resurgent interest in commodities is linked to recent attempts to overcome the constraints posed by the binaries of economy/culture and production/consumption. Commodities and commodification represent a contentious convergence of economic, social, cultural, political, and moral concerns. This essay develops a conceptual framework for understanding this interconnectedness by examining the relationship between commodities and our discourse, practices, and assumptions about food. We argue that the movement of a food artifact between local/global and global/local contexts is mediated by dynamics of power and resistance that represent contests of meaning regarding the criteria of that artifact's exchangeability. We apply this framework to the case of the tortilla, tracing its social life through an historical account of its transformation from the staple food of the Mayan and Aztec people to its introduction as a fast food component of the diets of 21st century Americans. This example demonstrates that food provides a powerful lens through which to trace and illustrate the interconnectedness between material and symbolic exchanges around the world that are commonly associated with globalization.