{"title":"What happened to the subjects? Questions about mezcal","authors":"Mauricio Alzate Gómez, Humberto Thomé-Ortiz","doi":"10.3280/ecag2024oa15967","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Mezcal is a Mexican agave spirit that has helped to create a sense of authenticity among global consumers, significantly increasing its presence on the world market. This has led to a great expansion of the production areas included in the Denomination of Origin, changing its artisanal forms of production and creating an ambiguous position for the subjects that produce this drink. The aim of this essay is to contribute a new theoretical perspective to the academic debate on the patrimonialisation of mezcal, incorporating analyses that focus on the issues behind the production of this emblematic beverage. It discusses the need to understand the productive dynamics of this predominantly rural beverage, based on an understanding of the relationships between subjects at different levels of the production chain. We have opted for a classical theoretical framework that dares to consider mezcal producers as peasants and that affirms the explanatory potential of revising the classics of peasant social theory in order to offer new insights into the problem of dispossession through the appropriation of the biocultural knowledge that underlies the production of mezcal.","PeriodicalId":37333,"journal":{"name":"Economia Agro-Alimentare","volume":"66 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economia Agro-Alimentare","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3280/ecag2024oa15967","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Mezcal is a Mexican agave spirit that has helped to create a sense of authenticity among global consumers, significantly increasing its presence on the world market. This has led to a great expansion of the production areas included in the Denomination of Origin, changing its artisanal forms of production and creating an ambiguous position for the subjects that produce this drink. The aim of this essay is to contribute a new theoretical perspective to the academic debate on the patrimonialisation of mezcal, incorporating analyses that focus on the issues behind the production of this emblematic beverage. It discusses the need to understand the productive dynamics of this predominantly rural beverage, based on an understanding of the relationships between subjects at different levels of the production chain. We have opted for a classical theoretical framework that dares to consider mezcal producers as peasants and that affirms the explanatory potential of revising the classics of peasant social theory in order to offer new insights into the problem of dispossession through the appropriation of the biocultural knowledge that underlies the production of mezcal.
期刊介绍:
Economia agro-alimentare/Food Economy is a triannual peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Franco Angeli Edizioni on behalf of the Italian Society of Agri-food Economics (SIEA), founded in 1996 by the then President of SIEA Fausto Cantarelli. It offers an international forum for the discussion and analysis of mono and interdisciplinary socio-economic, political, legal and technical issues, related to agricultural and food systems. It welcomes submissions of original papers focusing on agriculture, food, natural resources, safety, nutrition and health, including all processes and infrastructure involved in providing food to populations; as well as the processes, inputs and outputs involved in consumption and disposal of food and food-related items. Analyses also include social, political, economic and environmental contexts and human resource challenges. Submissions should be addressed to an international audience of researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, and they may consider local, national, or global scales.