Search

In this paper, I apply Walter Benjamin's concepts "aura" and "wish-image" to explain the cultural making of avocados into a "superfood commodity" in southern Turkey's peasant communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I employ a cultural-historical analysis to point out how, quickly after being introduced, the tree's leaves were used in folk medicine. As folk medicine, avocado leaf gained cultural importance due to its "aura." Later it was the dying charm of the leaf that breathed new life into the fruit to make it a "superfood," that is, a capitalist "wish-image" in Benjamin's thinking. This case study offers new theoretical insights into the production of symbolic-value from the bottom-up in the context of contemporary global capitalism while also suggesting new directions for research on symbolic-value resulting from the interplay between food and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our goal with this special issue is to expand currently untapped ideas about racial microaggressions from a sociological point of view. As noted, research on this issue comes largely out of psychiatry, psychology, and education-disciplines that tend to place less emphasis on structural and institutional causes of racism. There is a need for more sociologically guided research to examine how subtle, covert, and non-apparent forms of racism affect minorities physiologically, psychologically, and emotionally-and how these micronooses can best be understood in a larger context of structural racism. Examination of racial microaggressions from a sociological point of view promises additional insight to help understand the complexities of contemporary race and racism in America and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]