Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (review)

In the second edition of Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail, Deborah Barndt continues to explore the increasing distance between consumers and food production by examining how the processing of the tomato cash crop is cultivated and supported by colonialism, sexism, racism, and capitalism. Updates to the second edition are grounded in the growing awareness of food production and the effects of interdisciplinary engagement between scholars, activists, and the public that Barndt's first copy generated. Her goal is to further educate readers of the injustices found within the global food chain and to prompt activism that can bring a social justice movement to it.

Where does our food come from? This is the fundamental question Barndt asks in the introduction. She is mindful that the architecture of the tomato plant's root system consists of primary and secondary roots that grow in various directions for different motives, and she applies that metaphor to food production. In doing so, she begins to address and unravel the complexities and mysteries surrounding the globalization of production and consumption, the interdependent relationship between humans and nature, and the growing division between humans and their food sources. In the following eight chapters, Barndt examines the tensions and the interconnections between production/consumption; work/technology; biodiversity/cultural diversity; and health/environment. She concludes that the distancing or alienation of the corporate process of growing food prevents the public from connecting with their food sources—the process of getting food from the field to the table is a complicated, hazardous, monocultural, unhealthy, and unfair practice.

The conceptual context Barndt uses in chapter two for the project is to consider it as both a feminist and ecological study and as what she refers to as an "ecology of women and tomatoes" (79). Coupling feminism with the economic system, she positions herself with social ecofeminism, which suggests that gender and nature are socially constructed and that the exploitation of both are a result of capitalism and patriarchy. By focusing on those workers who are the most involved and marginalized individuals in the production and consumption of the food product, Barndt is able to examine the ways in which they are exploited and how they work towards individual and collective agency. Moreover, this framework allows her to investigate how nature is commodified through its objectification and through the pursuit of maximimum corporate profits. In studying these women and one food product, Barndt brings a sense of understanding to the relationship between humans and nature and the struggle for power that exists within it.

Barndt's theoretical framework is supported by her methodology of triangulation, which is grounded in qualitative and corporate research and photography. She uses participant observation by visiting fields/plants and grocery stores/restaurants, interviewing employees in each of those locations, and gathering several life histories of women workers. Collecting these narrations is also a means to recount the shifting roles of women in the workplace and in the home, highlighting the changing nature of the family. Barndt searches annual reports, Internet sites, and publications to uncover information about corporations, and she uses advertisements to analyze images that can help the viewer consider what is beyond or behind the overt message. She even transfers the power of research to a woman plant worker in Mexico who volunteers to take pictures of the inner-workings of tomato production after Barndt is denied permission to do so herself.

By humanizing the corporate process with stories of those most oppressed by it, Barndt discloses that its adverse effects go far beyond its obvious economic subjugation. Due to her holistic approach to uncovering the food trail, her choices of methods are effective to that end. The decision to interview individuals, choosing three women to be case studies, humanizes people whom the reader may not otherwise be moved to help. If Barndt does not thoroughly dissect the different aspects of corporatism/capitalism, the reader may not be wise to...