“American rice is cleaner”: marketplace hybridity and the cultural transformation of food in the Dominican Republic
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
ISSN: 0144-333X
Article publication date: 25 May 2022
Issue publication date: 19 July 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The article offers a study of the central food marketplace in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The purpose of the study is to explore how changes in the marketplace reflect transformation of urban food systems resulting from neoliberal restructuring during the final decades of the twentieth century.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on long-term qualitative research conducted during the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ethnographic and survey methods, the article illustrates how central urban marketplaces offer a window into transitions in both international and domestic food economies.
Findings
Research findings illustrate that the marketplace in Santiago operated in a state of economic hybridity, intermixing long established regionally produced domestic crops such as yuca, plantains and pigeon peas deeply rooted in Dominican agrarian culture with products dervived from liberalization of the Dominican economy such as imported rice, beans and eventually numerous Dominican food staples.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited by the scope of analysis which is one urban marketplace. More sites for researching marketplaces could be added for more comparative analysis.
Practical implications
The research findings have implications for how governments define social and economic policy that impacts domestic food producers and intermediary brokers that aggregate and debulk food to feed cities.
Originality/value
The scholarship raises questions about how the social and economic organization of urban marketplaces in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere reflect historical transitions in local, national and global economies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for generously supporting the bulk of the research conducted for this article. Carmen Ferradás, Tom Wilson, Ann Stahl, Dale Tomich and Pedro Juan Del Rosario contributed important insights to this study. The author is especially grateful to Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Regionales (CEUR) at Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in Santiago, Dominican Republic for hosting this project.
The original research for this study was based upon the work supported by the National Science Foundation, under Grant No. 9904222. Support for the project was also provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Citation
Rosing, H. (2022), "“American rice is cleaner”: marketplace hybridity and the cultural transformation of food in the Dominican Republic", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 42 No. 7/8, pp. 696-711. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-11-2021-0270
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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