Frontlines & Foodways
Senior Fellow Priya Parrotta
Earlier this summer, I was asked by Pro-Animal Future, a citizen-led movement to end animal exploitation, to give a talk on the connections between the beach tourism industry and the vegan movement. As I scripted this brief presentation, I came to understand that these two subjects, though seemingly unrelated to each other, are in fact deeply interwoven. The following is a transcript of the talk, which combined music with highly abridged findings from my recently completed archival study, The Paradise Industry: The Making of Waikīkī Beach, 1890-1930. I share this here because the process of writing this talk led to certain insights about global foodways which arise, powerfully and poignantly, on the frontlines of climate change.
‘I’d like to open this talk with a selection of original songs, dedicated to the two movements which are closest to my heart: the vegan movement, and the movement for the wellbeing of tropical coastlines in a time of climate change. I present these songs as an audiovisual experience rather than a live performance because one of the guiding premises behind all of my work is that we, as human beings, are not at the center of every story. The songs are titled Rise & Shine, Repertoire, and Frontline.
To begin, a little bit of information about tropical islands: Because of their locations, fertile land and favorable climates, tropical islands have experienced particularly acutely the extractive histories of the modern world. For instance, they are places where the plantation economy was most aggressively pursued by colonial powers. Because they are small, they are places where the relationships between human and nonhuman injustices can be seen clearly. Living on an island, one realizes very quickly that environmental injustice, violence towards animals, and the exploitation of human beings are all connected.
At the same time, islands are unusually creative places, brimming with art and music and dance and humor. As a result, they are the birthplaces of some of the most colorful, beautiful, interesting alternatives to the kinds of extraction and exploitation which concern both island activists and vegan activists. Because of all this, islands are places where veganism can intersect with other justice movements in wonderful ways.
My most recent tropical island research has been on the history of the beach tourism industry. In other words, I’ve researched the process by which many of the world’s tropical coastlines have been transformed into sources of profit. I’m particularly interested in this topic because in recent years, in the aftermath of natural disasters like hurricanes, the global rich have been acquiring coastal land and turning it into luxury beachfront property at an unprecedented rate. In nations across the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, enormous areas of previously protected land have been purchased. Large populations have been priced out of their homes. This has dire consequences for animal life on these shorelines as well. While this is happening at a terrifying pace these days, there is a long history to this kind of behavior.
My latest study therefore focused on one of the world’s first examples of luxury beach tourism: the commercialization of Waikīkī Beach in Hawai’i between the years of 1890 to 1930. This was the story of how a very small group of very powerful men transformed what was previously a sustainably managed wetland ecosystem into a highly lucrative destination which would make them immeasurably rich.
An enormous amount of physical manipulation is required to create a commercial beach zone. There is nothing natural about the tropical beach as most of us have come to imagine it. In the case of Waikīkī, creating a tourist beach there involved, among a number of other devastations, the following: dynamiting coral reefs, draining wetlands to create dry land for hotels, building roads that cut through essential coastal habitat, importing large amounts of sand, destroying sacred sites, and then marketing the results to a public that had no idea that any of this had happened.
This process was not only physical, but also cultural and ideological. It not only involved devastating the ecosystem in material terms, but also of furthering attitudes towards nature that justified those changes. Because no system of violence wins without somehow convincing people that the benefits of this violence far outweigh the costs. Rather like the advertising of the meat and dairy industries, creating the tourist beach involved convincing people that destruction of nature was in some way part of the ‘good life.’ Profit, built upon misinformation, is the goal; and as we all know, the same is true in the world of animal agriculture. Here are some of the \ steps involved in turning a beach zone into a source of profit.
In Hawai’i at the turn of the twentieth century, the architects of the tourism industry – who, by the way, had initially made their money as plantation elites – passed legislation that allowed them to purchase land on the coast, and do whatever they wanted with that land, once they owned it. They created a market for the sale and exchange of that property which was entirely under their control. They furthered a highly capitalist construction of nature – in which living beings such as marine animals were seen merely as commodities and as ‘inputs to production’ … Rather than being regarded as alive, and worthy of dignity and respect, they were seen merely as ingredients in an experience – the luxury beach vacation – that could be bought and sold at a high price.
The architects of the beach tourism industry created recreational and consumer cultures that concealed the violence involved in commercializing the shore. They poured huge amounts of money into advertising, the creation of consumer products, and the fabrication of promises of freedom and fun through consumption.
In the process of all this, the creators of the luxury beach tourism industry in Hawai’i supplanted an Indigenous worldview which treated coastal nature as sacred. In its place, they propogated a vision of recreation, relaxation and privilege that was built upon massive amounts of extraction.
To me, the similarities between this process and the dynamics which we are trying to resist in the vegan movement are startling. And in that common ground, I see a great deal of potential and hope.
The vegan movement is about defending the dignity of all life, and to do that, we need to confront the core premises which undergird both law and public opinion. Both are based on key assumptions about what nonhuman life is for – production-- and what our own lives are for – consumption.
If we bring coastal activism into dialogue with the vegan movement, the result is a beautiful, vibrant, decolonial, non-capitalist vision of the future. To me, these are some of the elements of that vision:
First, a nontransactional attitude to land and to the animals who live there. Eliminating the idea that life is to be bought and sold, and replacing it with the idea that life is to be stewarded and cared for.
Second, a conviction that no living being is a commodity, but rather is sacred and deserving of deep respect.
Third, a peace-based way of embodying our relationships to the nonhuman world. Believing that our bodies are part of living systems, and that to live well is not to consume, but rather to treat others with gentleness and kindness.
Fourth, an end to consumer culture. The forging of a society that knows how to see past advertising, and make decisions about what to eat and what to do that are rooted in truth and in integrity.
In so many ways, ‘the good life’ has been defined for us in a way that is profoundly violence- based – violence towards land, towards the nonhuman animals who live upon it, as well as human beings. We need to move away from this violence-based idea of the good life, and instead work towards a vision of a better world which is based upon non-harm-- and even more than that, a profound kindness.
I’d like to end with a song called Love, Not Industry, which I hope conveys the ways in which love for all animals, and love for tropical coastlines, are connected.