The Bitter and Sweet of Chocolate in Europe

Carla D. Martin1 – Kathryn E. Sampeck2 The bitter and sweet of chocolate in Europe3 DoI: 10.18030/socio.hu.2015en.37 Abstract This paper examines the changing role of chocolate in European society, especially in light of the food movement turn to slow, small batch, crat chocolate, as a way to criically analyze relaionships of labor and race, gender, and class inequality. The changing culture of chocolate consumpion over centuries, from its pre-Columbian origins to the ways European colonists culturally and economically adopted chocolate shows a trajectory of increasing permeaion of European foods (more foods contain chocolate) and regionalizaion of tastes in chocolate recipes, most recently by small batch chocolate makers whose work crats local idenity through branding of a tropical product. Europe is the world’s biggest importer and processor of cacao as well as the largest per capita consumer of chocolate. Industrial chocolate is higher in sugar and less complex in taste compared to the variety of local chocolate makers, so chocolate occupies an uneasy place in European diets, especially in light of growing rates of obesity and recent “junk food taxes” that target sugary foods. The historical context and analysis of labor in cacao farming and chocolate producion shows a criical reliance on coerced labor. While the legacy of the past has been the decoupling of horriic coerced labor in cacao producion from the consciousness of everyday chocolate consumers, the growing vitality of small batch chocolate makers refocuses atenion on the country of origin--the condiions of producion--as well as local, European tastes-the condiions of consumpion. The authors employ interdisciplinary methodologies of close readings of primary sources that include historical recipes, criical analysis of representaion in historic and contemporary images and media, and descripive economic data of export and consumpion levels. This systemaic study of taste in chocolate and its social, economic, poliical, and cultural implicaions is carried out in an analyical framework of the historical coningency of the social construcion of realms of value, and that such construcion takes place within global and local poliical economic forces that tend to propagate inequality as a soluion to greater economic eiciency. Examining food access and food jusice in the light of ways people produce and consume chocolate can challenge assumpions about social inequaliies, race, health, and idenity and ofer insights into long-term sustainability. The criical analysis of these social factors suggests direcions for future educaion, investment, and acion by the ine and crat chocolate industry in Europe that can promote mutual beneits for producers and consumers. Keywords: chocolate, ethics, quality, lavor, anthropology, crat, taste, labor 1 Harvard University 2 Illinois State University 3 Presented at The Social Meaning of Food Workshop, The Insitute for Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, June 16–17, 2015, Budapest, Hungary 37 Carla D. Martin – Kathryn E. Sampeck The Bitter and Sweet of Chocolate in Europe Introduction Food is a “source of tension, dispute, and mutual misunderstanding in contemporary Europe” (Delamont 1995:1) such that social struggles can be expressed in terms of taste, with “prejudices directed toward both individuals and the members of paricular ethnic groups…expressed, not as ethnic or racial biases, but rather as opinions based in individual tastes...symbolically associated with certain racial and ethnic ideniies” (Bonner 1999:120). The cultural history of taste – here taken in its broadest sense – is a journey into the construcion of social selves. From this vantage point, however, chocolate presents a dilemma: while Europe might have a culinary dividing line between north and south, chocolate crosses that boundary. Indeed, this has been the case for centuries. This paper examines the changing role of chocolate in European society, especially in light of the food movement turn to slow, small batch, crat chocolate, as a way to criically analyse relaionships of labour and race, gender, and class inequality. The unusual place of chocolate, its ability to cross froniers and permeate ways of being and experiencing the world, suggests that chocolate can tell us much about not only past lives, but also about how we are right now. The foundaions for these transcendent yet contradictory relaions lie in the pre-Columbian uses and meanings of cacao, which European colonists then took up in new ways that in fact made tangible and possible fundamental conlicts in class, race, and gender that were intrinsic to colonialism: fantasic wealth built upon extracion and coerced labour; expanding ciizenry and consumpion, both of which fuelled cravings for social disincions. The colonial dilemma was to incorporate new wealth and people, yet maintain social, poliical, and economic hierarchy; taste and empire were inextricably bound together (Laudan 2013). The conluence of individual consumpion, taste, regionalism, and ethnicity is based in making a foreign product “local”. Social instability fuelled new uses and meanings of cacao and the widespread adopion of chocolate in the colonial period, developments that have gained even more momentum since. The current state of the chocolate industry has deep roots, yet romanic narraives obscure its understanding, which then makes charing a posiive path for a future of chocolate more diicult. Chocolate’s ancient and colonial past ofers a chance to understand fully the dilemmas and promise of chocolate for today and beter plan for a sustainable and palatable future. Pre-Columbian Cacao: the Place of Chocolate To understand the history of chocolate, we begin not necessarily at the beginning of the domesicaion and irst uses of cacao in its homeland in tropical America, but in the places, uses, and ime that had most to bear on the eventual adopion of chocolate in Europe. For this discussion, the emphasis is on the intersecion 38 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● of taste and labour and how highly disincive pre-Columbian antecedents had much to do with the ways that Europeans took up the substance, its producion, and its growth in popularity over ime. Facets that seem like colonial invenions were instead appropriaion – Europeans took up the siren call of chocolate in means that ampliied what Mesoamericans had already been doing. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican regimes of value for cacao invoked class-based authority and extracive producion of a commodity. Cacao itself, the processed bean, as well as the tools for making concocions deined an experience quite separate from other agricultural, consumable products, largely because Mesoamericans consumed cacao in simultaneously discordant and complementary ways: as a ritual ofering, as currency, as a lavouring in foods, and as a beverage. The dissonance of the meanings of cacao and chocolate persist today and in this sense, we experience chocolate as Mesoamericans did hundreds of years ago. Mesoamerican Tastes for Chocolate: Terroir, Meaning, and Wealth Numerous studies have demonstrated the early and widespread use of cacao in Mesoamerica, even as long as 4,000 years (Henderson et al. 2007; Powis et al. 2002). While the northern Amazonian basin of South America may have been the irst place of cacao domesicaion, cacao truly came into its own once it reached Mesoamerica. Cacao culivaion was widespread in Mesoamerica, but intensive cacao producion zones were rare due to the ickle nature of the domesicate (Bergmann 1969). By the Late Postclassic period (1200-1520 ACE), the most proliic zones of cacao producion were the Izalcos region of today’s western El Salvador, the Gulf Coastal region of Tabasco, and the Paciic Coastal region of Soconusco, which the Aztecs conquered to have direct access (López Mendoza 1987; Ruz Lhuiller 1969). This late pre-Columbian patern shows that although cacao could be accessed in small quaniies in many places, the principal supply came from a few; cacao largely came from somewhere else – an export commodity sent from a few principal places to broad swaths of Central America and Mexico. The idea of terroir, the unique lavours and quality associated with the manner of producion and almost inefable qualiies of geneics, climate, soil, and place, also came into play for Mesoamericans. PreColumbian inscripions describe how people prepared, consumed, and invested meaning in cacao. Maya royal scribes painted texts designaing the owner and prescribed contents, otenimes cacao beverages, of bespoke, “monogrammed” drinking vases. These texts are recipes that included diferent spices, colorants, and kinds of cacao in various stages of ripeness or processing and from paricular regions (Stuart 1988). These preColumbian examples from across Mesoamerica show that disinct recipes were emblemaic of a paricular place; taste and place designated each other. Cacao consumpion was so important that “the distribuion of cacao vessels in the Maya Lowlands relects poliical and social paterns as well as purely economic ones” (Houston et al. 1989:720). Terroir was alive and well in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. For all Meosamericans, cacao was a proper ofering in healing rituals, to endorse marriage alliances, and to ensure successful travel. During the Postclassic period, from Yucatan to Oaxaca, celebrants consumed cacao drinks during ceremonies to seal important social contracts and conirm the legiimacy of dynasies (Roys 1972: 106; Smith 1973:3 1; Thompson 1972:6). The ways commoners used cacao just before colonial contact 39 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● never exactly matched elite pracices, even though cacao was widely available. This creaion of social inequality through cacao producion and consumpion is an enduring legacy of chocolate. With a potent history of ritual, cosmological, and high-status associaions, cacao was a valued good for thousands of years in pre-Columbian Meosamerica. A fundamental change took place, however, not long before European contact: cacao became the small coin in a moneizing economy. Some have argued that cacao as currency was a Spanish innovaion (Feldman 1985:86; Landa et al. 1941:95), but Europeans expressed the great wonder of cacao irst as money rather than as a comesible (Benzoni 1565; Champlain 1859:29; Echagoyan 1603; Garcia de Palacio 1985; Gerarde 1597; Martyr 1617; Molina 1571:11r). One of the irst European accounts of cacao, by Peter Martyr (1617), extols the usefulness of cacao as money not because it was due to the civilizing inluence of Europeans, but because people of the New World were using a highly pracical form of currency when the Spanish arrived. Cacao as a means by which to ix price or exchange value paricularly as small coin implies much wider access and ideally consistent and abundant supply. Commoners had the potenial to accumulate cacao and ascend in status. To paraphrase Mintz (1985:97), cacao as money must have become a “kingly luxury of commoners” and a “spurious leveller of status.” To ignore or minimize this contact-period use of cacao is to overly narrow our understanding so that the dilemmas and contradictory nature of cacao become at a minimum, very hard to explain. Labouring in the Fields of the (Cacao) Lord The labour for working cacao orchards was mobilized at the level of the household as part of services and obligaion to regional dynasic states. Cacao agriculture was not highly gendered. Generally, pre-Columbian scenes of cacao oferings and consumpion have both males and females receiving and ofering cacao, and cacao is not portrayed as equivalent to maleness or femaleness. Lords administered their dependants and lands, which included peasants who had service and tribute responsibiliies in various levels of government and more or less direct access to land as well as tenant farmers who provided goods for individual lords on their private holdings and owed nothing to the larger polity (Evans 1991:64; Lockhart 1992:106). In the preColumbian system of labour obligaions, lords demanded services and tribute; cacao producion was a way to saisfy the obligaions of ciizenship, and consuming cacao was a way to display lordly power. Spaniards imposed more European forms within this matrix; they usurped the “territory” of chocolate producion. What is “Chocolate?” It is clear that “chocolate” was one of many pre-Columbian recipes for a cacao beverage (Beliaev et al. 2010, Stuart 2006). “Chocolat” is a Nahua word and has its origin in peripheral Nahua dialects of southern Mesoamerica, including Pipil of the Izalcos colonial Guatemala. Many early accounts idenify chocolate as a Guatemalan recipe. Otherwise excellent analyses of the domesicaion of cacao and its pre-Columbian uses almost always at some point in the narraive make a surprising mistake: they use “cacao” and “chocolate” interchangeably (such as Beliaev et al. 2010, Macri 2005, several chapters in McNeil 2006, Norton 2006). 40 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● For example, the descripion in the Florenine Codex of cacao beverage making and selling begins with “Tlaquetzalnamacac” translated as “the seller of ine chocolate.” While the English translaion of Sahagún’s sixteenth-century Florenine Codex refers to “chocolate,” neither the Spanish nor the Nahuatl original uses the term, but instead refers to a “beverage of cacao” (Sahagún, 1961 [1575–1577]: 93). “Chocolate” was by no means the word or recipe of choice unil the sixteenth century at the earliest. The scene, then, just before Spanish contact is that what may have seemed like a fairly common culigen – rather like maize – was in reality largely a non-local product, as it was produced in large amounts principally in a few discrete zones. Cacao preparaions such as chocolate were iconic of place, designated terroir, while consumers were an increasingly broader class of Mesoamericans. Mesoamerican lords managed cacao culivaion as a part of the funcioning of the state and duty of common households. The ability to produce cacao, especially for export, reinforced social hierarchies. The consumpion of cacao was not just as a comesible, but also as a commodity money. The added value, as it were, reduplicated the associaions of cacao with elite, now monied, classes, while its propagaion as common currency also narrowed the separaion of those very classes. It ied together people in new ways and destabilized social relaions even as the moneized economy aided exchanges in other ways. The disincive tools and preparaion of cacao beverages – the molinillo, the steep-sided cup, and the spouted pot – created a highly disincive sensorial experience of cacao beverages in Mesoamerican foodways. Which of these features did Europeans embrace, and which did they reject? The answer reveals much about the process of colonialism and how we know chocolate today. Introducing Chocolate: Wealth versus Taste For European sensibiliies, cacao as a beverage was at irst a hard sell – biter, thick, in short, distasteful to the point of nausea (Benzoni 1565). Norton, however, argued that “the Spanish did not alter chocolate to it the predilecions of their palate … Europeans in the New World and then the Old World somaized naive aestheic values” (2006:660). In fact, the wholesale European adopion of Mesoamerican chocolate Norton described involved the full complement of Mesoamerican pracices and the pace of change in consumpion was much faster. While cacao as a food item was of-puing, the idea of cacao as money had great appeal because sixteenth-century Europe was facing a currency crisis due to a lack of small denominaions. Cacao as a commodity money was taken on enthusiasically by Europeans, with the Crown quickly adoping cacao as legal tender for transacions. The use of cacao as a wealth item for Europeans coninued well into the eighteenth century, with cacao, solid chocolate, and chocolate-related serving vessels recorded in eighteenth-century colonial Briish Williamsburg probate records, for example. How readily did Europeans adopt Mesoamerican tastes? A survey of early colonial cacao beverage recipes shows that early colonial Mesoamerican recipes usually had vanilla and water, and included a variable array of aromaic lavours, such as orejuela (custard apple) and piquant spices, such as chile pepper. Sweetness, by adding honey, occurred, as well (Chart 1). These Mesoamerican colonial recipes also show Europeanizaion, by the adopion of lavourings such as sesame, almond, and sugar. 41 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Chart 1. Frequencies of cacao beverage ingredients in Spanish America. The earliest European recipes in many senses follow the Mesoamerican lavour proile, but by using much more familiar and established lavourants acquired through trade or produced in Europe, such as cinnamon, anise, and pepper (Chart 2). Recipes from American colonies and Europe are all regionally disinct from each other, much as was the case for pre-Columbian Mesoamericans. Europeans truly embraced cacao as a way to deine disinct tastes. Chart 2. Frequencies of colonial European chocolate recipe ingredients. 42 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Part and parcel of European embrace of the taste for cacao was the adopion of all the tools of beverage making, but again, translated into diferent materials. European molinillos and spouted pots were made of metal – copper or silver. The steep-sided cups could be of ceramic, but usually in glazed maiolica or faience, or later, reined white earthenwares or porcelain. While depicions of Indians consuming cacao beverages show locally-made jícaras (gourd cups) and coarse earthenware vessels (Figures 1 and 2), cups and pots in drawings and painings of creoles or Europeans are made of ceramic or metal. All of the elements of the Mesoamerican form are present, but the content is disinctly European. Figure 1. Girolamo Benzoni’s sixteenth-century depicion of cacao processing. Original in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. Figure 2. Illustraions of the American, Indian associaions of chocolate in Philippe Dufour’s treaise on chocolate. Original in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. 43 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Europe and Chocolate: Colonial Desire Where in all of this, is chocolate? A leter writen by the Jesuit Pedro de Morales in 1579 describes chocolate as a blend of cacao and achiote (Mariscal Haz 2000:57). “Achiote” is known in English as “annato,” and gives a red hue to foods. Morales stated explicitly that this drink “was invented in Guatemala.” Most early sources link chocolate and Guatemala, including Henry Stubbe, the Briish King’s Royal Physician, who wrote that “chocolate has been eternally drunk in Guatemala (as ale is to England)” (1662:3). Stubbe (1667) endeavoured to “take care, that England know it, and have the beneit thereof” and made clear that all classes, sexes, and temperaments could beneit from chocolate if taken in the correct way, tailored to a person’s consituion. He argued that: …this is the most preious Drink of Drinks; this excells all others in advantages for our health, which either Time by a long succession of years, or encrease of Luxury and Pleasure to this day hath acquainted us with: because neither in the Chocolata itself being made into a Drink, no nor int any Ingredient thereof, is there any thing waning, that is necessary for the Life, or delight of Man, and so to invite him to use it. (Stubbe 1667:95-100) Relaive amounts of Spanish tribute quotas leave no doubt where the homeland of the special recipe of chocolate was: the Izalcos region of today’s western El Salvador (Ciudad Real 1973; Fowler 1987, 1989, 2006; García de Palacio 1985[1576-1587]). From the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, about 1.2 billion cacao beans per year were exported from Acajutla, the port of the Izalcos, and tribute levels from this region were at least triple those of other cacao-producing zones (Escalante 1992(1):56). The word “chocolate” irst appears in central Mexican and Spanish documents just as the Izalcos region reaches its peak of producion and the price of cacao reaches an astronomical all-ime high around 1580. The word for a special recipe for a cacao drink from the region of astronomical cacao producion started to become the name for the commodity when it became a source of fantasic wealth. As the wealth grew, the word spread. Europeans learned to like chocolate because of their material dependence on Indians, but this was not because it was a curious food or drink, but because it was an engine of commerce. Colonial Labour: Servitude and Slavery Another way that Europeans adopted cacao wholesale was in management of producion. How was this astronomical amount of cacao produced? Did colonizaion usher in fundamentally diferent forms of labour? The Spanish insituion of the encomienda can be seen as much like pre-Columbian forms of tribute duty. An encomienda is a reward by the Spanish crown of labour and tribute in a region to colonists of merit such as conquistadors. Some of the irst major exports of cacao happen at about the ime the Izalcos encomienda was awarded, and it became one of the richest encomiendas in all of the Indies. The success of cacao commerce created a nearly unrestrained frenzy for colonial control over every last bean. In this regard, Spanish coercive policies and illegal abuse were a departure from pre-Columbian antecedents. Indigenous cacao producers were held hostage, prevented from buying products freely, nor did they produce basic, everyday items. Encomenderos had monopolies on basic foodstufs, which sold for up to 44 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● ten imes their typical value (Escalante 1992(1):215). Encomenderos were accused of sending slaves to enter into houses as well as orchards and take cacao by force, torturing, and incarceraing people suspected of hiding cacao reserves (Escalante 1992(1):259). Beyond oicial tribute, the Spaniards stole more, and recaptured even more by selling products at inlated prices. The Spanish assessed tribute duies of Izalcos-region encomiendas by married Indian households and by the amount of land and cacao trees the individual had rights to. The household members decided how and who worked in the cacao orchards, as was done before colonizaion. Colonial cacao orchard labour was a mix of chatel slavery (in that indigenous residents were held hostage) and wage labour, paid by the naive families. From 1542-1580, even ater the New Laws prohibiing naive enslavement, the condiions for Izalcos cacao labour became worse and worse. Labour shortages due to disease were compensated for by increasing numbers of migrant wage labourers, with only 10-20% of original indigenous families remaining in some towns. So, the Spanish siphoned of the skills, knowledge, and experience of indigenous residents. African Slavery, Darkness, and Health Ater the iniial, long sixteenth-century reliance on encomienda-coerced labour and rapid shits to naive-controlled wage labour, market dominance in cacao producion shited to new regions free of the entanglements of a long heritage of indigenous producion: today’s Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Ecuador (McLeod 2008). These regions did not have the same skilled, knowledgeable populaion; the orchards were on privately-owned land and worked by enslaved Africans. This change was met by clamoring resistance on the part of colonial Guatemalans, who saw their wealth slipping away. They phrased their complaints in terms of health and quality. Residents of Guatemala made repeated legal claims that pleaded for limitaions on the export of cacao of Guayaquil and other centres because it was of poor quality (Escalante 1992). Complaints stated that low-grade cacao was looding the market and driving down prices (which was, in fact, true, at least in terms of price). Many complaints also argued that this low-quality product made people sick or at least did not have the full health beneits of high quality cacao (Escalante 1992). These complaints lesh out colonial dilemmas regarding the beneits of cacao and its connecion to morality. This move towards African slavery was also accompanied by a more consistent associaion of “chocolate” with a cacao drink that was dark, foamy, and potenially sinful or decadent (León Pinelo 1636, Figure 3). The overall trend during the colonial period is for chocolate to become increasingly, even exclusively, associated with sweet, dark, rich foods and drinks. The number of ingredients in recipes also tends to become fewer over ime, such that cacao, divorced from the vanilla that almost always co-occurred with it, becomes a single, highly sweetened lavour. African enslavement, sugar, and tastes for sweetness mutually reinforced each other, creaing a new foodways regime that was predicated upon capitalism; chocolate tastes and producion were part of this nexus (Mintz 1985). While pre-Columbian evidence demonstrates that sweetened forms of cacao concocions existed long before Europeans found chocolate (and in fact, perhaps Europeans learned to like the sweetened versions by tasing them irst in Mesoamerica), indigenous Mesoamericans did not exclusively associate chocolate with darkness and sweetness. That “chocolate” was rich, dark, biter, and sweet related 45 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Figure 3. Slavery and chocolate. Image from “Le More-lack, ou Essai sur les moyens les plus doux & les plus équitables d’abolir la traite & l’esclavage des nègres d’Afrique, ...”, London, 1789. Figure 4. From the Lewis Walpole Collecion. directly to its connecion to racialized circumstances of labour; that it was wealth, but secured at a moral and social cost. Chocolate could mark disincion in taste, quite literally, yet also keep that colonial, foreign, tropical product relegated to a comprehensible and restrained place. Engendering Chocolate One of the most dramaic shits in the semanics of chocolate, and probably inimately connected with its shit towards sweetness, is its feminizaion. While pre-Columbian antecedents suggest a gendering that is not exactly male or female, colonial narraives strongly connect chocolate and women (Figure 4). As menioned above, a 1578 allegorical arch personiied Guatemala as a woman holding a cacao branch. In fact, chocolate was seen to paricularly afect women, transforming their beauty and ferility, in some cases dangerously so; women would do anything, even murder a Bishop, for chocolate (Stubbe 1662). Enslaved Labour, Globalization of Cacao Production, Shifting Tastes The historical context and analysis of labour in cacao farming and chocolate producion shows a criical reliance on coerced labour in the forms of chatel slavery and indentured servitude, precedents for the complex present-day labour condiions in cacao and chocolate that include the devaluaion of labour, forced labour, and the worst forms of child labour. As described above, with the collapse of the encomienda system that usurped indigenous labour and land, Europeans sought a new means to meet increasing Old World demand for exoic New World cash crops. From roughly 1500 to 1900, between 10 and 15 million enslaved Africans survived 46 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● forced transport across the Atlanic and began working under chatel slavery, treated as property or what Mintz (1985) has called “false commodiies.” Approximately 60% of enslaved Africans arrived in the Caribbean, 30% in Brazil, and less than 10% in Briish North America (Gomez 2005). Mintz writes: “England fought the most, conquered the most colonies, imported the most slaves, and went furthest and fastest in creaing a plantaion system. The most important product of the system was sugar” (1985: 38). Indeed, lucraive commodiies like sugar (and rum), cofee, tobacco, coton, and cacao required intensive, skilled labour, working under frequently strenuous condiions. The life expectancy of many of the enslaved was very low, especially in sugar producion. Upon arrival, enslaved sugar labourers were expected to survive only 7 to 8 years. The triangular Atlanic trade was the site of enormous wealth generaion and botanical, demographic, and cultural change. Cacao, naive to South America, was spread throughout the New World, Southeast Asia, and West and Central Africa for culivaion. Imperial powers came to rely on goods produced by enslaved labourers, implicaing slavery directly in the development of capitalism (Williams 1994). The crown jewels – goods-producing colonies controlled by European powers (for France, Saint-Domingue, now Haii; for Spain, Cuba; Great Britain, Jamaica; Portugal, Brazil and eventually São Tomé and Príncipe; and the United States, The South) – became sites for the extracion of wealth. By way of example, in the case of France and SaintDomingue, by 1789, the colony exported nearly half of the world’s cofee and sugar (more than Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil combined) and provided France with 40% of the value of all French trade. More than 1 million of the 25 million inhabitants of France depended directly on the slave trade for their livelihood (Davis 2007). While much of the forced exchange of lives and labor took place between Africa and Lain America, both Europe and North America were thoroughly implicated in this trade system. Wriing at Oxford in 1839, the prominent Briish colonial administrator Herman Merivale explains: We speak of the blood-cemented fabric of the prosperity of New Orleans or the Havanna: let us look at home. What raised Liverpool and Manchester from provincial towns to giganic ciies? What maintains now their ever acive industry and their rapid accumulaion of wealth? The exchange of their produce with that raised by the American slaves; and their present opulence is as really owing to the toil and sufering of the negro, as if his hands had excavated their docks and fabricated their steam-engines... Every trader who carries on commerce with those countries, from the great house which lends its name and funds to support the credit of the American Bank, down to the Birmingham merchant who makes a shipment of shackles to Cuba or the coast of Africa, is in his own way an upholder of slavery: and I do not see how any consumer who drinks cofee or wears coton can escape from the same sweeping charge. (1861:302) Opposiion to Atlanic chatel slavery always existed and, as enslavement became less inancially viable and morally tolerated, aboliion came gradually and slowly over a period of approximately 100 years.4 Aboliion 4 The Haiian Revoluion (1791-1804) culminated in the end of slavery and formaion of the Republic of Haii, though the French demanded crippling reparaions for their inancial losses. Then, in 1834, the Briish Slavery Aboliion act abolished slavery throughout most of the Briish Empire; France and Denmark followed more than a decade later. The United States abolished slavery with the thirteenth amendment to its Consituion in 1865. Cuba and Brazil followed much later, with aboliion in 1886 and 1888, respecively. 47 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● frequently involved a coninued extracion of wealth, with periods of indentured servitude and schemes to compensate former slave owners for their loss of property. Only rarely was aboliion accompanied by reparaions for the formerly enslaved, and poverty and landlessness remain serious problems among the descendants of enslaved people throughout cash crop producing regions today. Once the system of slavery came apart at the seams, European powers worked to increase cacao producion in other places with suitable climates and inexpensive labour sources, such as São Tomé and Príncipe, West Africa’s Gold Coast, and Indonesia. Exploitaive labour pracices coninued in cacao and sugar producion post-aboliion. In the early 1900s, slavery was uncovered on cacao plantaions in Fernando Pó (now known as Bioko) and in Cameroon, both on German and on Duala elite plantaions (Clarence-Smith 2000). The use of enslaved people from Angola was common on Portuguese plantaions on the islands of São Tomé and Principe from the 1880s and coninued there well into the mid-1900s (Satre 2005). Indentured servitude of South and East Asians was also common throughout the colonial world. Cultural contact through colonial enslavement contributed directly to the shit in culture and taste among Europeans in relaion to chocolate. Mintz explains the challenge of understanding the scale of these changes: The irst sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a signiicant historical event, because it preigured the transformaion of an enire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis. We must struggle to understand fully the consequences of that and kindred events, for upon them was erected an enirely diferent concepion of the relaionship between producers and consumers, of the meaning of work, of the deiniion of self, of the nature of things. What commodiies are, and what commodiies mean, would thereater be forever diferent. And for that same reason, what persons are, and what being a person means, changed accordingly. In understanding the relaionship between commodity and person, we unearth anew the history of ourselves. (1985: 214) These societal shits in meaning were fundamentally linked to the dislocaion of producion and consumpion in commodity markets, and the transformaion of the relaionship between producers and consumers. Gikandi, too, argues in Slavery and the Culture of Taste (2011) that slavery was in fact key to white selffashioning of idenity, as evidenced in art, literature, and personal diaries from Europe and the United States. While slavery was treated as a taint to good taste and at imes acively kept out of the narraive of high culture, posing in portraits with an enslaved person became part of a popular genre and was seen as representaive of excellent taste and access to vast fortunes. Simultaneously, enslaved people were dehumanized to jusify their absence from narraives and African-derived cultural elements were appropriated by whites and treated as though they were European-derived. Thus, the power dynamics of race and culture came to be heavily inlected by the history of enslavement. Robertson similarly considers these and related power dynamics in Chocolate, Women, and Empire. She writes: “In the mythology of chocolate, the power relaions of producion and consumpion are subsumed by a more atracive narraive of exoic peoples and their surroundings…chocolate seems to generate a paricular type of history wriing… one which delves into the realms of fantasy and romance” (2009: 85–86). Chocolate 48 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● conquered the tastes of Europeans throughout the colonial period, spread by monks and nuns, among noble families, and indicaive of access to the rich resources of the exoic New World, and was simultaneously a key player in the hybridizaion of geneics, language, culture and lavour. Robertson coninues to explain that because chocolate was romanically constructed as “luxurious, hedonisic and sensual” (2009: 3) due to its perceived relaionship with aluence, a powerful trope emerged linking chocolate and sex in the European imaginaion. This trope was also linked to race, as a result of chocolate’s so-called “exoic” origins and the reliance upon the labour of people of colour for its culivaion. Social Inequality and the Popularization of Chocolate A long-term perspecive on the changing culture of chocolate consumpion shows a trajectory of increasing permeaion of chocolate into European foods and regionalizaion of tastes in chocolate recipes, such as the Hungarian chocolate pastry tradiion of Rigó Jancsi (chocolate sponge cake with chocolate cream illing). Over ime, this development of local taste has been undermined by industrial manufacture of chocolate. Cacao, a non-European food, an American culigen, is thus made “local” through processing. The resuling markeing claims all involve choices that set consumers’ lives apart from those who produced it. It is a food ideology that makes the strange familiar (chocolate as a common, everyday food), and what should be familiar, or transparent, strange (how chocolate comes to be). With the industrializaion of food, paricularly with mechanizaion, retailing, and transportaion changes in the 1800s, chocolate underwent an enormous change. It was no longer an elite, expensive product primarily consumed as a beverage, but instead an inexpensive cocoa powder to be drunk or low-cacao-content chocolate bar to be consumed as a food by elite and non-elite alike. Companies like Lindt, Nestlé, Cadbury, Hershey’s, and Mars, relaive early arrivals to the chocolate manufacturing game, implemented major changes in industrial chocolate producion to support the ability to scale (Coe and Coe 2013). They aimed to create uniform products by blending beans and standardizing formulaions that would taste the same each ime consumers purchased them. This represented a stark contrast to historical chocolate lavour experiences, which, as shown above, at imes allowed consumers to specify the origin of the chocolate of their preference in great detail. Large chocolate manufacturers also sought means to regulate producion against adulteraion and to promote longer shelf life of products. Addiionally, they found it increasingly important to control the supply chain to avoid interrupions in producion.5 Over ime, the industry shited dramaically, and large chocolate manufacturers became the producers of the majority of the world’s chocolate. Cacao culivaion began in the late 1800s on the Gold Coast (what would become Ghana), but expanded in earnest in the 1900s, partly due to divestment from São Tomé and Príncipe by Briish chocolate irms following the scandals uncovering enslaved labour there (Clarence-Smith 2000, Satre 2005). The intersecional relaion of race, gender, and class in chocolate became further complicated when women were put to work in the Quaker owned factories in imagined utopian villages like Bourneville and York, where morality and separaion 5 E.g. Milton Hershey, who already carefully controlled his milk supply, purchased land for sugar producion in Cuba in the early 1900s to ascertain access to the commodity even in the event of a world war, going so far as to construct a local railway system to support it. 49 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● of the sexes was treated as paramount to the preservaion of civilized society. Contemporary cacao farming, too, is highly gendered; most late colonial and contemporary farmers have historically been depicted as men, though it is well documented that women and children contribute a signiicant amount of labour to culivaion of the crop. Adverisements, both historical and contemporary, regularly gender and racialize chocolate, as described in detail in Robertson (2009) and Leissle (2012). With these changes in producion came massive changes in lavour and nutriional content, as well, such that industrially manufactured chocolate and candy typify what scholars now call “ultraprocessed foods.” Seeking economy, manufacturers began to subsitute ariicial ingredients like vanillin for vanilla and vegetable oil for cocoa buter and to otherwise alter the taste, texture, and experience of eaing chocolate. As a result, the processed, the ariicial, and the fake came to be commonplace throughout the twenieth century, and even expected as part of chocolate lavour (Kawash 2013). Sugar and fat, both key components of chocolate that at diferent imes were celebrated or viliied through adverising, powerful lobbies, and government policy, became linked with the prevailing social mores. Today, Europe is the world’s biggest processor of cacao (60% of the world total) as well as the largest per capita consumer of chocolate (50% of the world total) (ICCO 2013). Eighteen of the top 20 chocolate consuming naions are in Europe. The average Briish ciizen will consume 7.5 kg (16.5 lbs) of chocolate per year, the average Austrian 7.8 kg (17.25 lbs), and the average Swiss 9 kg (20 lbs) (Nieburg 2014). Industrial chocolate products, such as the popular Hungarian Túró Rudi and Túró Csoki are higher in sugar and less complex in lavour when compared to the ine Hungarian bean to bar crat chocolate made by makers such as Szántó Tibor and Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé and the ine confecions of chocolaier chocoMe. Today’s largest companies, colloquially known as the “Big Five,” are Nestlé, Mars, Cadbury (owned by Krat), Hershey’s, and Ferrero, three of which have European roots, and all of which seek global consumer brand loyalty. To support increasing demand for chocolate in the 1960s and 1970s, following independence from Britain and France, cacao producion increased heavily in the newly formed states of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. While producion has at imes since sufered due to government instability or civil war in these naions, they remain the top two naional producers worldwide, followed by Indonesia. The West and Central African naions of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon collecively produce approximately 70% of the world’s cacao today. The longstanding disjuncture between producers and consumers is highlighted by the consumpion of producers: even though Africa is world’s biggest producer of cacao, it is also the smallest per capita consumer of chocolate (3% of the world total) (ICCO 2013). Though cacao was less suited to large-scale plantaion producion than crops like sugar or tea, the long history and ongoing problem of exploitaive labour pracices have largely been forgoten, except by those consumers who acively seek to avoid them in the present day. The demographics of cacao producion in these African countries are striking. The vast majority of cacao producion takes place on 2 million small, independent family farms ranging in size from 2 to 4 hectares and characterized by complex systems of land ownership and landlessness. Depending on the locaion, each hectare produces only 300 to 400 kilograms of cacao beans annually, considerably less than many Lain American or South-east Asian farms, due to a number of factors including aging trees, disease, lack of funds for ferilizers, 50 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● and limited educaion. The median age of farmers is approximately 50 and, while a typical household head is male, women and children contribute a great deal of labour (World Cocoa Foundaion 2014). One 2011 study showed that the average daily income per capita for a Ghanaian cacao farming household is below $0.30 USD. Due to these factors, when surveyed, less than one-quarter of cacao farmers said that they would recommend that their children go into cacao farming (Hainmueller et al. 2011). At present, these farmers collecively produce 2.8 million metric tons of cacao per year. Farmers in West and Central Africa face many criical challenges; perhaps the most well-known outside of the region is that of eliminaing the worst forms of child labour. Muliple studies have been conducted by independent organizaions in recent years to track the problem (Berlan 2011).6 The issue of labour abuses in cacao culivaion has been publicized widely as a result of journalisic and consumer advocacy, with a number of documentaries made and consumer campaigns staged since evidence of child traicking and slavery on cacao farms was brought to public knowledge in the late 1990s. It is undeniable that some West African children are traicked and forced to labour in dangerous condiions with no or litle pay on cacao farms. These numbers are diicult to track, but abuses are serious. It is equally important not to hyperbolize through reliance on tropes denigraing to West African culture, as is oten the case in advocacy eforts. The problemaic result of much of this advocacy is a persistent exploiter-exploited binary stereotype in relaion to West African cacao and limited pracical improvement of farmer livelihoods and access to social services. The Rise of Compassionate Chocolate Consumerism Responses to labour problems in the cacao-chocolate supply chain have included the Harkin-Engel Protocol; non-governmental organizaion investments, program development, and research; Corporate Social Responsibility standards; consumer awareness campaigns and boycots; legislaion in African countries; and legal acion abroad (e.g. the 2010 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and an ongoing lawsuit in California to determine if Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland, and Cargill should be held responsible for child enslavement on farms from which they sourced cacao in 1990s). It remains debatable if the Harkin-Engel Protocol of 2001, a voluntary internaional agreement aimed at ending some of the worst forms of child labour, has had a signiicant efect in stemming the problem. In an atempt to address labour abuses and increase farmer yields to ensure a steady cacao supply chain, a variety of ceriicaion schemes (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, UTZ Ceriied, IMO Fair For Life) have proliferated in cacao sourcing, atracing signiicant consumer interest. As McCabe shows, through markeing 6 Most notable is a series of studies from Tulane University from the project “Oversight of Public and Private Iniiaives to Eliminate the Worst Forms of Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana,” the indings of which demonstrate mixed results at best from cocoa industry atempts to remediate the worst forms of child labour, with numbers of children involved shown to be increasing in 2013/14 survey data (Tulane University 2015). The series also conirms that many children work on cacao farms in Africa not as forced labourers but as parts of family labour pools. It is when their work tasks consitute hazardous labour – such as transporing heavy loads, pesicide and ferilizer applicaion, or the use of sharp tools like machetes – or interferes with physical and educaional development that this breaches internaional agreement. Many children working in these condiions receive no training or protecive gear. Hazardous labour can result in injury and sickness, musculoskeletal disorders, sprains, laceraions, fractures, eye injuries, rashes, and respiratory irritaion. Long-term negaive health efects are likely. In addiion, some research shows that hard labour can developmentally delay children (Berlan 2011). 51 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● and consumer awareness around labour abuses in cacao culivaion and fair trade ceriicaions, ine chocolate “was transformed from deterritorialized product perceived to come from chocolaiers in West European countries like Belgium and France to reterritorialized product connected to cocoa bean growers in tropical regions of the world” (2015:54). The ine chocolate market exhibits what she calls “resistance” – a form of agency – distributed in a ine chocolate assemblage of connoisseurs, products, producers, and insituional discourse, and characterized by a group force or momentum to link sensual enjoyment with ethical concern. Yet, dissening voices on ceriicaion are gaining in volume, with contradicions in the movement ever more apparent. The primary argument made by fair trade labeling criics is that the movement does more to make wealthy consumers feel good than to signiicantly counter poverty in the developing world. For example, according to some calculaions, an American consumer’s dollar paid for a fair trade product results in only 3 cents more paid to a developing country farmer than a dollar paid for an unceriied product (Sylla 2014). The rhetorical claims of fair trade, therefore, are strikingly diferent than the results of its pracice. In addiion, emerging arguments suggest that ceriicaion siles innovaion by prioriizing consensus among paricipaing companies and incenivizing only baseline standards adherence, ulimately becoming part of the problem rather than part of the soluion (Poynton 2015). Direct trade schemes and transparency based on companies’ stated values are increasingly championed as important methods to transform and verify supply chains, though evidence of their superior efeciveness in cacao sourcing has not been thoroughly documented or analysed. Sill more, chocolate occupies an uneasy place in European diets today, especially in light of growing rates of obesity and recent “junk food taxes” that target foods high in salt, sugar, or fat (Daley 2013). While industrially manufactured chocolate usually falls into the category of candy, much of the ine chocolate on the market is sold as high in anioxidants and otherwise of potenial beneit to consumer health. This complex link between chocolate and morality is boldly apparent in the atempts by large chocolate manufacturers to corner the Asian market and its potenial billions of customers. These atempts are characterized by a pervasive Orientalism that aims to conquer the hearts and minds of innocent Asian consumers by atracing them to Western sin (e.g. Allen 2010). A Return To Fine Flavour A serious, regretable loss of agrobiodiversity linked to lavour also occurred as chocolate manufacturers prioriized sourcing of more inexpensive, bulk cacao over ine cacao.7 In the industry, bulk cacao is generally understood to produce with higher yield and to be more disease resistant, though this is oten coupled with a 7 The diference between the two, which remains controversial as a result of our sill emerging comprehension of cacao geneics, is deined by the Internaional Cocoa Organizaion as follows:The world cacao market disinguishes between two broad categories of cacao beans: “ine or lavour” cacao beans, and “bulk” or “ordinary” cacao beans. As a general concept, ine or lavour cacao beans are produced from Criollo or Trinitario cacao-tree varieies, while bulk cacao beans come from Forastero trees. There are, however, known excepions to this generalizaion. Nacional trees in Ecuador, considered to be Forastero-type trees, produce ine or lavour cacao. On the other hand, Cameroonian cacao beans are produced from Trinitario-type trees and their cacao powder has a disinct and sought-ater red colour. However, these beans are classiied as bulk cacao beans. (ICCO 2015) Arguably the most popular strain right now, CCN-51, has been simultaneously heralded by Big Chocolate as a soluion to the world’s growing needs for more cocoa, and villainized among ine lavour advocates. 52 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● greater labour requirement. It is sold at a commodity price per ton and makes up between 93 and 95% of global producion today. However, connoisseurs note that bulk cacao most oten has inferior lavour and aromaic qualiies when compared to ine cacao. Fine cacao, on the other hand, is oten believed to produce lower yields and be more suscepible to disease, though emerging research suggests that this is an oversimpliicaion. In general, it is sold at a higher price per ton based on perceived quality of beans, suggesing the potenial to improve farmer livelihoods. Its ine lavour status is determined by quality assessment of the beans, especially in relaion to geneics, origin, and post-harvest pracices (though lack of standardizaion leaves much to be desired). At present, ine cacao makes up only 5 to 7% of global producion, a stark diference from the early 1900s, when it was produced in virtually the same quanity as bulk cacao. In response to the perceived loss of lavour and quality in industrially manufactured chocolate, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, an increasing number of bean to bar chocolate makers made a return to small scale manufacturing, oten using vintage equipment and single origin ine cacao. Companies like Valrhona, Bonnat, Cluizel (France), Domori (Italy), El Rey (Venezuela), and Scharfen Berger (based in the United States, and now owned by Hershey’s) atracted high end consumer interest by markeing their products as haute cuisine, crated by skilled arisans with a focus on ine lavour. This relected a return to interest in terroir, or the sense of a place, in chocolate. This renewed consumer interest in ine lavour, combined with increased desire to avoid the highly publicized problem of child slavery in chocolate (with all the requisite challenges in understanding the issue) proved foundaional to the success of the growing interest in the bean to bar, ine chocolate market (Eber and Williams 2012; Rosenblum 2005) . Such social producion of taste has also informed the self-fashioning of European idenity in relaion to chocolate, as demonstrated by Terrio in her ethnographic account of research among French chocolaiers. She writes that in the mid-1900s: “chocolaiers were a people without a history because of their ambiguous role in a postwar history whose master narraive was constructed around the themes of modernizaion and professionalizaion” (2000:11). As French chocolaiers grappled with the formalizaion of deiniions of crat work, associaions, and training models, they also engaged in the producion of a new noion of good taste focused on vintage, grand cru dark chocolates. Together with crat leaders, arisanal families, taste makers, CEOs, adverising execuives, government authoriies, and consumers, they confronted historical noions of French idenity in the late capitalist age and forged a new French chocolate idenity based around the perceived superiority of locally produced, arisanal chocolate over seemingly anonymous industrially manufactured chocolate. Terrio’s research carefully tracks issues of gender, familial heritage, and authenic naional idenity that are complemented by Robertson’s (2009) focus on gender, race, class, and the power relaions of producion. This allows us to consider the conlict between arisanal, crat producion that is local and speciic in the increasingly generalized, delocalized European Union food system. Chocolate, too, is a part of the broadly deined global food movement, founded on several inluenial ideologies. As Winson details, general tenets of the food movement include the beliefs that: consumers have rights which must be fought for rather than assumed; human and environmental health go hand in hand; there is no such thing as an average consumer; 53 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● what maters is not just “what” is eaten, but “how” it is produced and distributed; and policies can be changed for the beter, but this requires imaginaion, coaliions, and focused efort. Winson explains: In the process of [consuming food and drink] we take them inside our very bodies, a fact that gives them special signiicance denied such ‘externally’ consumed commodiies as refrigerators, automobiles, house paint or television sets. Moreover, unlike many other goods that we produce and consume in capitalist society, food is an essenial commodity: we literally cannot live without it (although this is not to say that all of the processed food products for sale today are essenial). (1992:4) The consumpion of food is thus fraught with global signiicance. Arising from the early interest in single origin, bean to bar chocolate came a turn to slow, small- or microbatch crat chocolate in the late 1990s, with a heavy focus on batch producion, lavour, quality, and perceived ethical sourcing of raw ingredients.8 Since the mid-2000s, when the number of companies hovered at around half a dozen in North America, a proliferaion of crat chocolate makers has occurred, with over 150 companies now operaing in North America (Brelinski 2015), and an esimated 70 companies in Europe (Bernardini 2015). Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé, a Budapest-based company, is one example of a local Hungarian crat chocolate maker. Started in 2004 by a husband and wife team, the company now has a retail shop in Budapest’s art district, and a small but expanding factory where the chocolate is made. The owners carefully source cacao from respected operaions, even going so far as to highlight the post-harvest pracices of the growers and to specify which geneic variety comes from which country of origin in their markeing materials. Their single origin dark chocolate bars are made in elaborate moulds designed to look like a tradiional Hungarian ile and wrapped in ornate, colourful paper. Over the years, Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé products have won several awards from the UK-based Academy of Chocolate and Guild of Fine Food and have been inalists in the Internaional Chocolate Awards compeiion. The company is explicit in its mission to meld tradiional and modern, crat and ine art: Chocolate as a material is paricularly inspiring. We at Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé use tradiional processes and pure ingredients to achieve the most natural lavours and apply detailed yet contemporary designs to create a memorable experience - a true piece of art…Old Hungarian shapes and paterns blend in with new creaions; tradiional chocolate making with a modern view. It brings consistency without compromising quality. (Rózsavölgyi Csokoládé 2015) This chocolate is packaged and sold in ways that indicate its localness, while also indicaing knowledge of the foreign condiions of producion. There are a number of potenial posiive impacts of the crat chocolate movement that emerging research suggests. Oten, farmers are paid signiicant premiums for ine cacao that has been carefully harvested, fermented, and dried and, when carefully sourced, this cacao is oten grown without the heavy use of syntheic chemicals and under beter labour condiions than most bulk cacao. In some cases, farmers and chocolate makers work together and educate one another on best pracices. A small number of companies (such as 8 While no standard deiniion of crat chocolate exists, it generally refers to chocolate made from scratch, staring with the unroasted cacao bean in a company’s own faciliies using tradiional methods of chocolate making (roasing, winnowing, tempering, tempering and deposiing chocolate). Crat chocolate companies also typically produce at a small scale, processing signiicantly less than 200 metric tons of cacao beans per year. 54 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Askinosie Chocolate) even go so far as to proit-share in a direct trade relaionship with farmers. The consumer base for crat chocolate is also generally educated and interested in quality produced with an eye towards ethics. The chocolate, too, when made well, can be of a higher quality and beter tasing (Eber and Williams 2012; Presilla 2009). However, crat chocolate is far from a catch-all soluion to problems in the cacao-chocolate supply chain today. For example, the vast quaniies of West and Central African cacao being produced are virtually invisible in crat chocolate due to sourcing challenges (Leissle 2013) and, at imes, direct prejudice, with derogatory tropes about African cacao quality and labour expressed commonly in the crat chocolate space. In addiion, crat chocolate makers buy only small amounts of cacao each year and produce only small amounts of chocolate, just a drop in the bucket of an enormous industry percentage. Cacao farmers selling directly to crat chocolate makers must oten rely on relaionships characterized by immature or fragile business structures. This overall economic instability and lack of tradiional industrial scaling beneit means that many in the crat chocolate space do not make a sustainable income and, due to the delaion overall of chocolate prices as a result of industrial manufacturing, crat chocolate makers ind it nearly impossible to set sustainable price points for their bars. Due to the steep learning curve and costly nature of good equipment, many bars produced are also of a lower quality than their relaively high price suggests. This problem is circular and afects overall sustainability of this segment of the industry – the high price of bars and variable quality limits the consumer base, as does the small level of producion and distribuion. In addiion, many of the claims to ethics made by crat chocolate makers are inlated with the same rhetoric employed by fair trade labellers, which is equally problemaic. Future Directions for Fine and Craft Chocolate One of the most important criiques of do-gooder consumerism, whether purchasing of fair trade or crat chocolate products, is that of compassionate consumpion through double commodity feishism. The irst level of commodity feishism, in the case of chocolate, relies on the ignorance of consumers as to the social relaions of producion. Consumers quite regularly purchase and eat chocolate while enirely divorced from any noion of its biography and geography. Moreover, when a second feish appears in the consumer’s world – that of the “tourisic quality” of consumpion (Lash and Urry 1994:272) or of “compassionate consumpion” (Richey and Ponte 2011) – this suggests that food as material culture can be consumed as a way to relect one’s knowledge, worldliness and morality. It is quite possible that the ine and crat chocolate products described in this essay, linked with someimes dubious claims of ethics and quality, expand consumpion far more than they meet the needs of the people they ostensibly serve throughout the supply chain. Simultaneously, many of these products acively sell a romanic ideal through stereotypical representaions of global inequality and injusice – that of the power of the average consumer to iguraively travel through the experience of terroir or to contribute to social jusice and alleviate the sufering of developing world farmers by voing with their dollars. This can efecively delink capitalist producion and global poverty in consumers’ minds, a disconcering possibility given the clear 55 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● relaionship between the two. While there is much to recommend ine and crat chocolate, there is also much let to be done. In other words, the problems of the local-global divide and socially unequal state of cacaochocolate producion and consumpion described throughout this essay persist in the present day, despite many of our perceived soluions. In order to address these problems, investment of resources into the following seven areas will be necessary: • Educaion – At all points in the cacao-chocolate supply chain, educaion and training are necessary. We can collecively work to improve our own comprehension of the long socio-historical antecedents of the worst forms of child labour, loss of agrobiodiversity in cacao and cacao producing regions, and challenges in cacao culivaion and chocolate producion. This will also aid in puing an end to the exploiter-exploited binary that oversimpliies and stereotypiies noions of cacao farmers worldwide, presently hindering much of the work that needs to be done. • Research – Further research is necessary in most areas of the cacao-chocolate supply chain, but especially in relaion to labour and social inequality. This research should be varied in design and analyical approach and guided by area and subject mater experts. It should be made available to all stakeholders. • Legislaion – Legislaion and execuion of the law are necessary to improve labour and land rights in primarily cacao producing countries as well as sourcing and consumpion pracices in primarily chocolate processing and consuming countries. • Advocacy – Grass roots, rather than top-down, approaches to advocacy are increasingly necessary. These approaches should be rooted in local communiies and supported inancially and technically by collaboraive allies. • Economics – Buyers must pay more for cacao, unceriied and ceriied. Both pracically and morally, consistent cacao farmer poverty in an industry replete with wealth is unacceptable. Any cacao purchasing scheme should be characterized by standardizaion, values, transparency, and veriicaion. Ceriicaion schemes should be possible to support farmers or cooperaives with limited economic cost. Criiques of ceriicaion should be taken seriously and result in innovaive change. • Cooperaion – Knowledge and resource sharing among diferent stakeholders in the cacao-chocolate supply chain should become regular pracice. Likewise, industry, governments, cerifying bodies, nongovernmental organizaions, and consumer groups must work together towards shared goals. • Prioriizaion – At present, lavour and high end consumer audiences are the chief prioriies of ine cacao and chocolate advocates, as evidenced by the exising industry organizaions, markeing schemes, and award compeiions. Increased prioriizaion of accountability for upholding stated values, especially in relaion to social and environmental ethics, is urgently needed to avoid the pifalls of rhetoric obscuring reality. 56 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● Summary This essay has demonstrated that many of the exising narraives of chocolate are similar to the point of mythologizing, with litle criical analysis of the history and culture of chocolate in Europe and among Europeans, especially as it relates to labour and social inequality. Criical analysis of these social factors, tracing from the ancient history of cacao in Mesoamerica to the present-day state of the chocolate industry and consumpion in Europe, demonstrates the complexity of the cacao-chocolate supply chain and its impact on the lived experiences of people throughout the world. It also suggests direcions for future educaion, investment, and acion by the growing ine and crat chocolate industry that can promote mutual beneits for producers and consumers. Everyone is implicated in our contemporary food system and everyone, from farmers to consumers, will be involved in creaing soluions to its problems. Chocolate’s capacity to connect at local and global levels tells us not only about past lives and about how we are right now, but also about how we could be. 57 ● socio.hu ● The social meaning of food ● Marin–Sampeck: The biter and sweet of chocolate in Europe ● References Allen, L. L. 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