Insects as Food for Capitalism – The Entomophagy Frontier in Laos, Thailand and beyond
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Are insects the food of the future, alleviating world hunger and ecological issues? In this book, based on extensive field research in Laos and Thailand, the author suggests otherwise. He describes local transformations in ‘entomophagy’ and explores differences between South East Asian and Western food cultures before presenting a deconstruction of the widespread ‘insect solution narrative’. Empirical observations are discussed mainly in the light of the World-Ecology approach, seeing the exploitation of humans and nature as inextricably intertwined. The main argument targets the commodification of edible insects and related resources, denoted by the central concept of the ‘entomophagy frontier’.
Unfolded along the lines of the distinction between wild-collected and farmed insects, it holds that the emerging entomophagy industry tends to reinforce the problems it addresses by ignoring their structural causes: social inequality, systemic unsustainability and ultimately the insatiability of capitalism.
Andrew Müller, M.A., studied Sociology/Social Sciences and Area Studies with a focus on Asia at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is now an independent scholar and journalist.
1. Introduction …………………………………………………….1
Methods and Methodology ………………………………………..9
Laos and Thailand …………………………………………………… 14
2. (Culinary) Transformations in Laos
and Thailand ………………………………………………….17
Western Disgust vs. Asian Routine? …………………………. 17
Setting the Scene to Explore a Food Taboo …………. 23
Traditions of Insect-Eating in Laos and Thailand ……………………………………………………..24
The Rural Decline of Entomophagy in a Cultural
Materialist Perspective …………………………………………….. 29
The Urban Revival of Insect-Eating in a
Structuralist Perspective ………………………………………….. 40
Westernisation, Multiple (Insect) Modernities
and Capitalism ………………………………………………………… 57
Interim Conclusion …………………………………………………. 67
3. The ‘Entomophagy Industry’ as a
Commodity Frontier ……………………………………..71
Challenging the Insect Solution Narrative ……………….. 73
Entomophagy and Marx: Inequality and
Capitalist Exploitation in the Insect Trade ……………….. 81
Edible Insects from a World-Ecological Perspective:
The Entomophagy Frontier ……………………………………………………… 93
The ‘Wild Insect Frontier’ ……………………………………………………….100
Insect Farming as a Technical Fix to Restore Cheap
Nature/Food …………………………………………………………………………..110
Cricket Farming in Thailand ……………………………………………..113
A Global Frontier ………………………………………………………………118
Insect ‘Sustainability’ and the Hope of Reducing
Negative-Value ……………………………………………………………………….128
Feeding Thai Crickets: Organic Waste vs. Fish Meal …………..130
Feed Conversion Fetishism ………………………………………………..136
Additional Consumption and the Fallacy of ‘Green
Insect Capitalism’ ………………………………………………………………142
A Failing Techno-Fix Increasing Negative-Value? ………………146
Black Soldier Flies as Animal Feed, Biotechnology
and the Whole Insect Frontier ………………………………………………..152
4. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….. 159
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………… 167