Paprika, Foie Gras, and Red Mud: The Politics of Materiality in the European Union [Paperback]

In this original and provocative study, Zsuzsa Gille examines three scandals that have shaken Hungary since it joined the European Union: the 2004 ban on paprika due to contamination, the 2008 boycott of Hungarian foie gras by Austrian animal rights activists, and the red mud spill of 2010, Hungary's worst environmental disaster. In each case, Gille analyzes how practices of production and consumption were affected by the proliferation of new standards and regulations that came with entry into the EU. She identifies a new modality of powerthe materialization of politics, or achieving political goals with the seemingly apolitical tools of tinkering with technology and infrastructureand elucidates a new approach to understanding globalization, materiality, and transnational politics.

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Zsuzsa Gille is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is author ofFrom the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History: The Politics of Waste in Socialist and Postsocialist Hungary(IUP, 2007), editor (with Maria Todorova) ofPost-Communist Nostalgia,and author (with Michael Burawoy et al.) ofGlobal Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World.

I recommend this book to undergraduates as well as graduate students studying various disciplines regarding social, ethical, legal, and economical questions about the (supra)national handling of food-security, animal-welfare, and the storage of toxic waste  topics that should concern everybody of us.

Gille offers a highly original take on globalization processes in Europe, and in particular, on Eastern Europe's incorporation into the European Union. . . . [V]ery accessibly written and should thus appeal tol#�