8. Constanza Ocampo-Raeder — Tasting the Wind, Talking to Rocks, Listening to Rainbows

Modern society has removed many of us from an intimate connection to the land, the water, and the elements. Air conditioning in cars and artificial light in our homes allow us to carry on without paying much attention at all to the forces of nature around us.

These relationships to ecological surroundings are something entirely different for those who fish artisanally along the coasts of Peru.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder is an anthropologist who writes beautifully and poetically about the people who catch camarones and the various types of fish used to make cebiche. She explores their intimate and visceral relationships to their environments—writing about a world of tasting the wind, talking to rocks, and listening to rainbows.

She finds that efforts to protect the traditional and artisanal fishing industries in Peru have provided the cultural and political power to protect the ecosystems that support these species.

I find her work particularly interesting in the context of the global seafood industry. The United Nations estimates that almost 90% of fisheries worldwide are either overfished or have already collapsed. To meet rising demand for seafood on a planet with nearly 8 billion people, seafood farming has expanded rapidly and now provides over half of the world’s seafood for human consumption. Fish farms pollute rivers, lakes, and coastal habitats, and escaped fish threaten wild populations with disease and other ecological impacts.

I think Constanza’s work points us toward what a healthy ecological relationship between people and marine life could look like, even as we fight to dismantle the commercial fishing industry and repair our collective relationship to the world’s oceans.

Constanza is from Mexico originally, and she’s married to a Peruvian. She’s now a professor of anthropology at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota.

This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Kitchen series, which explores questions of the sustainability of our food.

You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

As an environmental anthropologist, Dr. Ocampo-Raeder’s work focuses on the political ecology of resource management systems in resource-based societies. Her current research projects explore the contradictions between sustainable development goals and policies that impact the livelihoods of small-scale producers, as expressed in initiatives such as food movements, protected areas and ecotourism. Dr. Ocampo-Raeder's current project focuses on the socio-ecological underpinnings of Mexico's diverse culinary traditions where she is exploring and contesting notions of fusion, mestizaje and gendered roles in the booming gastronomic economy. Her research combines ethnographic and ecological methodological frameworks to evaluate the human ecology of indigenous and rural societies in Latin America (Peru and Mexico). Dr. Ocampo-Raeder holds a bachelors’ degree in biology from Grinnell College and doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. She has published amply in both Spanish and English, often with her undergraduate students, for environmental anthropology, food studies, and human geography journals. Dr. Ocampo-Raeder is currently an Associate Professor at Carleton College where she teaches anthropology, environmental studies and Latin American studies.

Cebiche/Ceviche Recipes from Constanza Ocampo-Raeder

Recommended Readings & Media

Transcript

Intro

John Fiege

Modern society has removed many of us from an intimate connection to the land, the water, and the elements. Air conditioning in cars and artificial light in our homes allow us to carry on without paying much attention at all to the forces of nature around us.

These relationships to ecological surroundings are something entirely different for those who fish artisanally along the coasts of Peru.

Constanza Ocampo-Raeder is an anthropologist who writes beautifully and poetically about the people who catch camarones and the various types of fish used to make cebiche. She explores their intimate and visceral relationships to their environments—writing about a world of tasting the wind, talking to rocks, and listening to rainbows.

She finds that efforts to protect the traditional and artisanal fishing industries in Peru have provided the cultural and political power to protect the ecosystems that support these species.

I find her work particularly interesting in the context of the global seafood industry. The United Nations estimates that almost 90% of fisheries worldwide are either overfished or have already collapsed. To meet rising demand for seafood on a