‘Local’: Contextualizing Hawai‘i’s Foodways

Abstract

Within contemporary concerns about the overall health of the US food system, the “local” has emerged as a key concept for strengthening sustainability, community, and access to affordable and fresh foods. For Hawai‘i, the local is more than a geographic category; it is also a core identity by which its residents mark their relationship to place. This double use of localism thereby underlines the personal—and political—stakes of “eating local” in an increasingly globalized food system. This introductory essay for a special journal issue on Hawai‘i’s Food Systems offers the island archipelago as a case study for understanding how these systems-in-place interact with, respond to, and reinforce histories of colonialism, migration and settlement, monocropping, and importation. By attending to critical discourses about localism through the geographic and social particularities of Hawai‘i, themes of place are highlighted as a central concern to the field of Food Studies today.