Discourses of Distinction in Contemporary Palestinian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Production

This article shows how Palestinian producers, faced with an "existential threat" to their own physical locality, seek to re-qualify their goods such as olive oil not only as elite goods based on the discourse of distinction of taste, but also in politically-inflected global discourses of distinction that attend to how the product is sourced, produced, and exchanged. Palestinian entrepreneurs and NGO-sponsored agricultural professionals are making olive oil "distinctive," thereby seeking to locate these Palestinian products as elite goods within a global space of circulation and distinction. To produce this kind of extra-virgin olive oil, production practices must change and new skills must be inculcated, like organoleptic "tasting practices." Ethical consumerism is promoted through fair trade strategies which seek to connect producer with consumer, embedding Palestinian olive oil with a "taste of solidarity." "Quality" is perceived as a tool to gain international recognition of its olive oil and, by proxy, of Palestine itself.