Tag Archives: conference

by foodanthro | April 7, 2013 · 5:25 pm

THE INSTITUTE ON RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE

Fifty-ninth Annual Summer Conference

Silver Bay, New York

July 27 to August 3, 2013

Co-Chairs: Solomon H Katz and Pat Bennett

Food occupies a central place in human life. Not only are its nutrients necessary for our survival, but feasting, fasting, and sharing are integral to our history, cultural identity, and religious traditions. Yet, today, and for the foreseeable future, nearly half of the world’s people cannot enjoy the fullness of their potential due to problems with food affordability, safety, and access. Serious problems with food production and price increases currently leave about one billion people experiencing hunger, and many of them facing starvation. Another billion spend over half their entire income on food, but still have only marginally enough to eat. Yet, concurrently, at least another billion people in the world are experiencing problems from consuming too much food and/or from dietary imbalances and safety problems that result in serious chronic diseases and infections.

Among the questions to be addressed at this conference are the following:

What are the origins and evolution of human diet and the food system, and how does this knowledge provide new insights about our contemporary food problems?
What is the status of world food resources? How does it relate to macro and micro food problems locally and nationally in the United States and throughout the world?
How does food serve as a symbol and a substance of various religious traditions? Has the loss of social traditions surrounding food production, preparation and consumption contributed to the problems noted above?
How can the human food system be made more sustainable? How can healthy diets be safely and economically made available to all humanity? How can new scientific and medical knowledge optimally help with sustainability, safety, and access?
What are the tensions created by climate change; population growth; demographic change; global trade and commodity pricing; market and business forces; water management; energy resources; food to fuel; new GMO technologies; agricultural practices; land use and agricultural practices; increased meat, dairy, and egg production; food sovereignty at local, national, and international levels; increased socio-political interests; and the demands for human rights and just food policies?
What secular and religious ethics and values can help to balance and/or solve food problems at all levels of the food system? What human and institutional resources are now available or need to be developed to catalyze meaningful solutions to food problems?
What are the potentials of a combined science and religion approach to achieving sustainable solutions to world food problems?

One of the conference’s aims is to derive, develop, and disseminate a statement of principles for achieving sustainable solutions to some of these issues, based on such a combined approach; and to issue an accompanying call to appropriate action at personal and communal levels.

An IRAS conference is a rather unique interdisciplinary experience, combining serious cutting-edge talks with many opportunities for in-depth discussions and workshops, as well as relaxed, informal conversation. Most speakers spend the entire week at the conference, giving plenty of opportunity to follow-up points over coffee and meals. Also, since conferees represent a wide spectrum of disciplines in the sciences and humanities, as well as coming from many different religious traditions, discussions are eclectic, stimulating and sometimes robust! And alongside the hard work of thinking and talking, and our traditional reflective sessions, there’s plenty of less serious stuff to enjoy too – music, art, laughter and jokes at Happy Hour, and all the rich and varied recreational facilities on offer to us guests at Silver Bay.

The deadline for poster proposals is April 19, 2013 and for workshop proposals is May 6, 2013. Visit the conference website for additional information, including a list of confirmed speakers that include several SAFN members.

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Tagged as Anthropology, call for papers, conference, culture, economics, food insecurity, Food policy, Food security, food studies, starvation, sustainability, sustainable food

by foodanthro | March 22, 2013 · 3:44 pm

CFP: Desert Foods and Food Deserts: Scarcity, Survival and Imagination

Desert Foods and Food Deserts: Scarcity, Survival and Imagination

International Conference

19 – 21 November 2013

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

The terms “Desert” and “Food” seem irreconcilable: deserts are associated with aridity, scarcity, and the struggle to survive in inhospitable environments, and are rarely related to the pleasures of fine cooking and dining. Research of desert societies, however, reveals time and again the ingenuity and resourcefulness of desert dwellers, who manage to eke out of their meager environment much more than the calories and nutrients essential for their survival. Indeed, desert cuisines, whether Mexican, Native-American, Bedouin, Mongolian, Aboriginal-Australian or Inuit, may seem simple and even coarse to the uninitiated, yet are surprisingly complex and varied, making for an outstanding human achievement.

If desert foods represent human ingenuity at its best, food deserts, defined as disadvantaged urban areas with poor access to retail food outlets, or as areas where food retail is scarce and expensive and where much of the available food is industrialized, processed, expensive and of low nutritional quality, stand for the degradation of the human condition in the context of modern urbanism.

The distinction between “desert foods” and “food deserts” is not without ambiguity. Processes of modernization undergone by some groups living in desert areas have indeed undermined local and traditional culinary practices and hastened the expansion of fast-food chains into those areas. However, at the same time, a counter-reaction to this process has brought about creative and innovative ideas and practices which seek to produce and distribute quality food in a non-alienated environment. Examples of this include community vegetable gardens, farmers’ markets and social networks for the exchange of knowledge and information regarding the cultivation and procurement of fresh food products.

Beer Sheva is the perfect venue for hosting such conference. Israel’s “Capital of the Desert” is located at the heart of the Negev Desert and constitutes the administrative, commercial, and cultural center of the surrounding desert communities. The city draws Bedouin semi-nomad shepherds and town dwellers, Jewish farmers in communal and private agricultural settlements, as well as large numbers of migrant workers from different countries, and serves as their culinary centre.

Up until recently, Beer Sheva was a typical “food desert”, featuring mainly cheap local fast-food venues as well as small and medium size grocery shops (“minimarkets”). Rising income, the influx of immigrants from the former USSR, the expansion of Ben-Gurion University and the growing communities of migrant workers from Africa and Asia, have led to new and diverse culinary demands. Beer Sheva is now an exciting hub of culinary experimentation and innovation, influenced by its multicultural and multiethnic social mosaic.

The conference seeks to unravel and discuss the rich and diverse culinary concepts and practices in both actual deserts and symbolic ones. To that end it will provide a platform to both scholars and practitioners. Keynote speakers at the conference will be: Prof. Sammy Zubaida, Chef Israel Aharoni.

We seek sessions and individual papers that deal with various aspects of desert foods, food deserts, and possibly their interface. “Deserts” are understood in the broadest possible sense of the term and include any region, territory or era where food is/was scarce and hard to get.

As the conference will also include a non-academic session with the participation of culinary practitioners from various fields proposals are also welcome for that session.

Potential topics include:

Food tourism in the desert
Food and Politics in the Desert
Migrant and native cuisines in the desert
Desert foodways of nomads and permanent settlers
Ecology, geography and nutrition
Food deserts and globalization
Food, nutrition and meaning in scarce environments

The conference is hosted by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in cooperation with the Israeli Association for Culinary Culture, and is supported by The Hertzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. The Conference conveners are Dr. Nir Avieli avieli@bgu.ac.il, Dr. Nimrod Amzalak info@culinaria.org.il, Prof. Aref Abu-Rabiah aref@bgu.ac.il and Mr. Rafi Grosglik, rafig@post.bgu.ac.il. Members of the academic committee include Prof. Yoram Meital, , Prof. Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Dr. Julia Lerner and Dr. Uri Shwed.

Attendance at the conference is free and the lectures are open to the public. Pending budget approval, the organizers will provide all speakers with free university accommodation and half board. The program includes study tours in Beer Sheva and the Negev Desert.

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to desertfood2013@gmail.com by MAY 15 2013.

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Tagged as Anthropology of Food, call for papers, CFP, conference, culture, food, food deserts, Food policy, food studies, Israel, Middle East, nutrition

by foodanthro | March 21, 2013 · 4:19 pm

Foodways and Urban Change in Latin America and the Caribbean: AAA 2013 Panel!

by Aeleka Schortman and Amy Lasater-Wille

Please consider submitting paper abstracts for our proposed panel on Foodways and Urban Change in Latin America and the Caribbean (see full panel description below). While we focus on urbanism, we encourage the submission of research based in rural or urban areas, so long as it speaks to issues of urban change, planning, development, and the like in Latin America or the Caribbean.

We further encourage non-anthropologists and applied researchers with similar interests to submit, especially as this year’s AAA meeting theme is “Future Publics, Current Engagements.” This theme encourages us as anthropologists to engage with scholars in related disciplines as well as with issues of pressing social, political, and economic significance.

Working Title: Foodways and Urban Change in Latin America and the Caribbean

Panel Abstract:

This panel addresses food and foodways in Latin America—here, including the Caribbean—to understand the processes, practices, and politics of urbanization and urban change in that region. Exemplifying worldwide trends, Latin America is growing increasingly urban, a transformation frequently associated with: land and resource consolidation, deepening inequalities, mounting security concerns, and growing involvement in—and dependency upon—globalized, industrialized, and inequitable agro-food systems. Today, historically unprecedented numbers of people, and city-dwellers, in particular, draw needed sustenance from novel and rapidly-changing food procurement and preparation networks. Changing metropolitan foodways present urban residents and visitors with new ways and places in which to consume, produce, or sell foods, and in which to (re)assess and (re)make the meanings of such practices. Providing far more than sustenance, food has social, symbolic, economic, and ideological value. Thus, participating in—or, alternatively, abstaining or being excluded from—eating, shopping, or laboring in urban markets, restaurants, kitchens, or informal locales can have profound social, symbolic, and economic significance. Moreover, changes in urban foodways frequently involve rural transformations, as both urban and rural residents engage with—and create—the production and distribution networks that characterize, and quite literally feed, the region’s growing cities.

Food is central to survival, daily life, and the webs of meaning, and power, that color human existence. Consequently, studies of food and foodways offer exceptional entry points through which to explore and engage with pressing issues of our time, including, here, urbanization and urban change. Latin America’s centuries-old involvement with inequitable, uneven, and increasingly globalized political-economies and agro-food systems makes the region a particularly alluring place for contemporary food-related research and scholarship. Moreover, despite great internal diversity, present (and historical) patterns of socioeconomic development, and inequity, unite portions of Latin America and the Caribbean, offering interesting fodder for both food-related analyses and discussions of regional trends. These include patterns of: foodway and demographic change; neoliberal development (and its alternatives, or backlash); deep, persistent (and frequently-racialized) socio-economic divisions; uneven/inequitable integration into regional/global political-economies; and tourism- and/or corporate-led development (amongst others).

Here, then, we explore food to shed light on the challenges, promises, and dynamic processes of urbanization and urban change in Latin America. In so doing, we engage with themes and issues of critical importance in the theory and practice of anthropology and related fields including: economics, social geography, sociology, urban planning/development, socio-economic policy, and nutrition/health. More precisely, individual panelists may address questions including: (How) are patterns of urban change—or development—implicated in shifting food acquisition, production, distribution, and consumption systems? Who benefits, or fails to benefit, from local, regional, and/or (trans)national food-related policies, programs, practices, and/or discourses? How do urban residents conceptualize and negotiate food-related constraints and opportunities, including potential paradoxes of food/nutritional scarcity amidst seeming abundance? How are Latin America’s urban foodways colored by long-entrenched (or newly emerging): socio-economic inequalities and patterns/practices of socio-economic, political, and/or spatial (geographical) exclusion (or inclusion)? And, how do people perpetuate or resist such inequities? How (and why) do city-dwellers ascribe particular meanings, or values, to specific food-related practices, policies, discourses, and/or symbolic representations? Moreover, what can studies of urban food and foodways tell us about changing—or newly emerging—economies, political systems (or visions), social movements, or global interconnections in Latin America, both urban and rural? What might studies of food reveal about the social, economic, political, and/or nutritional consequences—or implications—of existing economic models, socio-economic policies, or development programs?

DEADLINES (and Related Information):

Abstract Submission for Consideration in the Panel: Please submit proposed paper abstracts by Saturday, April 6^th, 2013. All submissions should be sent to BOTH: Amy Lasater-Wille (ael337@nyu.edu) and Aeleka Schortman (schortman@uky.edu). We will respond to all interested parties by Tuesday April 9^th (4/9/13) at the latest. We kindly ask that everyone abide by the April 6th deadline so that we may respond to all potential participants in a timely manner and assemble a full panel in time for the AAA abstract submission deadline (April 15, 2013).

AAA Submission Deadline: All accepted panelists must submit their own abstracts electronically to the AAA by April 15, 2013. (We will email instructions regarding how to do this.) Please note that participants must register (and pay) for the 2013 AAA meetings by that deadline as well.

Meeting Information: This year’s American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting will be held at the Chicago Hilton in Chicago, Illinois on November 20-24, 2013. The meeting theme is Future Publics, Current Engagements.

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Tagged as AAA meeting, Caribbean, CFP, chicago, conference, food, food studies, foodways, Latin America, nutrition, sustainability

by foodanthro | February 28, 2013 · 7:09 pm

The Anthronaut Farmer (AAA 2013 panel proposal!)

The Anthronaut Farmer

Session Organizer: Ted Maclin

An increasing number of anthropologists are turning to agriculture as a means of subsistence, a way of living in their communities, and a form of embodied research. Beyond a practice of study, this is a lived anthropology outside of academia: not a research venture bounded by funding cycles, but a journey of engagement with the world. Through their hands-on work, these ”anthronaut” farmers are transforming themselves, their communities and landscapes, and their academic work.

In a recent New York Times article, political scientist James Scott said that his own farming venture has made him a better researcher; but the institutions of farming and the academy conflict and coincide in complex ways. In this interactive session, we will explore how anthropologist-farmers navigate these complexities. We welcome discussions from all theoretical and agricultural perspectives, from apiculture to Actor-Network Theory, from eco-agriculture to ethnobiology, from permaculture to political ecology.

If interested, please submit an abstract (~200 words) to Ted Maclin (tmaclin@uga.edu) by March 1.

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Tagged as AAA meeting, agriculture, call for papers, CFP, chicago, conference, farming, food

by foodanthro | February 26, 2013 · 4:40 am

Fish and Ships: Exploring Seascapes and Engagements in Seafood Politics; a AAA 2013 panel!

Organizers: Shingo Hamada (Indiana University) and Lillian Brown (Indiana University)

This session explores the interplay of humans and the sea through seafood production, circulation, and consumption. Anthropologists have studied economic systems since the birth of the discipline, and introductory courses in anthropology usually cover hunting and gathering, pastoralism, and horticulture. However in anthropology, fishing does not receive as much attention as other economic activities. Despite the emergence and development of interdisciplinary food studies, most programs focus mainly on agricultural systems, with fisheries and aquaculture an afterthought. In discussing the omnivore’s dilemma, we know what herbivore and carnivore mean and critically discuss their relations to the environment, but piscivory falls into the space between them.

Fish swim cross physical, political, and ontological boundaries, and seafood leads us to fruitful discussions of anthropological theories and methodologies to capture fish, ships, and dishes. Concerns about genetically modified frankenfish and the accumulation of contaminating substances such as mercury in fish makes seafood “simultaneously healthful and hazardous” (Mansfield 2012). Seafood challenges modernist dualist ontology and leads us to reconsider the work of purification that constructs countless dichotomies which fail to incorporate the complexities that anthropologists study. These include healthy food and junk food; organic and industrial; food production and consumption, to name a few. In the meantime, the specialized skills of the maritime anthropologist, such as diving skills, immunity to seasickness, and dealing with cultural norms that limit anthropologists’ access to boats and other work places, require us to explore interdisciplinary exchanges and research projects.

Does the fact that human beings are terrestrial animals spatially limit social scientific and humanistic inquiries of seafood and seascapes? This session addresses seafood as an underrepresented field in anthropology. We solicit papers that present case studies from any geographic region discussing, but not limited to; the social construction of oceans, risks, and hazards; technologies and techniques around seafood procurement and preparation or preservation; the socio-cultural, and gastronomic importance of seafood; sustainable seafood production and consumption; seafood and disaster; and, seafood safety and security in neoliberal regimes. How do government policies both create and manipulate the dangers of the sea? What are the methodological challenges in the anthropology of seafood? How do the difficulties in access to the field in seascapes influence the way we engage the interconnectivity among seafood production, distribution, consumption and waste? What particular domains and to which fields can anthropological studies of seafood contribute? At the end of the session the presenters, discussant, and audiences will discuss how anthropologists can best engage with seafood politics, from sustainable fisheries to food choice and consumption.

If interested, please send Shingo Hamada (hamadas@indiana.edu) and Lillian Brown (lillbrow@indiana.edu) an abstract and your contact information by March 8. We are looking to submit a session proposal by the March 15 deadline.

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Tagged as AAA meeting, Anthropology, Anthropology of Food, CFP, conference, fish, fishing, Food policy, Food security, food studies

by foodanthro | February 19, 2013 · 5:45 pm

AAA 2013 Panel CFP: Politics of Public Food and Hospitality

Politics of Public Food and Hospitality: Diasporic and Transnational Tables

Organizers: Maria Curtis and Christine Kovic, University of Houston Clear Lake.

Following Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole Counihan’s charge of “Taking Food Public,” this panel explores foodways as confluent networks of cultural and economic exchange between diverse communities, with the potential to invert or to reinforce existing hierarchies. The production, consumption, and distribution of food along with the discourse surrounding these processes take place across multiple public spaces including places of worship, soup kitchens and shelters, festivals, cultural centers, restaurants, cooking blogs and cooking shows, adjacent enclaves, community gardens, and street vendors. In these spaces, among many others, food itself crosses boundaries of nationality, class, ethnicity, and religion as it shapes and is shaped by multiple interactions. Food may be shared as an act of hospitality or as an obligation, bridge ethnic differences, mark social status and highlight distinctions and disparities, or profit certain groups at the expense of others. Food is a means by which new immigrants reach out to their new neighbors, offering them a taste of their culture by turning the dining room table, inviting the host to be a guest in their homes and cultural spaces. Yet the commodification and consumption of so-called “ethnic foods” may enact “cultural food colonialism,” to use Lisa Heldke’s term, in which dominant groups appropriate “the other” for their own purposes, attempting to engage in a “lite” multiculturalism. Using ethnographic examples from multiple settings (including the United States, Turkey, Mexico, and beyond), the panel seeks to map out food’s potential to build dialogue and enact hospitality across difference as well as the ways conflict and inequality are reproduced and even fortified through food sharing.

In what instances does the sharing of food evoke dialogue, when hosts are willing to see “others” (immigrants, the displaced, refugees, exiles, guest workers, second and third generation marginalized groups) and to share time and space, and to dialogue with them? In what ways are parallel, and even divided, communities linked to each other through chains of food consumption and production?
In what ways might unacknowledged food chains lock some ethnic groups into low wage positions that impact their health and well-being while their food and care work feeds and nourishes others?
How is the public sharing of food tied to the “private” and “invisible” gendered work of domestic cooking?
How and why are some ethnic cuisines exalted while their communities remain marginalized?

As a related topic, the panel seeks to explore the role food in the ethnographic research process. To what extent does sharing food, drink, and meals carry the potential to build commensality, creating a common space for conversation and face-to-face encounter of fieldwork? To what extent does food consumption make visible inequalities that exist in the field?

Please contact Christine Kovic at Kovic@uhcl.edu with a short abstract by March 1st.

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by foodanthro | February 13, 2013 · 8:10 pm

AAA Panel CFP! Eating in the City: Foodways, Publics, and Urban Transformation

Eating has become a provocative and political element of urban contestation. Through food, publics are effectively (re)defined and urban futures popularly (re)imagined. As cities transform, the ways that people eat and procure food also change, along with the sociocultural meanings of food itself. This panel will explore the relationships between these contemporary urban processes and changing food habits. These shifting patterns of consumption and production can be linked to a variety of intertwined processes at global and urban scales — from cycles of de-industrialization and gentrification in the global north to the rapidly urbanizing megacities of the developing world. Food studies scholars have noted the impact of such urban transformations on diets, from the (post)Fordist homogenization of industrially produced food to the highly differentiated food landscapes of today’s gentrified cities.

In response, urban publics and counterpublics are reimagining — and being reimagined through — the circulation of food and dietary discourse that draws upon a range of sources from urban agriculture and farmer’s markets to the role of grocery stores and restaurants. Food also provides a significant public idiom for policies that address or entrench urban inequality, from “food deserts” to feeding prohibitions. Food even renders the contemporary city’s global connections “good to think” for urban dwellers: dependent on producers they do not know and rarely see, fearful about how and where their food is produced — and where it will come from in the future – consumers circulate a host of new discourses about whole, local, organic and sustainable foods.

Panelists will pursue several questions in order to understand how food remakes the city and vice-versa: Who has access to food and who does not? How do people come to understand their place in the urban social order through their food practices — particularly amid the urban manifestations of global political-economic restructuring and cultural change? How do the politics of food figure in the transformation of urban spaces? What roles do immigration and migratory foodways play in shaping modern urban life? What of the proliferation of ever more extravagant restaurants and eating experiences for the wealthy alongside ever worsening rates of poverty, hunger and ill-health for the poor? Above all, we ask, how are processes related to eating and urban transformation intertwined?

Abstracts should be submitted by March 1 to Maggie Dickinson (mdickinson@gc.cuny.edu).

Note from the editor: If you are organizing a food/nutrition related panel for the AAA meetings this year–or, really, for any conference–we would be happy to post it here at FoodAnthropology. Just send it along to foodanthro@gmail.comand we will take care of it.

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Tagged as AAA meeting, Anthropology, call for papers, CFP, conference, Food policy, food studies, SAFN, Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

by foodanthro | February 2, 2013 · 12:56 am

Another Proposed AAA Panel: Human Experience in the Genomic/Post-Genomic Age

With the completion of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent onset of the Genomic/Post-Genomic Age, genetic technology now plays a more prominent role in many aspects of modern day life. Applications of genetic technologies may be found within medicine, law enforcement, food production, and human reproduction. Given the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms, assisted reproductive technologies, genetic databases used in law enforcement, direct to consumer genetic tests and the like, it is imperative to ask how genetic technologies have affected various facets of the human experience. Have traditional boundaries regarding how people understand themselves and others changed as a result of the use of DNA technologies? How has the relationship between science and cultural aspects of identity, privacy, kinship, food, et cetera been altered as a result of an improved scientific understanding of genetics?

In this session presenters from broad anthropological backgrounds and experiences are invited to consider different social meanings of scientific data and examine the question of what it means to be human in the genomic age.

Please send abstracts (limited to 250 words) to jbenntor@nd.edu by April 1, 2013.

**From the AAA website**

Once accepted into the session, presenters are responsible for submitting their own individual abstracts (of no more than 250 words), paper title and keywords. Presenters must be current members unless eligible for a membership exemption (anthropologists living outside of the US/Canada or non-anthropologists) and have paid registration for the 2013 Annual Meeting in order to upload abstract information. Presenters must submit this information by 5:00pm EDT on Monday, April 15, 2013.

Submitted by:

Dr. Jada Benn Torres
University of Notre Dame
Department of Anthropology

Email: jbenntor@nd.edu
Visit the website at http://www.nd.edu/~jbenntor/Research/Research.html

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by foodanthro | January 22, 2013 · 4:57 pm

CFP: Toward Sustainable Foodscapes and Landscapes

Call for Participation

Due Date February 1, 2013

Joint annual meetings of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS), the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN)

Toward Sustainable Foodscapes and Landscapes
June 19 to 22, 2013
Hosted by Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI

Conference theme:

The concepts of “foodscapes” and “landscapes” invite us to consider the broader conditions, connections and consequences of food and agricultural issues. Food is more than a simple problem of consumer behavior, just as land use involves more than farmer or policy decisions. Foodscape and landscape perspectives situate the producing, distributing, acquiring and eating of food within a richer and more complex understanding of social, cultural, economic and political processes. As well, foodscape and landscape perspectives take serious account of the context and significance of the ecological systems in which food and agriculture are embedded. Instead of being removed from or in opposition to pressing concerns such as climate change and water availability, food and agriculture are deeply entangled in many of the most critical environmental and ethical issues of our time. Charting, analyzing and interrogating sustainable pathways through this complex terrain are important work for academics, practitioners, activists, policymakers and citizens. This year’s conference will engage these concepts of foodscapes and landscapes with the aim of creating a lively, generative space for people of diverse disciplines and dispositions to explore and advance thinking and practice related to agriculture and food.

Submissions are strongly encouraged in the following three formats:

Lightning talk* (five minutes maximum, similar to Pecha Kucha, Ignite, talk20, etc.; these sessions will be videostreamed live online!)

Posters (eligible for awards, including a student category)

Pre-organized sessions (panels, roundtables, workshops, etc.)

*5 minute presentations, particularly when they include 15-20 highly visual slides, may be more effective in generating interest in your full paper than longer presentations, because they are dynamic, force a tight focus, and are likely to draw larger audiences than a conventional session. See: http://www.speakerconfessions.com/2009/06/how-to-give-a-great-ignite-talk/

Submissions are also accepted for 15 minute conventional paper presentations to be grouped with 2 to 3 other papers by members of the program committee. Note there is a possibility that these submissions will be placed in Saturday morning sessions.

We strongly encourage practitioners, activists, government staff, and those with other practical knowledges of food and agricultural systems to participate, in addition to academics. We ask submitters formulating panels, roundtables and workshops to consider including participants whose orientation goes beyond the narrowly academic.

We especially encourage submissions that speak directly to the theme, but also welcome submissions on all aspects of food, nutrition, and agriculture, including those related to:

Art, Media, & Literary Analyses
Change & Development
Culture & Cultural Geography
Environment & Climate Change
Agroecology & Conservation
Ethics & Philosophy
Food Safety & Risk
Gender & Ethnicity
Globalization
History
Inequality, Access, Security & Justice
Knowledge
Local Food Systems
Pedagogy
Politics, Policies & Governance in National & Global Contexts
Research Methods
Practices & Issues
Social Action & Social Movements
Sustainability
Science & Technologies

Please note: Due to strong increases in the number of abstract submissions for this conference in recent years, in 2013, only one submission per person as lead author or submitter will be accepted (in any format).

Abstracts should be submitted online via EasyChair (signing up for an account required) http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=afhvsasfs2013 and include the following information:

Submitter’s name, e-mail address and organizational affiliation, and if applicable, those of co-authors
For organized sessions: names, e-mails and affiliations for moderator, panelists and/or roundtable participants
Title
Abstract (150 words or less). For panels, please include an abstract for the panel as a whole, and an individual abstract for each individual paper.
Category of submission (e.g. 5 min. lightning talk; poster; pre-organized session— specify in the abstract whether a panel, roundtable or workshop; 15 min. conventional paper presentation)
Keywords (3 or more)

Full papers may be submitted in pdf format, but this is not required.

Applicants will be notified of acceptance on March 1, 2013 via email.

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by foodanthro | November 29, 2012 · 4:23 am

Call for Papers: “Sugar and Beyond”

Here is a call for papers that may be of interest to FoodAnthropology readers:

Sugar and Beyond

Organizers: Christopher P. Iannini, Julie Chun Kim, K. Dian Kriz
The John Carter Brown Library seeks proposals for a conference entitled “Sugar and Beyond,” to be held on October 25-26, 2013, and in conjunction with the Library’s Fall 2013 exhibition on sugar in the early modern period, especially its bibliographical and visual legacies. The centrality of sugar to the development of the Atlantic world is now well known. Sugar was the ‘green gold’ that planters across the Americas staked their fortunes on, and it was the commodity that became linked in bittersweet fashion to the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Producing unprecedented quantities of sugar through their enforced labor, Africans on plantations helped transform life not only in the colonies but also in Europe, where consumers incorporated the luxury commodity into their everyday rituals and routines.

“Sugar and Beyond” seeks to evaluate the current state of scholarship on sugar, as well as to move beyond it by considering related or alternative consumer cultures and economies. Given its importance, sugar as a topic still pervades scholarship on the Americas and has been treated in many recent works about the Caribbean, Brazil, and other regions. This conference thus aims to serve as an occasion where new directions in the study of sugar can be assessed. At the same time, the connection of sugar to such broader topics as the plantation system, slavery and abolition, consumption and production, food, commodity exchange, natural history, and ecology has pointed the way to related but distinct areas of inquiry. Although sugar was one of the most profitable crops of the tropical Americas, it was not the only plant being cultivated. Furthermore, although the plantation system dominated the lives of African and other enslaved peoples, they focused much of their efforts at resistance around the search for ways to mitigate or escape the regime of sugar planting. We thus welcome scholars from all disciplines and national traditions interested in exploring both the power and limits of sugar in the early Atlantic world.

Topics that papers might consider include but are not limited to the following:

The development of sugar in comparative context
The rise of sugar and new conceptions of aesthetics, taste, and cultural refinement
Atlantic cultures of consumption
Coffee, cacao, and other non-sugar crops and commodities
Natural history and related genres of colonial description and promotion
Imperial botany and scientific programs of agricultural expansion and experimentation
Alternative ecologies to the sugar plantation
Plant transfer and cultivation by indigenous and African agents
Provision grounds and informal marketing
Economies of subsistence, survival, and resistance
Reimagining the Caribbean archive beyond sugar: new texts and methodological approaches

In order to be considered for the program, please send a paper proposal of 500 words and CV to jcbsugarandbeyond@gmail.com. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15, 2012.

Presenters will likely have some travel and accommodation subvention available to them.
For more information, keep checking this site or email Margot Nishimura, Deputy Director and Librarian (margot_nishimura@brown.edu).

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Filed under Call for Papers, Caribbean, sugar

Tagged as call for papers, Caribbean, conference, food, history, sugar

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Call for Participation

Due Date February 1, 2013

Joint annual meetings of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS), the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) and the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN)

Conference theme:

Call for Papers: “Sugar and Beyond”

Sugar and Beyond

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