Tag Archives: food studies

by | May 20, 2013 · 9:27 pm

CFP: Devouring Japan

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The Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin invites paper proposals for “Devouring Japan,” a 2-day interdisciplinary conference on Japanese food and food cultures, to be held in Austin on February 21-22, 2014. Building on growing academic interest in food studies, the conference seeks to explore five themes that will serve as analytical frameworks for the proceedings: Production, Consumption, Circulation, Representation, and Identity. We seek to include innovative research that explores Japanese foods from a variety of perspectives including:  the material culture of cuisine; histories of iconic foods, beverages or key chefs/restaurateurs; ethnographic and ritual practices involving foods; government policy and the regulation of food; representations of food in art, literature and film; globalization and/or transnational hybridization of foods; and how local, regional and national identities are shaped by foods.

The conference will include keynote lectures by Ken Albala (Professor of History, University of the Pacific) and Eric Rath (Professor of History, University of Kansas). It will culminate in a keynote roundtable discussion by Professors Albala and Rath, together with select panelists, to reflect upon the potentials for cross-disciplinary research between Food and Japan Studies.

In addition to presenting original research, invited scholars will be asked to actively participate in panel discussions by acting as respondents and in the culminating roundtable session.  Participants will also be asked to submit a draft (12-15 pages) of their papers by January 25, 2014 for distribution to other conference participants. A select number will be invited to revise their papers by August 31, 2014 for publication in an edited volume.

Thanks to the generous support of the Japan Foundation and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association of Asian Studies, UT will cover all ground transportation, meal and hotel expenses in Austin.  As befits the themes of the conference, participants will have several opportunities to sample some of Austin’s best food offerings.  Invited scholars, particularly junior scholars with little access to travel support,will also have an opportunity to apply for additional travel funding in fall 2013.

Interested scholars are asked to submit a short (max. 3 pages) CV and a paper proposal of max. 400 words to Dr. Nancy Stalker,  nancy.stalker@austin.utexas.edu, by August 15, 2013.

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by | April 11, 2013 · 9:22 pm

Connecting Students with Real Food and Real Farmers

By Kellen Gilbert, David Burley, Bonnie May, Timothy McCarthy, Sole Sanchez, Erica Dickerson, Danate Moses and Benny Milligan (Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, Louisiana)

Part One

Last fall, the students in a graduate class in Applied Environmental Sociology at our university took on a food-based project that has outlasted the one semester class.   The instructor, David Burley, an environmental sociologist interested in sustainability issues, and his students saw this class as an excellent opportunity to put applied sociological (and anthropological) concepts and methods to work on a very local issue: the campus cafeteria food.

One of the graduate students in the class, Bonnie May, was the president of Reconnect, a campus organization for students interested in environmental and sustainability issues. Reconnect had been a part of the national program, The Real Food Challenge (RFC) since the previous semester. The RFC’s goal is to have local, sustainably and justly produced food in campus cafeterias instead of industrial agricultural products.  RFC is a student created and run organization that engages students on their own campuses to organize “real food campaigns” and other activities on campus to educate and implement change.

At the time, Reconnect was a small and dedicated group but limited in terms of time and energy its members could spend.  Finding time for extracurricular activities is an ongoing challenge for many of our students in part because so many commute to campus and work full time or, at the very least, part-time jobs.  So a student-led project to change the campus cafeteria food was perfect for our applied graduate class.

The graduate students prepared by reading articles about urban agriculture and food justice, ecological identity, and seminal works like Mary Hendrickson and William Heffernan’s (2002) article on locating weaknesses in the global food system and yes, of course, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Then, the class employed information from the readings, consultation from RFC coordinators via Bonnie May, and advice from independent market consultant Darlene Wolnik, to develop a university community outreach plan. Students took on individual tasks such as designing attractive educational pamphlets and information cards. Others put together a presentation on local, sustainably produced food and spoke to over 30 undergraduate classes and student organizations.  The students also gathered over 1000 signatures on campus in support of the “real food” project with over 600 email addresses of students who wanted to stay informed and over 100 who said they would volunteer in some capacity.

But the biggest part of the class’s project was planning a farmers market to raise awareness and build support in coordination with National Food Day on Oct. 24th.  This would become not only the first ever farmers market on our campus but, at least according to our research, the first on any Louisiana college campus.

Southeastern Students at market

Students purchasing greens at the Southeastern Farmers Market.

To be continued…

Next:  The Farmers Market—farmers cooperatives versus corporate intruders.

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by | April 7, 2013 · 5:25 pm

Solving the World Food Crisis

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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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Filed under anthropology, Call for Papers, culture, economics, farming, food policy, food security, Food Studies, foodways, GMO food, markets, nutrition, obesity, sustainability

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by | March 22, 2013 · 3:44 pm

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

Israeli Assoc Culinary Culture Logo

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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by | March 21, 2013 · 4:19 pm

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

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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 6th, 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 9th (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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by | February 27, 2013 · 7:00 pm

Midwestern Foodways Grant Opportunity!

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SAFN member Robert Dirks has alerted us to a grant opportunity from the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance. The announcement reads as follows:

Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance, in collaboration with Culinary Historians of Chicago and with funding from the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, is pleased to announce financial support for the study of Midwestern foods and food-related institutions.

This support is offered as three American Midwest Foodways Scholar’s Grants: one grant is for $3,000, a second is $1,500, and a third is $500.  Each is intended to help underwrite the research of academics and other investigators who intend to publish their findings in books, articles, videos or other media.

The grants are merit based and unrestricted.  They can be used to support fieldwork, library visits, conference attendance, or any other activities related to the applicant’s proposed project.

The American Midwest Foodways Scholar’s Grant is open to all individuals age 18 and older. Affiliation with an academic institution is not required, although students and others affiliated with such institutions are encouraged to apply. In selecting a recipient of the American Midwest Foodways Scholar’s Grant, the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance and Culinary Historians of Chicago do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion or national origin.

            The Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance and Culinary Historians of Chicago would like to increase the amount or number of grants given in the future and contributions to the scholarship fund are encouraged.

Additional information and application can be found at www.GreaterMidwestFoodways.com.  Any queries, please contact Catherine Lambrecht at CulinaryHistorians@gmail.com and telephone: 312/380-1665.

             Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance is dedicated to celebrating, exploring and preserving unique food traditions and their cultural contexts in the American Midwest. By hosting public events, developing archival resources and generating publications, the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance uncovers the distinctiveness of a region that is as varied in tastes and traditions as it is in its geography from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Whether indigenous foods such as Wisconsin cranberries and Minnesota walleye, iconographic flavors such as wheat and corn from across the prairies, immigrant cuisines from early Europeans to 21st century newcomers, or fish boils and fine dining in small towns and big cities, the Greater Midwest Foodways promotes and chronicles the diversity of the region’s culinary character.

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by | February 26, 2013 · 4:40 am

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

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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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by | February 19, 2013 · 5:45 pm

AAA 2013 Panel CFP: Politics of Public Food and Hospitality

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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 | February 13, 2013 · 8:10 pm

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

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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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by | November 20, 2012 · 1:12 am

Smokin’ Fish, Smokin’ Culture

by David Beriss

Is it possible to be an authentic Indian in a society overrun with tourists who want to buy bits and pieces of Indian culture? Are those bits and pieces authentic if they are manufactured in Asia? How can people maintain their traditional foodways if the government forbids them from catching enough fish? Can a balance be found between the needs of native fishers and public policies designed to preserve fisheries? Is there room for any kind of distinctive cultural identity in a globalized, touristic, heavily regulated society like that of the contemporary United States? Also, are salmon some sort of deity?

Cory Mann. Photo from Native American Public Communications.

These are the kinds of questions raised by the fascinating film “Smokin’ Fish.” The documentary is the result of a collaboration between Luke Griswold-Tergis and Cory Mann. Having finished an undergraduate degree in anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, Griswold-Tergis set off to Alaska, where he met Mann. Mann is just the kind of person who makes it hard to define culture. He is Tlingit and an entrepreneur with a business designing tchotchkes based on native Alaskan designs. His products are manufactured in Asia for resale in Alaska. Yet even as he pursues his global efforts at mass marketing native culture, he is also deeply engaged in exploring his own cultural identity. The collaboration between Griswold-Tergis and Mann has produced “Smokin’ Fish,” a documentary that explores the connections between native culture, global capitalism, colonialist exploitation of indigenous people, the environment, sustainable fishing and entrepreneurialism. Oh, and smoked salmon. And bears.

Smoking Fish. Photo from Native American Public Communications.

Mann seems to be quite a dynamic entrepreneur, pursuing several different business ventures at any given time, most with some sort of tie-in to Tlingit culture. But for a few months each summer, he closes things down in Juneau and heads back to Klukwan, where his extended family lives. There he works with members of his clan to catch and smoke salmon. The fish, both alive and smoked, are central to the film’s story. Mann asserts at various points that Tlingit worship the fish. The smokehouses they build seem central to their foodways. But this is not all about subsistence fishing. Some Tlingit engage in what appears to be commercial fishing. The smoked fish are also used in trade with other native Alaskans.

The film subtly weaves in the kind of ethnographic details that highlight what is distinctive—and unexpected—about contemporary Tlingit life. Mann explains that his mother took him to San Diego as a small child, where they lived what seems like a counter-cultural kind of life, more hippy than Indian. He never knew his father, who was white. At some point an aunt retrieved him and brought him back to Alaska, where he was raised by a large group of female relatives. This makes sense since, as Mann points out, the Tlingit are matrilineal. It is that kind of detail, along with discussions of clans and houses (Mann is a member of the Eagle Thunderbird Clan) and about the ways in which people build and maintain relationships (by helping build and maintain smokehouses, for instance), that remind us that even in a society heavily dominated by Euro-American values, groups like the Tlingit retain at least some aspects of cultural distinctiveness.

At the same time, the Tlingit continue to struggle with their relationship with non-native authorities. They must deal with the limits on fishing imposed by the state of Alaska, including both licenses and limits that would make it impossible for them to catch enough fish to meet their needs (these are very much ongoing debates, if recent news out of Alaska is any indication). The conflict here surpasses any kind of stereotypes about native relationships with the environment vs. rapacious outsiders. The Tlingit are presented as complex people with interests in salmon that are both traditional and commercial, not as natural environmentalists. Mann also must struggle with federal tax authorities, who do not seem to understand the unusual way in which he runs his business. He has to deal with border officials, as he goes to visit and trade with other natives in nearby Canada. I should note that he does all this while displaying a wry sense of humor and while using an astonishing array of vehicles, all of which appear to be in dire need of repair.

Filmed mostly in Alaska, much of the movie is quite breathtaking. Mann does his fishing from a canoe, in areas of stunning natural beauty. There is an amazing number of eagles flying around the region, as well as both brown and grizzly bears competing with the people for the fish. In addition, members of Mann’s extended family provide a wide range of additional voices, commenting on the history of native/nonnative relations, the exploitation of Tlingit lands, and the challenges they face in maintaining any kind of attachment to their heritage.

The movie is currently traveling around the U.S. Details on where it may go next can be found here. The filmmakers have a Facebook page as well. “Smokin’ Fish” would make a very useful addition to a variety of anthropology courses, including any food and culture course, as well as introductory cultural anthropology classes, courses on indigenous cultures or even on globalization. It can be used to start discussions on food, kinship, identity and, of course, culture. I recommend, however, making sure you have some smoked fish on hand when you show it. The audience will be hungry.

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