Category Archives: AAA 2013 Chicago

by | August 22, 2013 · 2:44 am

Christine Wilson Award

Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
2013 Christine Wilson Student Paper Award

DEADLINE OCT 4!

The Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) is pleased to invite students to submit papers in competition for the 2013 Christine Wilson Awards presented to outstanding undergraduate and graduate student research papers that examine topics within the perspectives in nutrition, food studies and anthropology.

Papers may report on research undertaken in whole or in part by the author. Co –authored work is acceptable, provided that submitting student is first author. Papers must have as their primary focus an anthropological approach to the study of food and/or nutrition and must present original, empirical research; literature reviews are not eligible. Papers that propose a new conceptual framework or outline novel research designs or methodological approaches are especially welcome. Winners will be recognized and presented with an award at the 2013 AAA meeting in Chicago, IL and receive a year’s membership in SAFN.

Students (undergraduate or graduate) must be currently enrolled or enrolled during in the past academic year (Fall 2012 to present). The text of papers should be no longer than 25 pages, double-spaced and follow AAA style guidelines.  For application details please the Christine Wilson Award page here.

Deadline: October 4, 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 28, 2013 · 7:09 pm

The Anthronaut Farmer (AAA 2013 panel proposal!)

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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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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 | February 2, 2013 · 12:56 am

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

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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

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.com and we will take care of it.

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by | January 28, 2013 · 5:41 pm

Proposed AAA Panel: Foodways in Discourse and Practice

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Foodways in Discourse and Practice:  A Discussion of Ethnographic Methods.

This panel will seek to find theory and methods that prove useful in overcoming the impediments to matching quantitative dietary recall data with qualitative ethnographic participant observation of foodways in the field. We will seek to share theories and practices that help illuminate these difficult but interesting areas of disjuncture.  Instead of presenting these incongruous results as failure in the field, I am seeking researchers who have dug deeper into these conflicts to find interesting ways to apply theory and further understanding of how humans use and interpret their foodways.

If you are interested in participating please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words discussing some aspect of your participant-observation fieldwork that has benefited from a renewed or novel understanding of anthropological theory (particularly practice theory, political economy, cultural materialism or symbolic/interpretive theoretical frameworks) in order to understand contradictory results in dietary surveys or other quantitative methods used to study foodways.  Please keep in mind the historical understanding and future directions implied by the theme of this year’s conference.

Please submit your proposal or direct any questions to Amber O’Connor at aoconnor@utexas.edu by February 25th.

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.com and we will take care of it.

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by | January 21, 2013 · 11:08 pm

Call for Papers: Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

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Your opportunity to present at the 112th American Anthropological Association annual meeting in Chicago, November 20-24, 2013

The theme of this year’s conference is “Future Publics, Current Engagements”. The AAA executive committee asks us to consider “how anthropological theory and method can provide insight into the human past and emerging future.” In particular, we are asked to examine “our efforts to transform our disciplinary identity and capacity in terms of knowledge production and relevance in a world of radical change.” SAFN members are particularly well situated to contribute to discussion around the theme, as many, if not most of us, work across anthropological sub-disciplines and/or with colleagues in other disciplines, using theories and methods that cross-cut disciplinary boundaries in innovative ways. For more information about the national meeting, including elaboration of the theme and important dates, see http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/index.cfm.

SAFN is seeking proposals for Executive sessions, Invited sessions, Volunteered papers, posters and sessions, and alternative session formats including Public Policy Forums, Roundtables and Installations.

There are three deadlines for submission: a deadline for Executive sessions (Wednesday, February 6), Invited sessions (Friday, March 15) and Volunteered sessions (Monday, April 15).

The deadline for proposing an Executive session is coming up fast. An Executive session is a unique, highly visible forum on a topic of interest to a wide audience that connects directly to the conference theme. Anyone interested in organizing an Executive panel or roundtable needs to submit a session proposal on the AAA meeting website by 5 PM EST, February 6. Decisions will be announced on March 1st. (Note that if the decision is negative, you can submit the panel for invited/volunteer sessions—see below.) If you are interested in submitting an executive session, please let Helen and Neri know asap (see our emails below). To apply, you will need: a session abstract (of no more than 500 words), keywords, length of session, anticipated attendance, presenter names and roles. The organizer(s) must be a current AAA member unless eligible for a membership exemption (anthropologists living outside of the US/Canada or non-anthropologists) and have registered for the 2013 Annual Meeting. Individual presenters must submit their own abstracts (250 words), paper title and keywords via the AAA meeting website by 5 PM EST, April 15. Any discussants or chairs must also be registered by April 15th

Invited sessions are generally cutting-edge, directly related to the meeting theme, or cross sub-disciplines, i.e. they have broader appeal. Session proposals must be submitted via the AAA meeting website by 5 PM EST, March 15. Session proposals should include a session abstract of no more than 500 words, key words, number of participants in the session, anticipated attendance, as well as the names and roles of each presenter. Decisions will be announced on April 4th. Individual presenters must submit their own abstracts (250 words), paper title and keywords via the AAA meeting website by 5 PM EST, April 15. Any discussants or chairs must also be registered by April 15th. One way to increase your and our presence at the meetings is to have a co-sponsored invited session between SAFN and another society. Invited time is shared with the other sub-discipline and the session is double-indexed. Please include any other societies we should be in contact with about possible co-sponsorships.

Volunteered sessions are comprised of submitted papers or posters that are put together based on a common theme as well as sessions proposed as invited that were not selected as such. Volunteered session abstracts should be 500 words or less, individual paper abstracts 250 words or less. Both must be submitted via the AAA website by 5 PM EST, April 15.

Installations are a creative way to present ideas that capture the senses, and may include performances, recitals, conversations, author-meets-critic roundtables, salon reading workshops, oral history recording sessions and other alternative, creative forms of intellectual expression. Selected Installations will be curated for an off-site exhibition and tied to the official AAA conference program. Successful proposals will offer attendees an opportunity to learn from a range of vested interests not typically encountered or easily found on the traditional AAA program. Organizers are responsible for submitting the session abstract (of no more than 500 words), keywords, length of session, anticipated attendance, presenter names and roles by 5 PM EST, April 15.  Presenters must also be registered by the April 15, 2013 final deadline in order to appear on the 2013 Annual Meeting Program. If you have an idea that might require some organizational creativity please contact the Executive Program Committee as soon as possible at aaameetings@aaanet.org.

Public Policy Forums are a place to discuss critical social and public policy issues. No papers are presented. Instead, the ideal format is a moderator and up to seven panelists. The moderator, after introductions, poses questions that are discussed by the panelists. It is recommended that at least one panelist be a policymaker. Proposals should include a 500-word abstract describing the issue to be discussed, and the moderator and panelists’ names. Submissions are reviewed by the AAA Committee on Public Policy; the deadline for forum submissions is 5 PM EST, March 15.

For further information or to log in to submit proposals, go to http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/Call-for-Papers.cfm. Remember that to upload abstracts and participate in the meeting you must be an active AAA member who has paid the 2013 meeting registration fee. (Membership exemption is in place for anthropologists living outside of the US/Canada or non-anthropologists.)

If you’d like to discuss your ideas for sessions, papers, posters, roundtable discussions, forums or installations feel free to contact the 2013 Program Chairs, Helen Vallianatos (vallianatos [at] ualberta.ca) or Neri de Kramer (dekramer [at] udel.edu).

We look forward to another exciting annual meeting with a strong SAFN participation!

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