Category Archives: AAA 2017 Washington DC

by | April 11, 2017 · 5:54 pm

AAA CFP Last Call // Sedimentation: Extraction, Soil and Memory

Sedimentation: Extraction, Soil and Memory

(seeking papers re: Agriculture, Food Commodities)

Co-organizers:

Serena Stein, PhD Candidate, Princeton University

Andrew Ofstehage, PhD Candidate, UNC-Chapel Hill

 

Land is often mobilized discursively as wastelands (Voyles, 2015) or zones of hidden potential and promise for capitalist development (Yeh, 2013) to justify frontier expansions worldwide. Land, landscapes and soil are also increasingly recognized as powerful actors in agrarian narratives and encounters, as agentive materials that help create their own history and futures (Kawa, 2016). This panel centers upon the encounters, memories, and afterlives of soil, putting forward the analytic of ‘sedimentation’ to recognize, reconsider and unsettle the dust upon which we tread in so-called development contexts of extraction. In particular, sedimentation, as a social analytic, aims to rethink processes and potential shapes of accumulation in extractive spaces, in terms of strata (tempo, order, verticality); accretion (formation, connection, growth); and provenience (origins, indigeneity, and future archaeologies) of resources taken from the earth, as well as the (im)material objects, spaces, imaginaries, and discursive remains.  Presenters will draw on multi-species and actor/non-actor encounters (Haraway, 2007; Ingold, 2000; Raffles, 2002; Tsing, 2015), materiality of things (Stoler, 2016; Bennett 2010), and memories and afterlives of land and soil encounters (Gordillo, 2014) to examine the placeness, temporalities and relationalities of encounters in and through land, with attention to disparate histories, political projects, and livelihoods in the Global South that help to constitute the material and narrative lives of soil.

Submit paper abstracts to Serena (serenas@princeton.edu) or Andrew (aofste@live.unc.edu) no later than 12 pm (ES) Thursday, April 13th.

 

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by | April 10, 2017 · 7:18 pm

The School Lunch Debate: Ethnographic Perspectives

AAA Panel CFP
Unknown-2The School Lunch Debate:
Ethnographic Perspectives on Education, Nutrition, and Culture

From parents to politicians, health care providers to business executives, anthropologists and many others have various reasons to ask: How does school food shape children- their health, education, and general well-being? The politics behind school food programs is rife with tensions between neoliberal approaches to government that seek to diminish public assistance programs and those who believe that all humans have a right to food and schools should be one of the first places of assistance. Beyond the physical body, school food also has the potential to play a critical role in education–shaping children’s engagement with the natural world, different cultures, and the school curriculum.

This panel seeks to explore the different ways in which anthropologists are looking at how school food programs throughout the globe shape children’s lives. It also examines the ways in which government policies about nutrition and education play out in the cafeteria. From the children’s behavior in the lunchroom and classroom to the preparation of food in school kitchens and what kids bring to school in lunch bags, this panel will present new perspectives on food consumed at schools.
We invite papers that use ethnographic methods to shed new light on current debates about school food. Whether focused on the nutritional or educational outcomes or on the sourcing and sustainability of school food, we encourage participants that focus on understudied areas of school food—for example, taste education, cultural diversity, food in school curriculum, the intersection of biopolitics and nutrition, policy outcomes, allergies, eating disorders, the role of agro-food industries in feeding children, and the work of chefs. 

We are looking for 2-3 more papers for this session. Please send your abstract to Rachel Black by Wednesday, April 12, if you are interested in participating in this panel.

 

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by | April 8, 2017 · 8:19 pm

AAA CFP: Famines and Food Crises in Africa

For the upcoming 2017 AAA meetings in Washington DC. Contact the organizers listed below if you are interested in participating.

Famines and Food Crises in Africa: Causes, Consequences and Remediation: How Anthropologists Are Responding

Anita Spring- U Florida (aspring@ufl.edu) and Sol Katz-U Penn (skatz2001@aol.com) organizers

Famines and food crises in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries bordering the Red Sea are created and complicated by war, political unrest, climate change, continued population growth, and economic factors. A chaotic decline in food resources for at least 20 million people extends east to west from Nigeria to South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, mostly due to political unrest and instability, with these four countries having the greatest severity in Africa and the world according to the UN. Other climate-related famine countries are in the Horn of Africa and include Sudan and Ethiopia, while political unrest affects food production and distribution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (central Africa) and drought conditions obtain in the southern and eastern Africa (Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), where prolonged and serious drought strains the economic and social capacity to cope with and develop new solutions in these recurring drought scenarios. Further complicating relief in many of these countries are the reduced expenditures from multilateral agencies of the UN and bilateral assistance from the US, UK, EU, and Japan. By contrast, China has stepped up to provide public- and private-sector funding and development assistance, but the magnitude, methods and results need to be studied to ascertain the impacts. This session examines from an anthropological perspective the causes, consequences, and their efforts for remedial and action plans developed by participating multilateral, bilateral and NGO agencies aimed at mitigating food and agriculture disasters, and for promulgating new solutions both political and technological. A major problem currently facing famine-relief programs is the uncertainty of UN funding, particularly affecting the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP) and related emergency resources due in part to the proposed US under-funding for UN programs. This round table aims to summarize issues and remedies using the data from several perspectives. Questions to be addressed in this session include, but are not limited to the following issues: (1) How are anthropologists conceptualizing, identifying, and mitigating food-system disasters, using their the long-term experiences in studying previous and recurrent calamities? (2) How do current political mishandling of agricultural production and distribution affect outcomes versus what happens if “more enlightened” production and distribution methods, as well as better marketing strategies and financial instruments are introduced? (3) Are any of these likely to mitigate the food crises, and if so how? This round table also considers new and innovative farm-managed methods such as conservation agriculture and carbon sequestration in soils, alternative food sources and better food storage, new financial instruments and index-insurance for farmers, and producer-friendly government policies in terms of production and distribution. The need for greater economic understanding of the food supply is a crucial and missing link between the planning which is often done by Big Ag economics, and the need for “Anthronomics”, that uses the insights and questions of anthropology and the methods of economics to address new solutions for food system problems.

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by | April 8, 2017 · 5:32 pm

AAA CFP: Circulations, Logics, and Logistics of Food

We are looking for 1 more paper for the following session. Please send abstracts to Micah M. Trapp, mmtrapp@memphis.edu, by Tuesday Apr. 11th.

Circulations, Logics, and Logistics of Food

In The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing describes capitalism as a translation machine: mushrooms transpire and are plucked from the forest, generating a variety of gift and commodity forms. Asking what it is that can possibly live in the ruins of capitalism, Tsing’s meditative account reveals the complex and transformative potential of the mushroom as an invasive, magical spore and multifarious source of meaning and value. The mushroom demands that we follow where it is that our food resources go, but also the generative life along these pathways to understand the emergence of conflicted and conflicting forms of meaning and value. In this session we consider how food circulates. We treat circulation broadly as transformational force and evoke different theoretical understandings of the ways food moves to explore how meanings and value accumulate and dissipate in our food systems.

Following classic studies of political economy, circulation tracks processes from production to consumption. Situated within theories of a moral economy, circulations articulate social relationships and values. As a semiotic endeavor, the circulation of food transpires through imagery and representations. Circulation is also an embodied phenomenon, foods circulate through and nourish the human body, while pesticides invade and seep through the pores of farmworkers. Nested within discursive politics, “healthy foods” circulate bodily ideals and discrimination, while advocates of food access aim to remedy the unequal circulations of food.

Papers will seek to unearth and articulate underlying connections between food logics—the social frameworks we use to explain, motivate, and propel food-based action—and food logistics, the systems, connections, and exchanges required to sustain human nourishment. How does one’s logic of farming, for example, intersect with the logistics of operating a viable business? How do the logistics of subsidized food supply chains refract upon the logics of humanitarianism or social welfare? Distribution, attendant inequalities, and the hope for equality lie at the heart of our inquiries as we consider how food logics and logistics shift from reciprocal links and fluid movements to strangleholds and breaking points.

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by | April 2, 2017 · 9:26 pm

CFP on Waste Materialities & Meaning

AAA 2017 CFP

Session Title: Waste Materialities & Meaning: Anthropological Engagements with Reuse, Repair and Care

 

Organizers:

Cindy Isenhour, University of Maine

Anna Bohlin, University of Gothenburg

Staffan Appelgren, University of Gothenburg

 

 

The recent international focus on circular economies – which purport to reimagine waste as a resource rather than a market externality – has engaged scholars from multiple disciplines in the exploration of reuse as a tool for climate mitigation, reduced materials use and resource conservation.  This is certainly a positive development given the impact of contemporary production-consumption systems on humans and non-humans alike.  At the same time, anthropological engagements with so-called “waste” (garbage, rubbish, discards) raise questions about the novelty of the circular economy concept. Anthropology has already illustrated the deeply relational, situated and cultural entanglements implied in the determination of “resource,” “value,” and “waste”.  From ethnographies featuring innovative reuse among resource-strapped communities (Nguyen 2016) and garbage pickers on the margins of Brazilian society (Millar 2008) to sanitary workers in New York City (Nagle 2014), or among connoisseurs of thrift shops and vintage goods (Isenhour 2012), anthropology has long demonstrated the not-so-novel concept of informal circular economies in action.  Perhaps more importantly, anthropological engagements have helped to illustrate the materiality and generative capacity of “abandoned things” as they fundamentally shape social relations, our collective sense of memory and heritage, as well as human and non-human nature(Reno 2015). What is perhaps new about today’s circular economy imaginaries is that they signal the growing commodification and formalization of waste and reuse practices, raising important questions about the potential gentrification of reuse, and potential exclusion, as well as the shifting relationality of reuse to capitalist markets given projections of the “end of cheap nature” (Schindler and Demaria 2017, Moore 2015).   This panel seeks to both critically and productively engage with long-standing and emergent efforts to “save waste” through repair, care and reuse.  We seek contributions that engage theory and ethnographic detail to explore a wide variety of questions and themes with relevance to the meaning and materiality of reuse including, but not limited to, the following:

 

  • How waste and residual value are variously and situationally determined
  • How discarded goods or “abandoned things” circulate in space and across scales
  • How posthumanist perspectives can provide novel ways of conceptualizing human-object relations in contexts of reuse
  • The generative capacity of reuse to shape/reshape livelihoods, waste infrastructures and materials markets
  • Everyday practices of maintenance, repair and care – as processes of reuse
  • The potential of reuse markets and practices to bring transformative change (or variously, another individualist and niche market-based movement)

 

If interested, please send an abstract to Cindy Isenhour (cynthia.isenhour@maine.edu) by Friday, April 7th.  We’ll get back to you no later than Monday, April 10th so that we can submit the panel prior to the AAA deadline of Friday, April 14th.

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by | April 2, 2017 · 9:22 pm

New Call for Paper’s Website Section

M. Ruth Dike

University of Kentucky

In an effort to centralize Call for Paper’s for the upcoming American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting, we have created a new Call for Paper’s section of the website! This will be a place where anyone can browse CFP’s related to the anthropology of food for the upcoming AAA meetings. If we see Call for Paper’s that are relevant to the anthropology of food, we will first post them on the blog and then on the CFP’s section of the website.

2017_AAA Meeting

We hope to also post CFP’s for other conferences such as ASFS/AFHV in the future.

If you see a CFP relevant to the anthropology of food, please send it to mruthdike@uky.edu to be posted on the blog and/or our listserv. The deadline for AAA Invited and Volunteered Panel, Individual Paper, Roundtable Sessions and Poster Submissions is Friday, April 14th, 2017 at 5 pm EDT, so please send in any relevant CFP’s in ASAP!

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by | March 16, 2017 · 10:11 pm

Panel Proposal, AAA 2017: Interdisciplinary Work in Food and Nutrition

This is an abstract for a panel for the AAA 2017 meetings in DC. Click here to see the CFP for the conference from SAFN and here for more details on the conference. Contact information and deadlines for this proposal are below.

Building the Big Tent: Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Work in Food and Nutrition

Systems thinking and interdisciplinary work are essential to facing challenges in contemporary food environments that are complex and globalized. Issues such as the nutrition transition and sustainable food systems are difficult to comprehend or address using a single lens or discipline. National initiatives such as Healthy People 2020, and international efforts by the World Health Organization urge greater scrutiny of the social determinants of health to target health conditions, like chronic disease, that have a long chain of causality. These are often rooted in historic trends such as colonization, urbanization, and globalization, with deep political and cultural implications. Biomedical or socio-cultural approaches prove inadequate on their own to establishing lasting solutions. Integrative research in nutrition uses systems thinking to connect research about human nutrition and the experience of food across biological, socio-cultural, economic, and political dimensions. Transdisciplinary and integrative research that transcend the politics of siloed academic research and scholarship and build the big tent are critical to crafting effective responses to intractable global health and nutrition issues.

Despite academic recognition of the importance of interdisciplinary work, there is limited scholarship and deliberation about best practices. Even while interdisciplinary programs emerge, there is little discourse on how to include such approaches within courses, across curricula, and in institutions. There is a need for more research and sharing of best practices in interdisciplinary work and integrative research that help us move forward. This session will focus on the process and nature of interdisciplinary work and integrative approaches to research in community food and nutrition. We encourage submissions that address, but are not limited to, any of the following:

  • The role of anthropology in interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and/or inter-professional work in community food and nutrition
  • Models of ecological and systems thinking, including best practices and methods using integrative research approaches
  • Stories of difficulties faced and lessons learned: bridging distances, developing common language and culture
  • Examples of emerging projects and questions posed
  • Reflections on being an interdisciplinary scholar
  • Developing courses and curriculum in higher education settings
  • Using transdisciplinary platforms to inform and influence policies, programs, and interventions

Please submit a title and 250 word abstract by March 28, 2017 to Kimberly E. Johnson (kjohnson4@wcupa.edu ) and Susan Johnston (Sjohnston@wcupa.edu).

 

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by | March 13, 2017 · 3:21 am

SAFN and AAA 2017: Sessions, Papers, Posters!

The Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) would like to invite colleagues to submit sessions and poster presentations for this year’s 116th AAA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC (November 29 – December 3, 2017). You can submit here:

https://www.conferenceabstracts.com/cfp2/logincustom.asp?EventKey=TWAPLBWD

The Society welcomes innovative, well-rounded sessions, strong individual papers, and posters representing the full range of topics food and nutrition anthropologists are concerned with. In particular, however, we especially welcome submissions that engage creatively with this year’s conference theme “Anthropology Matters”, which calls for anthropologists to employ their critical skills to address contemporary issues of social injustice, health and well being, and environmental challenges. Frankly these themes seem tailor-made for research related to food and nutrition.

The deadline for Invited and Volunteered Panel, Individual Paper, Roundtable Sessions, and Poster Submissions is Friday, April 14, 2017 at 5pm EDT

We will select several sessions/roundtables among those submitted for review by SAFN for designation as INVITED. These are generally cutting-edge, directly related to the meeting theme, or cross sub-disciplinary. SESSION proposals should include a session abstract of no more than 500 words, keywords, anticipated attendance, as well as the names and roles of each presenter. Individual presenters must also submit their own abstracts (250 words), paper title and keywords via the AAA meeting website. ROUNDTABLES are a format to discuss critical social issues affecting anthropology. No papers are presented in this format. The organizer will submit an abstract for the roundtable but participants will not present papers or submit abstracts. A roundtable presenter is a major role, having the same weight as a paper presentation.

More information on proposal submission types, rules for submission and participation, and access to the online portal can be found on the AAA website, here: http://bit.ly/2m4GuVj

PLEASE NOTE, one way to increase your and our presence at the meetings is to have co-sponsored invited sessions between SAFN and another society. Invited time is shared with the other sub-discipline, and the session is double-indexed. When prompted during the submission process, please select additional AAA sections for review if you think that we should be in contact with them about possible co-sponsorship.

If you are considering proposing a session with us, have any questions, or are looking for additional presenters to make up a session, please do not hesitate to contact the 2017 Program Committee members at Abigail Adams (Chair): adams@ccsu.edu ; Amanda Green amagreen@gmail.com ; Ryan Adams adamsr@lycoming.edu

Abigail Adams
Chair, Program Committee
Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition

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by | March 12, 2017 · 6:12 pm

CFP for AAA session – Bienestar: Transition and Wellbeing amongst Mexican-origin Farmworkers

CFP for AAA session

Bienestar: Transition and Wellbeing amongst Mexican-origin Farmworkers.

Session Abstract
As U.S. food production has grown increasingly industrialized, the consolidation of small family farms into larger, and often vertically-integrated farming operations has grown more commonplace. Since the end of World War II, these consolidation and industrialization processes have been spurred by a growing influence of large-scale agricultural corporations that now dominate the majority of food production and distribution in the United States and abroad. Alongside this consolidation, hiring laborers from off the farm has become the primary strategy of meeting the production needs of farming operations where labor needs exceed local labor availability. Foreign-born workers labor in nearly all sectors and scales of the food system, from the smallest family farms to the largest corporate food operations, from diversified farms to enormous dairy operations. In a nation where the food industry accounts for 13% of the total Gross Domestic Product, the contribution of farmworkers is clearly significant to the nation’s overall economic wellbeing (FCWA 2012). Despite the significance of farmworkers in upholding the national agricultural economy, the economic conditions of farmworkers remain substandard.
The growing reliance on nonfamily farm labor since the end of World War II has been significant, with the ratio of hired farmworkers to total farmworkers growing from 1 in 4 in 1950 to 1 in 3 in 2014 (Kandel 2008, Hertz 2014). Today, nearly 80% of American farm workers are foreign born, and approximately 50% of farm workers are living and working in the U.S. without legal work permits (USDA). While the majority of farm workers are foreign born, most no longer migrate in the traditional sense. Farm workers today travel in smaller circuits, and often settle and raise families in rural communities. Most farm workers now live within a 75 mile radius of their place of employment. Border security policies have contributed significantly to this demographic shift, as families choose to stay together as undocumented laborers rather than risk the perils of border crossing (Hamilton and Hale, 2016).
In this session, we seek to explore the “well-being” of Mexican-origin farmworkers currently living in the United States. We include several geographic locations and a variety of agricultural industries across the U.S. In each of our papers, we consider how race, gender, age, geography and immigration status intersect with markers of well-being. Markers of well-being include: food security, access to health care and equal protection under the law. One commonality amongst our research is a process of transition. Transition can include the physical movement of farm workers, shifting farm worker demographics (include immigration status, gender, age and ethnicity). Furthermore, demographic transitions in our agricultural labor force must be contextualized within the broader arena of rapidly changing immigration policies and laws on national, state and local levels.

Session Organizers:
Teresa Mares, University of Vermont
Lisa Meierotto, Boise State University
Rebecca Som Castellano, Boise State University

If you are interested in submitting a paper to this session, please send an email expressing interest as soon as possible, and plan to submit a paper abstract to Lisa Meierotto by April 1st.

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