Category Archives: Food Studies

by | June 22, 2017 · 3:36 pm

CFP: Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics

We have received the following call for proposals from David Kaplan, which may be of interest to FoodAnthropology readers and researchers:

Call for proposals:  Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, 2nd edition. Eds. Paul B. Thompson (Michigan State) and David M. Kaplan (University of North Texas)

We are accepting contributions on the ethical dimensions of food, agriculture, eating, and animals. Entries should be 2,000 words (min) to 4,000 words (max).  Deadline for proposals: September 1, 2017

Contact David M. Kaplan (University of North Texas), David.Kaplan@unt.edu to indicate your interest. Dr. Kaplan will send you the Table of Contents.  Please suggest a topic (and a title) that is not included in the list.

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by | May 23, 2017 · 9:05 pm

American Food

There is a lot of innovative teaching being done in food studies and we like to feature it here whenever we hear about it. Last year we noted that Emily Contois’ students at Brown had produced an interesting blog about Food and Gender in US Popular Culture. We were interested to see what she might come up with next. This year it is a student blog on the idea of American Food. The project grew out of a class she co-taught with Professor Richard Meckel on “Food in American Society and Culture” at Brown University. The texts range from thoughts on immigrant foods, to the role of convenience foods, American food in cross-cultural context, and much more. Interesting contrasts—between health and indulgence, for instance—are explored. There is a pretty nifty Pinterest board to go with it as well.

Go check it out. And send us your student projects! We would be happy to share them with the world.

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by | May 12, 2017 · 3:37 pm

What FoodAnthropology Is Reading Now, May 12, 2017

David Beriss

A brief digest of food and nutrition-related items that caught our attention recently. Got items you think we should include? Send links and brief descriptions to dberiss@gmail.com or hunterjo@gmail.com.

It is 2017, not 1906. At least, that is what the calendar says. But if you read Michael Grabell’s recent article in The New Yorker about work at Case Farms, a chicken processing company in Ohio, you might think you were reading something by Upton Sinclair, from the early 20th century in Chicago. Underaged, undocumented, immigrant workers, working in extremely dangerous conditions, without benefit of unions, always in danger of being fired, living in awful conditions…this article is essential reading. Read it, assign it to your students, discuss, act. Also, after reading this, you may wonder if Mr. Trump and other anti-immigrant advocates have been discussing the wrong problem all along.

Here in Louisiana we are quite used to hearing about the toxic dead zone that appears regularly in the Gulf of Mexico. It is huge—the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island, combined—and deadly to sea life. It is mostly caused by agricultural runoff from the Mississippi River, which drains a huge portion of the United States. As it turns out, such hypoxia zones exist all over the world (the Baltic is actually the largest, the Gulf of Mexico is second). This graphic article from Civil Eats provides an overview of the situation and some forecasts for this coming year. The impact on our food system is enormous. That said, dead zones are reversible. Countries along the Rhine River and the North Sea have reduced pollution sufficiently to diminish their dead zones by upwards of 35% in recent years.

And yet, do we really know if chemical runoffs are creating the dead zones? What if we could find studies, produced by faculty at real universities, that suggested the chemicals used to fertilize, kill pests, etc. on farms are not really harmful? In this article, Bruce Livesey, writing in the Canadian publication “The Walrus,” examines the role of industry in funding research that at the very least tries to create doubt about the impact—on the environment, on food, on humans—of the chemicals used on farms. He looks particularly at industry funding for research at one Canadian university, but this is a persistent issue at many universities and seems likely to be more important as public funds for research are cut.

On a cheerier note, John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance (an organization whose work often turns up in this digest) has recently published a new book, “The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South” (Penguin, 2017) and, possibly as a consequence, he is suddenly everywhere. John T. also recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, “The Hidden Radicalism of Southern Food,” which is about food sovereignty and race in the U.S. south (and specifically, the work and life of Fannie Lou Hamer). In addition, Kim Severson wrote an interesting bio of John T. for the same paper, which goes into some of the intellectual battles that have arisen around his work. Our advice: read it all!

Another leading member of the food intelligentsia, Jessica Harris, has published a memoir that we are looking forward to reading. The book, “My Soul Looks Back,” (Scribner, 2017) has already been reviewed by the New York Times, which you can read here.

Can a salad be a racist symbol? In this article, Writer Bonnie Tsui explores the continued existence of the “Asian Salad” on many restaurant menus. This is a useful way to get into a discussion about casual racism in the food world. As she points out, the situation for this (and other) salads with names referring to nations or ethnic groups, is not simple. It is worth noting that there may still be a few restaurants (usually Italian) in New Orleans with a salad named for an ethnic slur for Italians. In this article from a few years back, a chef explains where that fits in local culinary terms.

Ever wonder about the story behind Indian-Chinese cuisine? You should, because the world is full of all kinds of great stories about traveling foods and people. To that end, read this article by Sharanya Deepak, on the development of Chinese cuisine in Kolkata over two centuries ago. And while we are tracing foods across the globe, check out this blog posting from food historian Rachel Laudan about the Islamic influence on Mexican cuisine. She traces a chicken dish from “Moorish” to “Mestizo” over a few centuries.

Following on this theme of ethnicity and foods, we have often featured here articles that take on questions about how foods from different groups are represented. Are they “ethnic” foods, immigrant foods, or just food? And who can speak about them, cook them for the public, etc.? These are important questions because they help (or prevent) thinking about the lives of the people who make the food. And because these discussions are far from settled, here is another one, in which Angela Dimayuga, executive chef at Mission Chinese (in New York), discusses the food they serve as maybe Chinese and maybe “New American Food.” This is the same Angela Dimayuga who was recently in the news for having refused an interview with an Ivanka Trump-affiliated website using very powerful language.

The Trump administration has picked a fight with Canada over milk and apparently both American dairy farmers and Democrats are happy. But should they be? Does the U.S. have a strange policy that generates huge milk surpluses? Perhaps. Read this, from Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, to learn about this situation.

During the last French presidential election debate, we learned a new word from France’s now-president elect, Emmanuel Macron: poudre de perlimpinpin. That is French for “snake oil” and Macron was accusing his opponent of being a purveyor. Dietary advice is, in America, one area where the poudre de perlimpinpin is regularly on offer. In this recent article from the Atlantic, James Hamblin looks into recent claims that lectins—substances found in plants—are to blame for American dietary woes. He critiques a book by a doctor who advises avoiding foods with lectins and who, as it happens, sells dietary supplements that he claims can help you deal with them. Along with casting serious doubts on the claims made by the anti-lectin doctor, Hamblin does a particularly good job of pointing to the signs and symbols deployed to lend legitimacy to this attempt at creating the next dietary fad. For that alone, this is worth a read.

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by | April 30, 2017 · 5:01 pm

Great Food Conference Program

Los Angeles is one of the great food cities of the world. So, logically, it should be one of the great places to have a food studies conference. That is the hypothesis we are working with and it is up to you to go study the matter. To do that, you may want to attend the annual joint conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, this coming June 14-17. It will be held on the campus of Occidental College, in, of course, Los Angeles.

The preliminary schedule is available on the conference web site. This should help you decide whether you want to attend. The scholarly program is on June 15-17, but there are several interesting looking events, including workshops and tours, on June 14 that could give you a reason to arrive a day earlier.

If you are presenting research at the conference (and a number of SAFN members are!), you need to be sure to register by today (4/30/2017) to be included on the final program. Whether you are presenting at the conference or not, we hope to see a good turnout of SAFN people there. We will try to organize some sort of informal gathering of SAFN members at the conference this year. Details to follow!

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by | April 24, 2017 · 9:45 pm

CFP: The Future of Food Studies

We recently received this call for papers for a graduate student conference that should be of interest to our members or their students. At the very end of this CFP there is a note about the Graduate Association for Food Studies that ought to interest any graduate student with interests in food.

Call For Papers

The 2nd Annual

Future of Food Studies Graduate Conference

St. Louis  —  October 19-21, 2017

presented by the Graduate Association for Food Studies with major funding from

The Association for the Study of Food and Society and 

Washington University in St. Louis

The Future of Food Studies

The Graduate Association for Food Studies is pleased to announce the second annual Future of Food Studies graduate student conference, to be held 19-21 October 2017, at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The keynote speaker will be Professor Krishnendu Ray, acclaimed food studies scholar and chair of the Food Studies department at New York University. Additionally, a select number of student papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the Graduate Journal of Food Studies, an open-source, peer-reviewed graduate journal that publishes food-related research.  Learn more about our 2015 conference at Harvard University here.

Below you will find the Call for Papers; please feel free to distribute to any and all graduate students who you think may be interested.

Thanks to generous funding from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and Washington University, modest support may be available in some cases to partially subsidize travel expenses of some conference participants, with priority granted to those traveling from afar.

For proposal/abstract guidelines, a provisional schedule, and further details, please visit the conference website.

—–

Food studies has arrived. It is hard to imagine that two decades ago, scholars seriously considered food only in a few disciplines, usually at the margins. As food studies has exploded across disciplines, the field now boasts its own professional associations, journals, and undergraduate and graduate programs at institutions around the world. In addition, the past decade has seen a surge of public interest in food, from food trucks to urban farming to The Hunger Games—even as food security remains unattainable or elusive for billions of people. Food has never been more relevant to academic inquiry.

As food studies has risen to prominence, scholars have emphasized that we can use food as a lens to examine nearly any topic. Yet it is clear that food studies must grapple with many questions, including questions about the field’s own identity. With food studies becoming increasingly institutionalized, how will the discipline continue to evolve? What new subjects, methods, or theories will reshape the study of food in coming years? What areas of food culture and politics urgently need academic attention? And how can the discipline stay relevant when public interest in food inevitably wanes? Emerging scholars at the forefront of the discipline offer exciting answers to these questions.

This conference seeks graduate scholarship that presents original approaches to food studies, whether applying creative theories and methods to established questions or subjects, or interrogating unconsidered topics in novel ways.  As a fundamentally interdisciplinary subject of study, we welcome papers from the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, english, cultural studies, american studies, gender studies, economics, art, politics, pedagogy, nutrition, philosophy, and religion, as well as other disciplines. We expect to assemble graduate students from an array of disciplines and a broad geographic expanse.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

·        the ethics of terroir and sustainability;

·        agriculture and agrarian change in the Anthropocene;

·        medicinal or ‘drug’ foods across history;

·        innovation across the food system;

·        food and the body;

·        food sovereignty and food insecurity;

·        the politics of public health and nutrition;

·        emergent culinary diaspora(s);

·        food and value;

·        food, identity, and authenticity;

·        food, media, and representation ;

·        food, eating, and race;

·        food, agriculture, and empire;

·        food history.

Proposals (papers or full panels) should be submitted by June 15, 2017, and must include an abstract (250 words) of the paper to be presented and a brief biographical statement (100 words).

For thematic continuity, we strongly encourage proposals for pre-organized panels of up to three presentations. For panels, each speaker must send their own abstract, and indicate the names of the other speakers with whom they will share the panel at the bottom of their abstract. Panel proposals without all three speakers’ individual proposals submitted will not be accepted.  Only proposals from graduate students will be considered. Select papers will also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies.

See the conference website for more details and to submit an abstract.

Deadline for proposals: June 15, 2017

ABOUT THE GAFS

The Graduate Association for Food Studies (GAFS) is an interdisciplinary academic community founded in the spring of 2014 with the goals of connecting graduate students interested in food and promoting their exceptional work. The Association publishes the digital Graduate Journal of Food Studies and hosts the Future of Food Studies conference for graduate students to present, discuss, and network. Our first Conference took place in 2015 at Harvard University with an upcoming conference at Washington University in St. Louis in October 2017. We are the official graduate student caucus of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS).

Rooted in a network of senior graduate students pursuing food studies scholarship in a rigorous fashion, the Graduate Association for Food Studies provides peer-to-peer advice, support, and professional development. Join the GAFS to build your CV as well as your knowledge of the pragmatics of peer review, editing, book reviews, and publishing—and meet other grad students interested in food studies, from all over the world.

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by | April 21, 2017 · 10:43 pm

What FoodAnthropology Is Reading Now, April 21, 2017

David Beriss

A brief digest of food and nutrition-related items that caught our attention recently. Got items you think we should include? Send links and brief descriptions to dberiss@gmail.com or hunterjo@gmail.com.

As the Trump administration nears its 100 day mark, it is worth noting that the US Department of Agriculture, with over 100,000 employees spread out over 29 agencies, regulating parts of an industry that contributes around $992 billion to the U.S. economy, is still without a confirmed leader. Lack of leadership has not stopped the Trump administration from acting, however. For instance, a rule proposed under the Obama administration that would have protected the rights of farmers to sue corporations for whom they raise chickens and hogs has been suspended for six months—and possibly permanently—much to the dismay of some of those farmers. The unconfirmed nominee has had a hearing, with mixed reviews, as you can see here and here.

Also on agriculture, but on a more global scale, the Lancet has recently started an open access online publication, “The Lancet Planetary Health,” that will focus on “human health within the context of climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity, food and nutrition, sustainable fishing, agricultural productivity, environmental exposures to contaminents, waste management, air quality, or water and airbourne diseases.” The first issue is worth a look. It includes an editorial about the role of smallholder farms in the global food system and several related articles.

And while we are still thinking about agriculture, take a look at this article and short film about a form of urban agriculture that is rarely discussed. The focus here is on farmers in Guangzhou, China, who continue to farm even as their village has vanished around them, replaced by endless rows of skyscrapers. This process is an old one, but watching this raises a lot of questions about food, culture, and the future of our food supply.

There has been a lot written about American barbecue cultures and racism in recent years. This New Yorker article, by Lauren Collins, focuses on the particularly bitter history and present of Maurice’s Piggie Park, in South Carolina. Collins does a great job of unpacking the nuances of this particular story in a way that would make for a great discussion starter in a class on…food, racism, American society, or the country’s political present. Alas, this is an article about barbecue that may cause you to lose your appetite.

From the UK, we have this interesting observation about a new restaurant in Seattle that will feature foods from the American South…served with an “encyclopedia” that explains the cuisine. The idea is to combat racist perspectives associated with the cuisine.  Food that insists you think.

Everyone wants to know where their food comes from, but who looks at how it gets to you? This episode of the podcast Bite focuses on an interview with Alexis Madrigal, who has his own podcast series on the world of containers and shipping. In this instance, he discusses the place of small batch coffee in the world of enormous containerized shipping. The way this shapes the world of food is really so huge that it is hard to fully grasp. You should listen to this; it is where much of what you eat comes from. Also, the podcast starts with a brief segment on Indian cooks in America who are thrilled with their Instant Pot electric pressure cookers…which ought to be inspiring for anyone who has one.

Many people are distressed at the demise of Lucky Peach, which provided a place for all kinds of food writing that was hard to find elsewhere (at least in an accessible format). For an example of why, read this amusing (yet possibly serious) article on the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world. Also, if you draw, you could join the Taco Bell Drawing Club.

Why are so many people being asked to work for free? This has been a crisis in the arts for a while, of course. Internships, mostly unpaid, seem increasingly necessary for college students before they can hope to start developing careers. Unpaid labor is also an important part of the world of food, with cooking school graduates and other aspiring cooks often engaging in “stages” (one of the culinary world’s words for “internship”) in restaurants. How useful is this? How exploitative? Is it even really legal? Corey Mintz explores these questions by looking at the astonishing extent to which the world’s most elite restaurants actually depend on unpaid labor.

The hipster food world is in love with mobile food vendors, perhaps best represented by trendy food trucks. Along with trendy trucks, a lot of food vending happens in carts that sell nearly every imaginable food.  This very useful article by Tejal Rao illustrates a day in the life of a New York City food vendor. His food looks great, by the way, but it is the result of hard work and what look like terrible economics.

In the realm of obscure-but-fascinating items, historian Paul Freedman provides this brief overview of the history of food at private clubs. The article includes lists and photos of current specialties at a variety of clubs around the U.S. One might expect the food to be rarified and elegant, but the photo of macaroons with Halloween candy corn suggests otherwise.

Finally, the first round of the French presidential elections is this Sunday (4/23). The outcome is anything but certain and, depending on your politics, you may need a drink afterwards. A French friend recently sent a clip from the movie “Le Tatoué,” with Jean Gabin and Louis de Funès demonstrating how to eat and drink with gusto. Even without faith in French politics, this should inspire everyone to have at least some faith in French cuisine, no matter the outcome. Remember this advice: “Manger des tripes sans cidre, c’est aller à Dieppe sans voir la mer.” Enjoy.

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by | April 4, 2017 · 5:18 pm

“Comparative Dynamics of Cooking Practices” – PhD opportunity in France

PhD. Student recruitment in social sciences – “Compared dynamics of cooking practices”

Context

Created in 2008, the Center for Food and Hospitality research at the Institut Paul Bocuse aims at developing a scientific expertise in service of knowledge and promotion of the pleasure of eating, everywhere and in every context. It develops an original strategy through an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on three major concerns:

– Taste and pleasure of meals

– Health and well-being

– Eater’s environment

Presentation of the subject

Today’s food is a common subject in the media: several reports are sometimes valorizing local “traditions”, or sometimes noticing – or denouncing – the consequences of “globalization”. In this large flow of information, works produced by the social sciences are hardly audible. They yet question the simplistic interpretations by underlining the complexity of these phenomena, between identity reactions, folkloristic reconstructions, intentional exoticism and food hybridization. They especially reveal that the stated evolution or practices does not get systematically along with a strong transformation of food patterns. Among the different aspects of food, cooking practices are a very interesting dimension. Indeed they combine transmission, acquisition and practical application of technics, linked with knowledges and representation of the products. They are also constrained by the time priorities and material aspects surrounding the act of eating. Anyway, they mobilize all the cultural dimensions of food and are thus a good indicator of the social and cultural dynamics of today’s eating habits.

The PhD. research project currently arranged at the Institut Paul Bocuse consists in a comparative study of culinary practices in two of three parts of the world (still to be defined). It will mainly use a qualitative approach, using the methods of the social and cultural anthropology. However, it can also call on more quantitative methods (questionnaires, etc.) from the sociology, in complementary perspectives. The research will have an applied dimension intended for the professionals of the food sector.

Supervising

The PdD. Thesis will be co-supervised by Mrs. Isabelle Bianquis (Professor of Anthropology at the University François Rabelais of Tours) and Mr. Maxime Michaud (Center for Food and Hospitality Research, Institut Paul Bocuse).

Required profile

Schooling and skills

– Master level in social sciences.

– Mastery of qualitative study (ethnography) essential.

– Mastery of complementary methods (interviews, questionnaires) strongly recommended.

– Mastery of French language essential.

– Theoretical knowledges in sociology and anthropology of food recommended.

Other profile information

– Knowledges on research methodologies

– Independence

– Attraction for theoretical reflections

– Attraction for the food domain

– Adaptation skills, especially to the constraints of working with the industry.

Practical information

– Duration : 3 years

– Beginning between September 1st 2017, and October 31st 2017.

– Place of work: Ecully (just next to Lyon), France. The PhD. student has to be on site (apart

from fieldwork periods).

– CIFRE contract (with participation of a French government agency), with a gross salary of

24600€ per year (with an obligatory health insurance).

To apply

Required documents:

– Cover letter

– A detailed CV (3 pages maximum) with schooling, professional experience, skills and

publications.

– A summary (5 pages maximum including bibliography) of the Master thesis.

– One to three reference letters.

Please submit these documents in one single PDF file before April 7th by email to:

– Mr Maxime Michaud (Maxime.Michaud@institutpaulbocuse.com)

– AND Mrs Isabelle Bianquis (Isabelle.Bianquis@univ-tours.fr)

Agenda

– Receiving appliances until April 7th, 2017

– Audition of candidates: April 2017

– Grant file arrangement: May to September 2017

– Start of the PhD.: September/October 2017

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