Meaning and Discourse
Remembering Food Waste and Recovery
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leda Cooks
Strasser (1999), observes that the history of trashmaking in the “developed” world is one of dislocation and forgetting, especially as an era of “disposable” products and relations between and among people and products has become common. The social, economic and cultural history of waste brings about interesting questions of memory and remembering. Set against increasing calls among industrialized nations for awareness and reduction of the amount of food unnecessarily wasted, this chapter compares individual and collective memories about food waste as intertextual discourses and performances that also re-member economies, cultures and identities. Food waste memories involve acknowledgement of waste in a society spacially (politically, economically, socially) designed to hide it. How do we both acknowledge our histories with food and waste, and imagine a better future? The essay juxtaposes food waste reduction and recovery policy and agency websites in the US (e.g., US Environmental Protection Agency, Feeding America) with narratives from 15 interviews about waste in the US from diverse locations at the consumer/household end of the food chain. Three questions are at the heart of this study: How is food citizenship imagined in the interstices between national policies and movement discourses about food waste and individual and collective memories of wasting food? How might or does the act of storytelling as well as the relational study of food waste memories open other-than neoliberal imaginings? What can analysis of individual and national narratives of food loss and recovery help us understand about food valuation and food citizenship?
Quenching a Online Thirst: The Irish Pub as Reframed for a Digital Age
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Aoife Carrigy
Ireland’s food culture has experienced a profound grassroots revolution in recent decades with local producers, chefs, writers and consumers celebrating Irish food with unprecedented confidence. A primary agent of change has been the parallel emergence of a digital culture and the related food communities that the internet and social media have helped to foster both online and offline. Visual representations of food experiences have become powerful social signifiers in a global context; in an Irish context, they have also helped to reshape a modern national identity and provide positive expressions of local culture in the wake of a devastating global recession. Ireland’s pub culture, conversely, has been slower to respond to these opportunities for digital communication and community-building, in part because embodied communication and community as Oldenberg’s Third Place have long been at the heart of the Irish pub experience. Furthermore, unlike Ireland’s nascent food culture, Irish pub culture is well-established, deeply embedded within national identity and evolving at a significantly slower pace. This paper will explore the lessons that Irish publicans can learn from digital-literate food and drink cultures. It will also suggest further attributes inherent in Irish pub culture, such as its role as an incubator of the national flair for storytelling and a disseminator of Irish literary arts, and examine how these might be reframed and better exploited for a digital age.
Table Size and Counters for Eating Out: “Convivialité” to Solo Diner in France and Japan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Masahiro Miyake
This paper reports on a table size for eating out in France and Japan and discusses the different sizes. A table for eating out has different functions roles as compared with a table at home. Some societies place priority on meals for socializing around a table at home than eating out. For example, French society selects to enjoy meals at home for social life. However recently many Japanese don’t want to invite people to their home. Therefore they frequently use a table at restaurants. Social facts may be a reason for this contrast. I have researched table sizes in restaurants or cafe in France (118 tables) and Japan (365 tables) and have found significant difference between the two countries. Many Japanese restaurants provide tables for four people. The distance between the people is usually 75cm. Interpersonal distance could be relative to societal factors. Further Japanese meals consist of a variety of dishes served at the same time. In France, restaurants (except for a banquet) tend to use tables for two people, and that distance of the table size is relatively shorter than Japanese restaurants, In contrast to the French serving at home using a large size table, setting a pot at the center of the table. The social meanings of food diverge.
