Cultural Shifts
Food Sovereignty and Communication for Social Change: Subjectivities in Food Practices
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Solón Calero, Carmen Rivera
The purpose of this paper is to share the results of the research Food Sovereignty and Communication for Social Change, which main objectives were: Understand the subjectivities and the communication processes that are part of experiences related with the production and distribution of food, taking in consideration cultural practices of food sovereignty. Create an intercultural encounter among the different experiences to consolidate a communication strategy that allows the empowerment of these food alternative practices in the city of Cali in Colombia. Two methodological approaches will be presented in order to explain how the research was accomplished: Discourse analysis and the characterization of communication interaction and processes which illustrate the way “other” type of subjectivities are constructed when subjects, through social practice, take the determination to resist the hegemony of the agro industrial ways of production and distribution of food, and the communicative participation method to build the strategy that allows these social actor being more visible and protagonist in the environmental transformation of the city of Cali.
Home Work in the Global Gastroscape: Affective Labor, Food Blogging and the Indian Diaspora
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sucharita Kanjilal
With 16.6 million of its citizens living overseas, India’s diaspora is the world’s largest. In the contemporary global economy, Indian workers move through a dizzying number of transnational labor networks, occupying positions as discrepant as engineers in the Silicon Valley, nurses for the British National Health Service and security guards in Abu Dhabi. Yet, across these discrete geographies, economic migrants are not only produced through the demands and discourses of global markets and historically racialized labor regimes; they are also reproduced through the intimate practices of diasporic households and the affective solidarities enabled by social media. What, for instance, do Indian immigrants in Nairobi eat for dinner? From whom do they learn where turmeric is sold in Helsinki? What might an examination of food and fellowship tell us about immigrant desires, constraints, and contestations? This paper considers the complex interrelations between domestic cooking, new media technologies, and globalization through an ethnographic study of women food bloggers among the Indian diaspora in Singapore. My study asks three broad questions: What is the relationship between food and home? How do immigrant bloggers use the technologies of media and food production to negotiate their gender, racial and national identities as part of the transnational Indian workforce? How do the material and discursive practices of food blogging in migrant households transform and get transformed by global capitalism?
Fast Sushi, Slow Sushi
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Voltaire Cang
Sushi is Japan’s most prominent contribution to global food culture. However, its current popularity in the world has resulted in drastic - and still ongoing - transformations in the culinary culture surrounding sushi in Japan itself, critically affecting the basic, “traditional” ways sushi has been produced and consumed in its supposed country of birth. This study will look at the ways sushi culture is transforming in Japan, with a particular focus on sushi chef training. Today, sushi chef training could be categorized into two divergent and opposing systems: years-long apprenticeship under a master sushi chef, and months-long education in a sushi chef training school. Advocates for both training schemes are currently engaged in a sometimes caustic debate about each scheme's (de)merits, with many views expressed in print, broadcast, and online media. This paper first considers the historical and cultural contexts behind sushi chef training in Japan and the rise of short-term chef training schemes, which is a recent phenomenon. It then filters and weigh the significant issues of the debate, as it investigates the fundamental stances of the opposing systems, look into how these are promoted and enacted, and, finally, discuss how they affect the ways sushi is made and eaten not only in Japan but also in the rest of the world today.
