Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change, causing rising sea levels and droughts, has already provoked migration within and across nations, and this process will increase in the years to come (Rigaud 2018). Climate migration is triggered by a lack of food, but it also produces the diasporic food traditions, and, as described in EAT (2019), a need for more sustainable ways of eating. Although studies have examined the effect of previous climate migration (McLeman 2006), it is difficult to predict how the migration of food traditions, and new types of food and eating will impact human social organisation and behaviour. Literature and film can contribute usefully to this discussion by imagining human societies that have been forced to adapt to these pressures. Building on Ghosh’s (2016) observation that realist fiction struggles to depict future climate change, this paper explores how speculative fiction film imagines food and eating in diasporic, migrant futures. The paper specifically considers Snowpiercer (2013) and Mortal Engines (2018) that portray distant futures of constant migration where new forms of eating have developed. The dystopian techno-futures that these films visualise enable them to confront audiences with radical shifts in the way that food is manufactured, ritualized and consumed.