Cultural Links (Asynchronous - Online Only)
'Intergenerational Choreography': Digital Community Cookbooks During COVID-19 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carlina Duan
I explore English-based digital cookbooks created during the Covid-19 pandemic as case studies for analyzing the practice of public pedagogy within community cookbooks. I am particularly interested in modes of making that interrupt the individual/collective binary, especially during a global pandemic which has emphasized distance, isolation, and shelter-in-place. Contemporary creative process, I argue, can be modeled and archived by digital community cookbooks, which help to democratize the food writing genre by expanding the possibilities of narratorial ownership by expanding the notion of who gets to “own,” “author,” or belong within the realm of recipe-writing. Moreover, the community cookbook offers time-specific portraits of a community’s immediate needs, thereby inviting forms of social response that might help to honor and nourish a community in a given time. As writer-scholar Thao Goffe argues, gastropoetics creates an “archive where recipes are the primary resource and thus argument or evidence for how humans have cultivated and been cultivated by their environment” (Goffe). To read a community cookbook through the framework of gastropoetics allows readers to view how recipes both shape and document human responses to a historical moment in time. That said, digital cookbooks can also decrease access to specific food(s) and communities, given both their format and their reliance upon specific [reading] technologies and fluencies in media platforms that may not be accessible to some potential readers.
Food Boycotts in U.S. History : On Food Activism in the Twentieth Century View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Janett Barragan Miranda
On December of 1969 a group of activists and community organizers attended the White House Conference on Food and Nutrition in Washington D.C. and they refused to eat at the luncheon. Not only did they refuse the $18 per person luncheon, but they boycotted the event and invited other participants to join them in making a statement about the amount of money being spent on one meal, all the while national Food Assistance Programs advocated for recipients to eat an entire meal for less than $1. With a focus on the 1900s, paper addresses the long history of food activism that led to the 1969 boycott at the White House. Particularly, how food boycotts have drawn attention from the media, influential people, and the general American public with the aim to create change and develop a more equitable society.
Childhood Memories of Food Collected in Eco-tourism: A Case Study of the Hare Krishna Movement View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tamas Lestar
The paper investigates the potential impact of eco-tourism and food in particular on the future behaviour of children. By drawing on literature on sensory memories (e.g. Madeleine de Proust), the paper explores how taste as an olfactory experience, and involvement in sustainable dining in general, contribute toward pro-environmental behaviour through memory storage and retention.
Food for Thought: An Empirical Analysis of the Efficacy of Gatrodiplomacy View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gabriel Mayer-Heft
Food has historically been used to communicate culture. Proponents of gastrodiplomacy theorize that this can be used as a diplomatic tool to improve the nation brand. This paper tested this theory empirically, and thus begins to fill a gap in the literature, through the utilization of a multilevel model to test what contributes to the empirical success of gastrodiplomacy. For the purposes of this paper, success is defined through the lens of the Nation Brand Hexagon as coined in the Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index. The following hypotheses were considered: H1 countries with a higher democracy level will enjoy greater success in gastrodiplomacy; H2 as the duration of a gastrodiplomacy program increases, it will see greater success; H3 the more restaurants a country funds or endorses abroad, the greater its gastrodiplomatic success will be. For the purposes of this study, gastrodiplomacy success was defined as increases in food exports, inbound foreign direct investment, and/or inbound tourism. Food exports was found to have a positive relationship with time, and a negative relationship with democracy level. Restaurants was found to have a positive trend in the food export model. None of the variables were found to have a significant effect on inbound foreign direct investment. Inbound tourism was only affected by time. These results indicate that different strategies in gastrodiplomacy have diverse effects on success. More interestingly, however, are the findings related to democracy level – its negative relationship with food exports. This challenges a long-held assumption in the nation branding literature.
Public Libraries as Partners in Community Food Systems: Seed Libraries, Community Gardens, Community Kitchens View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christine D'Arpa
Community food gardens have long been sources of healthy local food but are increasingly vulnerable given development and land speculation especially in urban areas. Public library collections and programs serve to support communities in myriad and sometimes surprising ways. Though there are a number of historical examples of food and flower gardens at public libraries, this study focuses on current efforts by librarians to address issues of food and health literacy, food security, and community wellness through the development of library projects that include food gardens, seed libraries, and even community kitchens. I document these efforts and use that data to engage the following questions which are framed in terms of the literature of community food gardens and food security, and the role of the public library in the U.S.: Why are libraries developing programs and initiatives in these areas? How and with whom are libraries partnering on these projects? How is this type of work funded? Who benefits and how?
Artisanal Slaughter: The Challenges and Opportunities of Goat Meat in Vermont View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amanda Kaminsky
Why is it so hard to find goat meat in the United States? Although popular in diets around the world, most white Anglo-Americans lack this particular culinary tradition. To examine why goat meat remains underutilized, I take the state of Vermont as a case study. Vermont, one of the smallest and whitest states, is often credited with jumpstarting the popularity of goat cheese in the United States. Although home to many goat dairy farms, goat meat is rarely consumed outside small ethnic minority communities in the Burlington area. Many of these consumers import their goat meat from Australia, even as local farmers are euthanizing their male baby goats. In this paper, I explore the exceptions to this rule: Vermont farmers and consumers of fresh local goat meat. My research builds from extensive interviews with goat farmers, processors, and consumers, as well as analysis of livestock market reports and local news sources. I find that both producers and consumers of goat meat consider themselves alienated, both culturally and economically, from the mainstream American industrialized food system. They are able to succeed only by sidestepping traditional slaughterhouses and retailers, instead utilizing Vermont’s on-farm slaughter legal exemptions. Along with a growing awareness of the benefits of on-farm slaughter across other meat sectors, this pattern in goat processing fits into the longstanding historical trajectory in Vermont towards decentralized, hyper-local, and artisanal agriculture.
What is the Relationship of Biological Diversity to Food Sustainability? : The Body-as-data that is Emerging in Food Security Discourse View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elizabeth Bullock
This paper considerw how a discourse on sustainability is altering the way we think about the human body and its relationship to food. The engine for this change, I argue, is the cultural life attributed to biological diversity as this has become the resource that is needed in order to ensure that we have access to food in the future. Our relationship to a “food environment” undergoes an important shift in this discourse: from a resource in need of our protection to one whose preservation provides plant scientists and farmers with the tools that they need to generate food in the future (Hayden 2003). I am especially interested in the implications of this shift for the way that we think about the body and it’s health. Can we continue to view health in terms of the nutrition sciences, where the metabolism of the body is understood in relationship to a “universal” world outside (Landecker 2013)? Or must we imagine now that the information in our environment is telling the body too what it can be? Discourse on food security are discussed in relationship to earlier campaigns against global hunger, specifically the Rockefeller Foundation’s investments in the Green Revolution along side discourse on nutrition, communication technology, biotechnology, and biological diversity.
The Potato Project: Food Studies as Hub Topic for Home Schooling Program in Lockdown in the UK View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emily Mayhew
During the UK's lockdown, a program was created to teach Food Studies to a mixed classroom from age 7-11. It used the potato as its main focus. It blended social science, history, anthropology, culture, geography, ecological studies to produce an interdisciplinary study of the potato from its earliest evolution to the food industry today to the cutting edge of scientific research in food production, sustainable packaging and the development of nutri-dense varieties as a response to climate change and malnutrition. It required a high level of student engagement in projects and original creative writing. This paper demonstrates the value of Food Studies as a standalone curriculum topic in both primary and secondary education, as well as its essential role in undergraduate and post graduate studies.
Featured We Have Different Tastes: Exploring the Cross-Cultural Food Choices of Generation Z from Ireland and France View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lana Repar, Joe Bogue, Solenn Breton
Consumers’ food choices are complex and impact on society in many ways, such as consumer health, the economy of rural areas, and sustainability. Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2015, is a growing segment with tremendous purchasing power and influenced by the global food system and various international media that impact on food cultures and choices. The study objective was to explore perceptions and purchasing behaviour of Irish and French students, aged between 18 and 24, towards foods to identify the key attributes that drive acceptance in each market. An online survey, back translated for accuracy in both languages, was administered during 2020/2021 to Generation Z in Ireland (n=284 valid) and France (n=200 valid) using convenience sampling through student email systems and societies. Data were analysed using SPSSv26. For Irish and French respondents, price and ingredients were the most important factors influencing purchase behaviour, with social media of less importance to the French cohort. Irish respondents were more neophilic towards new foods while French respondents were more familiar and likely to purchase products with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). French respondents paid more attention to product origin, but both cohorts were equally supportive of companies trying to reduce plastic packaging. Through identifying the food choices of Generation Z, and understanding the differences across cultures, it is possible to develop high quality new foods adjusted for various markets, with key intrinsic and extrinsic attributes linked to consumer trends, which encourage healthy choices and support sustainable behaviours.
Eating Habits in a Particular Setting: Expectations, Needs, and Wishes of Young Conscripts in the Swiss Armed Forces View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stefano De Rosa
In Western countries, the availability of an infinite choice of food is taken almost for granted. The variety of food with regard to the taste, the preparation, the nutrients or the cultural origin has never been so diverse. At the same time, food has gained an incredibly central place in people's life. Food has an identity-creating power, and one's eating behavior becomes a key aspect of one's personality. There are only few situations where a larger proportion of people will experience imposed restrictions on their food choice. This paper focuses on one of these rare examples: the Swiss Armed Forces (SAF). In the SAF, catering offers only one dish per meal. There is one an additional vegetarian option. As the Swiss military System is based on conscription, the question arises how the young servicemembers handle this restriction. Based on 42 qualitative interviews with soldiers at the beginning and the end of basic military training, this presentation gives insights into the needs, wishes, and expectations regarding food in the SAF. What do young adults think about meat-consumption, food waste, or other dietary aspects? What do they consider important features of the catering they experience during their 18 weeks in the military? This study sheds light on the eating practices of Generation Z in a particular setting. At the same time, the paper considers how a public institution such as the military should organize its food service nowadays, in order to meet the needs of both, the servicemembers and the society.
Environmental Challenges of the Artisan Cheese Making: A Case Study in the Tropic of Mexico View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session América Lina Patiño Delgado, María Isabel Palacios Rangel, Fernando Cervantes Escoto, Ayari Genevieve Pasquier Merino
The aim of this study is to analyze an artisan cheese production system in Mexico to identify the challenges, difficulties and perspectives that this activity faces in the context of the environmental impact of livestock systems. The case study of traditional fresh cheese from a community in the State of Guerrero was examined, through in-depth interviews conducted with farmers who supply the raw milk to the cheese factories. We investigated the production practices, the use of land and water, the conservation of natural resources and the management of livestock waste. The results indicate that as the activity has been transformed within the territory, it has caused changes in the landscape. Natural vegetation was replaced by induced pastures, these rangeland, in turn represent a potential source of contamination of nearby mangrove areas, due to the use of fertilizers and agrochemicals, the residues of these substances enter the river-borne and the ocean altering the aquatic ecosystems. In the region, there are no evidence of agrosilvopastoral practices or other that minimize the environmental impact. Additionally, there is an overgrazing, which causes land degradation, nutritional problems for the cows and low dairy yields. It is concluded that the main challenge of livestock related to artisan cheese making is the low productivity at a high environmental cost. It is essential that the implementation of more sustainable practices be considered to produce this traditional dairy product, and thus ensure the livelihoods of the families involved in its manufacture.
