Abstract
The first wave of global lockdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic brought many viral trends along with it, with sourdough bread baking storming the world in parallel to the virus that has changed the global landscape forever. My paper explores why this activity in specific had a renaissance during such a chaotic and anxiety inducing time in history. I approach home bakers’ motivations for engaging in activities related to sourdough bread baking through the lens of the feminist concept of Carol Gilligan’s Ethics of Care in order to understand how individuals relate to their sourdough bread making praxis in terms of their personal, social, and temporal-cultural relationships, especially during a time when one had to heavily rely on oneself for comfort and care. In using critical discourse analysis on interviews and qualitative surveys, I pinpoint specific dimensions of care within the entire process of baking with sourdough that are a symptom of the entangled relationship of human or non-human actors; relationships that are informed by cultural, temporal and personal expressions of care. I investigate how these same dimensions of care are expressed through narrative and embodied –as well as sensorial– practice, by using social media analysis and sensory ethnography as a method of inquiry. Finally, I invite theories of radical care and slow/gentle activism to inform my investigatory practice of thinking about the process of fermentation as a potential carrier of this culture of care-taking as a future-oriented undertaking rooted in the present but also heavily informed by the past.
Presenters
Margareta PinterStudent, MA Sustainable Heritage Management, Aarhus University , Århus, Denmark
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Ethics of care, COVID-19, Sourdough, Embodiment, Interspecies relationships, Gentle activism
