Abstract
This session emphasizes a multispecies examination of the interactions between food systems, bodies, power, and ecosystems. It reframes and depathologizes what we refer to as eating disorders and other forms of struggle and disconnection relating to food and embodiment through a framework called “food system alienation.” Food system alienation is the systemically enforced conceptual and structural distancing of people from their sources of food. The study explores how processes such as domestication, the formation of civilization, colonization, male supremacy, white supremacy, classism, speciesism, heteronormativity, fatphobia, and ableism have all shaped lived experiences of food and embodiment. It also addresses how these histories and systems impact social perceptions of people’s difficulties with eating based on their perceived identities. Using extensive literature review and some elements of autoethnography, this research draws from psychology, anthropology, ethology, critical animal studies, critical race theory, history, and dietetics. The research addresses and interrogate how anthropogenic food systems create patterns that can be seen across the bodies of humans, other animals, and plants. The ubiquity of diet culture, fatphobia, and fraught or deviant alimentary consumption allude to and support the idea that enough people experience difficulties and disconnection in relation to food and food systems that these experiences could be viewed as heavily cultivated social phenomena instead of as individual illnesses.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Food Systems, Multispecies, Eating Disorders, Civilization, Colonization
