Sunday, September 7, 2008

A writing experiment


[archived]

I've been writing the latest series of 'Geographies of food' reports for Progress in Human Geography.

The first one on food following - based on research influenced by Arjun Appadurai's (1986) 'social life of things', David Harvey's (1990) 'getting behind the veil of the commodity fetish', and George Marcus' (1995) 'multi-sited ethnography' - was published in 2006. The second one on food mixing - based on research influenced by bell hooks' (1992) 'eating the other' - will be published later this year (see below left for full references and availability).

I'd like the third and final one to be a collaborative, co-authored, experimental affair, arising from discussions on this blog between the 'up to 99 authors' invited so far. I'd would be grateful if they/you could read and respond to one or both of the first two reports, bounce off them, critique them, ask questions of them, and think about how these responses might be re-assembled into a 7,000 word 'review' paper...

As of 24 August 2008, 25 people had accepted invitations to contribute as co-authors and Blogger had timed out the invitations which hadn't received replies. If you would like to be re-invited - or contribute without registering by emailing your posts to me - please get in touch at i.j.cook@ex.ac.uk.

The conversation has started - as you'll see below - but time is quite tight. The deadline for postings has to be the end of this month (excuse the counter with its ticking seconds - it's the only one I could find). So - if you haven't already done so - please let rip sooner rather than later, so people can respond to your comments.

Please don't think you have to do tons of reading before you do this! Say what you know, base it on what you do, address questions of /issues about your work in the papers and blog. Short entries are as fine as longer ones. Discussions are unfolding in the comments at the foot of some of the posts, as well as on the main page.

Huge thanks go to Lucius Hallett, Mimi Sheller, David Nally, Rachel Slocum, Louise Crewe, Alison Hulme, Julie Guthman, Kersty Hobson, Damian Maye, Heike Henderson, Emma Roe, Henry Buller, Mike Goodman, Paul Kingsbury, Andrew Murphy, Jean Duruz, Charlie Mather, Allison Hayes-Conroy, Jessica Hayes-Conroy, Lisa Tucker and Richard LeHeron for their (multiple) contributions so far, and for the emails from others getting ready to post...

What's next?
Once the August 31st deadline has passed, I'll send out an email which a) asks for contributors' 'conclusions' regarding the discussions that have unfolded here; and b) putting forward, and asking for, ideas about writing a review paper based on these discussions. After these new discussions have taken place, I'll try to put together a draft paper (in the first couple of weeks of September?), circulate it via email for comments, etc... so as to hopefully be able to submit the afters review to PiHG at the end of September / early October. I have no intention of shutting down the blog after that - conversations can continue - unless some unforeseen legal issue comes to light (I'll raise any issue such as this on the blog before doing anything...).

Cheers

Ian
updated 31 August

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