From Skoko Imai

Hello, my name is Shoko, a graduate student in Japan currently working on PhD thesis on Japanese food in the world and globalization. I am new to this blog project, in fact though I have read some of his works before, I only met Professor Cook a couple of weeks ago and just heard about this exciting project. So I do not really know any of the people who have posted to this blog site so far. Well, surprisingly (but at the same time naturally), I do feel less scared to post my comments to this website, because I simply don't really know all of the contributors. But I also know I would get more scared later when I find out who you are and what you do and so forth. Yet, in a way, I find it kind of interesting to put some comments to something in public without any fear or hesitation so I just force myself to do it and see what happens. I am just trying to describe my feelings about participating in this project, collaborative writing as one of unknown authors, I mean working together without knowing well each other or his/her works well. But at the same time, I believe it doesn't really matter since as long as you have some ideas or thoughts about this common topic of food. Maybe ideally academics should be open and fair to anybody who is interested with an atmosphere of peace.
Anyway, one issue I would like to bring up here is whether you need to be a good cook, or at least have to be interested in cooking in studying food. When we discuss food issues, we often use food related phrases and terms metaphorically, for example, “I would like to ‘cook’ this argument more” or “I am hungry for what you wrote about”. But how about literally, you need to be cook to study food? I have some experiences, when I introduce myself that I study food, some people assume that I must be a good cook, or at least I would be a good person to ask for recommendation when they are looking for some good food for their dinner. Well, myself, I am interested in cooking and I love to cook. But I never really thought of combining cooking and writing or studying about food together in an academic way. I have assumed passion for cooking should be separated from the academic interests in food and just keep it more like a hobby. But why not? Yet still, at the same time, I have to admit that I have taken it for granted that if people are interested in studying food, then most of them must be interested in cooking like me in their ordinary, I mean, non-academic life too. But why? What kind of assumptions have made me think this way? Is it something based on cultural background or environments you grew up with? And is it true that you really need to be good cook or at least interested in cooking? In my opinion, it is not really necessary to be good at, but knowing a bit of cooking is sometimes very helpful for studies, because it gives you a power of imagination in various culinary scenes described in texts. And I believe this knowledge of cooking gives you a new insight or a way of approach toward food studies as long as you try to combine them. As you know, many works done by researchers who used to be chefs, or being chef at the same time, have been fascinating and informative. For myself, I have never thought about this consciously, but my interests of cooking have surely influenced the way I analyze or understand in my research. That would have been different if I had not known anything about cooking. I am not saying here that it is always better to have knowledge about cooking, but rather it is necessary to be a bit more conscious of having some ideas of cooking when you disentangle the food issues. It’s rather interesting to synthesize my academic interests on food with my own cooking experiences or passions, and that is connected to the issue of autoethnographic writing.
The other issue I would like to comment came up in my mind when I was reading the argument on ‘Eating the Other’ in Professor Cook’s paper, “Geographies of food: mixing”, the decontextualization of white culture and black culture using an example of food. This can be a great digression from the main discussion, however I wonder whether this ‘eating the other’ can be possibly applied to the discussion in case of non-white but non-black either, Asian people in the same context or not. What does it imply when white people eat Asian food, for example, and how about the case of black people eating Asian food? What kind of ideology would be constructed or destroyed by doing that? Or is it from the beginning, Asian people should be in the same category with black people or white people, or wouldn’t fit in neither of them, something else? Then what is it? Who are they really? On the other hand, what does it really mean for Asians to eat white people’s food? Do we need to apply a completely new perspective? If Asian researchers discuss white people’s food or other people’s food, is there any special positions they need to take? Are there any notions or concepts to be adopted? Is this another way of resistance, conquering or colonizing with a new form of commodification and consumption? Is there any kind of paradigm shift needed? Well, put it more simply, how you feel when other people who have different cultural, historical background based on different locations discuss “eating the other” argument and is it OK to do? I find myself, to be perfectly honest, a bit hesitating on this topic, even though I just know I shouldn’t be. Then I am curious why sometimes I feel unstable and unsafe when I talk about white people’s food issues. Is this natural or very specific? And more particularly, who are Asians? Is it OK to discuss putting all Asian people in together? For instance, is there any possibility for Japanese or any other people to have a chance to get rid of this context just because of its economic power, without been criticized that escaping a responsibility as one of Asian counties?

Shoko Imai
American Studies
University of Tokyo

Final thoughts(?) from Rachel

Hi everyone,

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the blog’s content and by blog as a method. I’m with those who find greater potential to incite in conversation and I hope that happens in Vegas. Anyway, definitely, supporting Julie and others’ posts, Ian, you should be head chef (good luck!—often what I feel I need when cooking or writing). I like the idea of conveying some of the multiplicity of interpretations in a rational form that need not preserve the actual text we’ve written. Ian has already committed to not silencing, hasn’t he? With others, I’d also suggest rather than conclusions, connections that generate further inventiveness (paraphrasing Elizabeth Grosz)—or that unsettle as Jean says.

More themes:

1. Politics:
What can be generated through the friction created when the perspective that alternative food is neoliberal biopolitics meets the idea of a politics of encounter through taste etc.? The blog seems to be often about this tension.

2. Bodies—taste,health, guts, life.
Here all the tangles of animals, aesthetics, people, yeast (Bobrow-Strain 2008), prions, exchanges, enteric disorders, size.

Cutting across both is identity/difference and food. More ways to theorize these in relation since Ian’s mixing paper.

Cutting across both is hunger: Early on Mimi mentioned the eating of dirt cakes sold in Haiti. An article I read somewhere said people were not able to afford even these,much less food without dirt in it.

Bobrow-Strain, A. (2008) Trouble with Microbes: Industry, Public Health, and the Politics of Biosafety in Turn-of-the-Century America, paper presented in the session Experimentation & Engineering: Materialities Between the Processual and the Aleatory II, AAG, Boston.

Rachel

Writing the paper: a collaboration? (archived)

Now it's time for me/us to try to turn the contents of this blog into a 7,000 word paper: 'Geographies of food: afters' which will need to be submitted to Progress in Human Geography in the next 6-8 weeks.

What follows is for only those who have contributed below, the co-authors of this review: 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, Richard LeHeron, Chris Philo, Heather Putnam and me. (plus one or two people I'm still hoping/expecting to contribute way past the last minute).

Can each of you please do the following?
1) have a look at the post below called 'collaborative writing'.
2) have a look at the post below called 'conclusions'.
3) have a look at the discussion that started in the comments at the end of Allison & Jessica's 'Collective writing...' post.
4) add your comments anywhere (or send to me to post)...

I've set the clock again (2 weeks and counting).

After these new discussions have taken place, I'll put together a draft paper in the way that we agree this should be done, circulate it via email for comments, redraft, circulate and again and submit.

Hope this catches you at a good time. Again, please shoot from the hip, rattle things off, splurge, dump... whatever helps to make this a quick and easy task!

Things are coming together nicely. One step to go. Thanks for all of your efforts so far.

Ian
8th September 2008
(updated 18 September)

From Heike Henderson

Okay, first I feel like I owe an apology, I have definitely done more reading (and thinking!) than writing… maybe because I have been a little bit intimidated, since I am not a food geographer myself. And I also miss the ‘real’ food that can accompany ‘real’ conversations…
Having said that, I have been impressed with the way this writing experiment has created new spaces for imagination and conversation, so yes, despite my limited participation, it definitely has been an interesting experience for me, and an idea that I do intend to take to other venues and topics.
About the question of how to bring it all together: I like the idea of the fragments and snippets. To me that sounds more in line with the different voices in this blog; it does provide the opportunity to incorporate a wide variety of viewpoints and ideas without trying to force them into one big master narrative. With fragments, you can jump from one part to another, there is less of a hierarchical order, and they usual do form (sometimes unexpected) connections. And there is also less of a risk of cannibalizing the vital parts of everybody’s thoughts and research. (Recently, my own research has led me from food studies, or rather the representation of food in literature, to the not always tasty and unsettling topic of cannibalism...)
But enough midnight ramblings, I just wanted to make sure I post something before the “time is up,” so thanks again for the stimulating contributions, and I would love to meet some of you in real life with real food… So any of you who makes it to Boise (Idaho, US), send me a note and I will cook for you!

Re: Finishing up (from Julie)

About a year ago, Jessica Hayes-Conroy and I were discussing the politics of the school garden project in Berkeley where she did her recent field research. We were talking about the race politics of such programs, specifically the effect of what I have dubbed as whites wanting to teach others, especially African Americans in the case of at that program, how to eat. While I was thinking about the lack of resonance, she had found a complex mix of rejection, curiosity, joy, humor, and transformation among the African American youth she had observed, spoke with, and gardened with. At the time she was thinking that an interesting approach to writing up her findings would be to take the same findings and write them through multiple lenses. The comment has stuck with me ever since and certainly came to the forefront again in reading and contributing to this blog. Because whereas I like to argue, quite strenuously it seems, about the limits of alternative food politics in terms of political economic transformation or even transformations of individual political subjectivity, when I read others interpretations of the similar phenomenon I often find myself in agreement with them, as well. I was particular sensitive, of course, to Damian's comment about those of us who put alternative food through a neoliberal framework. This is a long way of saying that I am largely in agreement with Jessica and Allison that there's no one conclusion here, because what might be more useful is to hold as similarly valid these multiple interpretations of the same problem/object.

My comments about the collaborative writing follow from this. Although I'm not much of the blogging type (and, frankly, the Sarah Palin phenomenon is sucking up enough of my time), I was struck by the effect of it producing a "real time" conversation with those with whom I do not always agree in our scholarly debates (although I agree with those who would rather have this conversation in the hotel bar . .). It produced an extra degree of civility, care, and engagement. In terms of the real work yet to be done in bringing this conversation into publishable form, I am a fan of the chef model. Pardon the need for ordered rationality (I just can't help myself), but I would organize it around several themes, note where they cross-cut other themes, and then note the leftovers. Rather than refer to them as debates, though, it might be useful to think of them as multiple interpretations that all hold validity.

Note to Mike: Did I accuse you of shouting? If I recall you wrote that ethical commodities "shout" in your workshop paper. As you know, in the person I'm the shouter.

Rational menus?

Hi again,

Thanks Kirsty and Paul for your recent posts - good stuff. All this talk about messiness (in Kirsty's post) makes me realise that my conclusions in the 'emerging themes' post possibly appear a little too rational! Oh well. I was also tempted to propose extending the menu idea from a paper David Bell wrote in 2002 where he produces a menu to describe culinary culture in the city (he organises the themes alphabetically, like a city A-Z). In the afters paper - where we might ditch the starter and main and go straight to afters!? - I was thinking we could present the themes a like that!? Is that a little bit on the cheesy side of things and as Kirsty says not PiHG enough? Probably - hence why I decided not to suggest it earlier. It probably also sounds even more rational than my earlier post, but the intention in Bell's paper is to provide a set of fragments exploring the relationship between food and the city - some entries better developed than others. That idea of fragments probably better captures what the emergent themes in this blog represent. Here's the abstract, or appetiser as Bell describes it, so you can see what he means:

"APPETISER
This paper presents a series of fragments exploring particular aspects of the relationship
between food and the city. My intention is not to provide a fully articulated thesis on urban
culinary geography, but instead to present some random snapshots, some first thoughts. Some are better developed than others, which flash past like fast cars or subliminal blipverts; that’s
inevitable in such polymorphous sites as postmodern metropolises. Like that familiar publication that guides us round the urban landscape, the A–Z, the entries are arranged alphabetically, and
each follows its own logic and trajectory. The disjunctures between them reflect the chaotic
heterotopian shape of the contemporary city. Taken together, they represent the beginning of the project of rethinking how food and urban space come together in particular contexts, from the work of the chef to the scavenging of feral animals. Conscious of perpetrating the crime of generalizing ‘the city’, I would state that the cities of which I am tasting here are early twenty-first century ‘world cities’, the postindustrial metropolises, the themed, malled, mediatized urban sprawls—and I apologize for the exclusions and omissions that this inevitably means. Others can surely add to my lexicon with their own entries from diverse locations."

The full ref is:
Bell, D. (2002) Fragments for a new urban culinary geography. Journal for the Study of Food and Society, 6, 1, 10-21.

This ref might be the same one Paul mentions? I can't remember.

I don't think Vegas gets a mention or Partridges!

OK - enough from me!!

Cheers
Damian

From Kersty Hobson

Woke up this morning thinking ‘now, what is it that I am forgetting to do?’ then realized it was posting some thoughts on where now/what’s it been like etc for this blog, before our time expires. When I say forget, I think I actually mean ‘put to the back of my mind in the hope that some inspiration will well-up and spring fully formed while I am cooking risotto or something’. It isn’t that I am not willing to apply my grey matter to some of the vast array of fascinating issues/concerns/thoughts touched upon herein. It is rather that I have to admit—and my naïve assumption that people like honesty has got me into trouble many times, so what’s one more!—that I have somewhat mixed/ambivalent/unsure reactions to this mode of working, and I have been baulking/struggling/evading attempts to put this into a coherent statement (and I am not saying that this is coherent or even qualifies as a ‘statement’ – I think Ian’s noun ‘dump’ comes closer to it!).

To explain I am in the process of reading John Law’s (2004) ‘After Method: Mess in social science research’. The book basically explores where the desire and practice of (re)presenting our worlds (in our case, through our research and publications) as singular comes from: and how we might work in and through the multiplicities/slipperiness of things that we all encounter but don’t quite know how to put across, and thus end up silencing—arguments/experiences I am sure you are all familiar with. So this got me thinking of different ways such approaches might work for this blog/project – how we might tell divergent stories, opinions, representations etc in one piece. Boxes within the text? Juxtaposed columns telling different stories of the same ‘thing’? Nice in theory– but then the practicalities kicks in i.e. how do we do it in practice; have we got the time or energy; would it even work and result in something approaching readability; and will the publishers of such a 'respected' journal wear it etc? So once again, the desire for a linear, singular storyline takes hold, and we end up with the same options/ways of working i.e. circulate drafts etc.

I know these are the issues that Ian and others are butting up against all the time in this and other work, hence this blog-experiment. So this isn’t a criticism of this project (in fact, far from it—I really admire Ian’s work and the integrity he exudes). I don’t actually have any pithy conclusions (So I think this posting just proved my, well John Law’s point – the expectation of a pithy/succinct/singular conclusion) I guess it is just that old tension of how we put our conceptual/ethical commitments into practice in an ‘industry’ (for academia is undoubtedly one) that demands certain singular outcomes. So If I do have a finishing point/question it is how we might include the experiences of working in these ways/the challenges of trying to write/think/share differently in a piece that is meant to, knowing how PHG works, be a straight up and down review of the literature. Once again, no conclusions…just more questions!!