The invitation

NB some of you who received blogger invitations may not have received this email invitation that explained why you had been invited to contribute to this blog.


Hi Everybody

I've recently been writing a series of Geographies of food reviews for a journal called Progress in human geography. One review was published in 2006 - 'following' - the next is out later this year - 'mixing' - and I'd like to co-author the third and final one - 'afters' - with as many of you as are interested.

The reason that you have ended up on this email list is for one or more of the following reasons:

- Your work is cited (briefly for most, in detail for some) in one or both reviews;
- Your work should have been cited (time and word counts were a big problem);
- You helped put these reviews together (discussing ideas, sending pdfs, reading & commenting on drafts);
- You read and responded to the first review when it was published;
- I thought you might be interested in getting involved in the final review;
[- new - someone else thought you might be interested in getting involved in the final review]

When I started reading for the first review paper, I got quite nervous about fully and fairly representing what was going on in this field. The more I read, the more I needed to read, disciplinary boundaries vanished, I should have known!

So, I thought it would be a good idea to allow those people whose work I (should have) roped in to the first two papers to, at least, have a right to reply, but also to get on paper what they (and/or their students) might say after reading these reviews (good and bad).

To get this dialogue going, and to produce the raw materials for the third review paper, I'd like to invite you to contribute to a blog set up for this purpose: http://food-afters.blogspot.com/ . You will be getting official invitations soon and these should make the blog fairly straightforward to use, even for those (like me until recently) unused to blogging. Please email me ASAP if there is a problem (e.g. you invitation doesn't arrive in the next 24 hours). There are likely to be teething problems - apologies in advance - and hope they don't put anyone off.

The third review will be manufactured out of this dialogue, with all contributors being credited a co-authors (not 'Ian Cook, with assistance from...' I promise). How this will be done will be part of the discussion. I do have some experience with this kind of process, but so do many of you...

I've set a deadline for contributions for the end of August, so that I/we can hopefully submit the paper in October.

Finally, I hope this seems like an interesting and worthwhile project to get involved in. I'm hoping that it will only be time-consuming for me. Let's see what happens. As an incentive, there's a free car for the first person to post! gone.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, and to get copies of one or both of the papers (I'm not allowed to make them freely available).

Thanks and best wishes. I couldn't have got this far without you!



Ian

Prize-giving + issues already raised: some pre-blog feedback...

You win the car...

Thanks for kicking things off Lucius. Email me about the make and model...

Could you say a bit more about Julie's paper, and how it relates to your work on markets? It would be good to get some background and to flesh things out.

The issue of whiteness in the alternative foods movement is briefly mentioned in the mixing 'review' as part of the conclusion to Lisa Heldke's book. But this is one area where - it seems - there's newer work that could help rework / move beyond that 'eating the other' argument.

I didn't get the chance to discuss Rachel Slocum's recent work in this area in the 'mixing' review, but we've been in touch and she mentioned three papers just out. I'll keep a running reference list down the left hand side of the blog, and add these first. Rachel has registered as a blog author and Julie was invited to participate. So, hopefully, they can give us their thoughts, we can read and discuss their work in more detail to get some of the detail we'll need to put the third review together. No pressure, though!

Pre-blog feedback...
I was going to post something soon to briefly outline some of the feedback that I've already had on the papers via email. There's till plenty of time to post but thought this might help to get the ball rolling. In no particular order, comments ranged across:

- other experiences re. the pedagogical issues related to food geographies based on people's different experiments and experiences - usually with much larger classes - on ways to involve students in these arguments in more personal, visceral, collective, transformative ways;

- on a related note, the relationships between theory/practice/research/writing/audiences in food and other geographies, especially the 'transformative' potential of messier/'unfinished' versus more direct/complete forms of argumentation. I'm curious to know what people made of Sayer's post-disciplinary studies arguments as they relate to food.

- again, on a related note, a couple of artists working with/on food issues contacted me after reading the reviews, and the 'following' paper was republished in a Bioneering: hybrid investigations of food exhibition catalogue last year (see link). I invited both to join the blog and they have registered, so there will hopefully be some further discussion on potential /ongoing /previous art/geography crossover work here.

- the ways in which Marx's arguments about 'commodity fetishism' are (not) caricatured and dismissed as simply brushing aside the veil to revel the 'truth' behind it. This seems to be something that needs a bit more attention, especially as defetishising work seems to coming across as ineffective in studies of fair trade / alternative consumption (see Cloke, Barnett et al - link and Kneafsey et al - link). Two things might be worth developing here: a) the authors in backets have been invited to contribute to the blog, and it would be great of one or more could summarise and reference their arguments here; and b) could people suggest more theoretical reading that could help amend / develop / replace / revive those defetishising arguments? I really like Tim Luke's (2000) paper on the subject - see list - as a way of developing the theoretical argument sketched out in the 'following' review. I can say more...

- the point about food geographies being appreciated as relations between rounded people (for want of a better term) rather than 'producers' and 'consumers'. This was raised at a seminar I attended as a potential problem with a back-story, but I didn't note down the details. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

- some important readings were missed, including Rachels', Uma Narayan's (1997) detailed critique of Lisa Heldke's book and some discussion of the 'discovery' of Europe by Elizabeth David all needed to be in the 'mixing' review. Any number of papers published in Sociologia ruralis needed to be discussed in the 'following' review (my university library didn't subscribe, and this was one of the criteria I used to narrow things down - sorry - but this does provide those in the know, with the access, in the journal to contribute here).

- 'post-romantic' food studies: I had a fascinating email about this in response to the 'mixing review'. If you recognise this as your phrase, could you blog that email, elaborate on it some more, something..!?

- the styles/approaches of the reviews, i.e. how attempts to engage readers affects the process of writing/reading a literature review. One respondent described the 'following' review as 'disturbing' in a way that was (not) good and expressed a concern that others might have over style versus substance, and how seriously this review might be taken by some. Where's the dividing line between engaging and annoying? The 'mixing' review refused to come to a conventional conclusion - another email said - treating knowledge as "a moving river which cannot ever be frozen (or at least not without disastrous consequences)". What are the pros and cons of doing things this way, as this relates to the food politics 'reviewed', and/or in any wider senses? I know what I think, but what about others...? If readers / you were irritated / etc. by this approach, this needs to be aired in the 3rd review. Please don't hold back.

- finally, and particularly for those of you who emailed in response to the blog invite to say that you weren't food geographers but might have a go at getting involved, to what extent does this third review need to be confined to / or question the boundaries / limits of food geographies? I' like to encourage contributors to make any kind of response that comes to mind, and we'll go from there...

That's it so far. Thanks to everyone who sent the emails mined here. Hope this is teh beginning rather than the end of the conversation

Looking forward to your posts.


Ian

Ian, as with any meal there is that moment when one asks "Do I need (want) any more? Have I had enough or am I still hungry?" One of the great things about food and the geography of food is that it always leaves you asking that question. Every new article, every new interview or field note leads to further and further potential for inquiry. Guthman's recent article on the 'whiteness' of farmers markets is a good example. I started looking around at the perceived image of our own Kalamazoo farmers' market, the actual location of which is in a lesser advantaged (read black and hispanic) neighborhood, and how it matches or exemplifies what she wrote. One of my interviews labeled the market as "a liberal welfare project for the farmer" which I thought was brilliant. The point of the market was that it was to be located where everyone in the city could best use it but no one takes the bus there, only SUV's and Lexus' are in the parking lot. This just leads me to further inquiry, lovely that, eh?