Archived 25 August 2009
Hi Everyone
Please accept my apologies for not keeping to my own deadlines. I've been busy and ill, with ongoing medical stuff...
Roger Lee - who commissioned the 3 food papers for Progress in human geography - has been in touch asking when he can expect our paper. We have agreed that May is good under the circumstances.
The plan (updated):
I intended to put a first wiki-draft together by 20th March, but that didn't happen (same reasons as usual). I hope we can still keep to the May deadline (i.e. completing & submitting the review in May).
Progess so far:
- All the blog postings are now in one 43,000 word document .
- A Google doc experiment has started...
Next
- I'll code the posts and work on the draft in the next couple of weeks (to, from and during a week-long fieldcourse in Cuba).
- I'll upload this draft to Google docs and invite everyone to edit, add, update, etc... right at the start of May.
Ian
13th April 2009
------------------------------------
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Writing
[archived...]
There seems to an agreement that I should orchestrate the writing of the paper, but in a way that's relatively non-hierarchical, and includes different voices, fragments and the character of our discussions. If possible.
Whether this involves stages of drafting and a series of emails, attachments and tracked changes (which with so many authors, may be overly complicated), or setting up a wiki (which could be simpler and more collaboratively edited), is something to think about.
The wiki idea is new to me, as was blogging at the start of the summer. So, thanks for the suggestion Lisa. I'm happy to go with this as another experiment.
When the dust settles, I'll code, cut and paste, and top and tail a rough document for us to start with, and maybe circulate it 'normally' and try a wiki so we can get this done one way and another.
Thanks for your support with this continuing experiment!
Ian
23 January 2009
There seems to an agreement that I should orchestrate the writing of the paper, but in a way that's relatively non-hierarchical, and includes different voices, fragments and the character of our discussions. If possible.
Whether this involves stages of drafting and a series of emails, attachments and tracked changes (which with so many authors, may be overly complicated), or setting up a wiki (which could be simpler and more collaboratively edited), is something to think about.
The wiki idea is new to me, as was blogging at the start of the summer. So, thanks for the suggestion Lisa. I'm happy to go with this as another experiment.
When the dust settles, I'll code, cut and paste, and top and tail a rough document for us to start with, and maybe circulate it 'normally' and try a wiki so we can get this done one way and another.
Thanks for your support with this continuing experiment!
Ian
23 January 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
A bit of leftovers after the meal?
Hello! I am comming to the party a bit late--appologies. Thanks Ian for letting me gatecrash.
I think I would like to make just a couple of tenative comments concerning practices and materiality.
Firstly, and I am being very tentative here as one is always warry of comming into a conversation that is most of the way through and then just saying somethign that has already been said...but here are some tentative thoughts:
Following on from Rachel: I guess I would like to suggest more work that considers the idea of capacities and learning as part of food practices (see Rouse 2007 and Schatzki 2002 on practice theory) and how in creating the everyday spaces of cooking and shopping and eating, learning is a key aspect which is linked to the continuation but also innovation within food cultures. A critical mass of particular capacities also helps to shape and reshape places (I am sort of thinking Massey (2005) here but applied to foodspaces), which in turn makes it much harder for those with different capacities and different foodways to be engaged with these spaces/places and thier politics (I have a paper forcomming in the Annals that takes on board some of these ideas in relation to "local food").
Linked to this I think is the notion that time-space and space-times (see Schatzki 2005 and also Haggerstrand1982) can contribute a lot to the ways that we understand how food is imbricated in the projects of people within the context of thier lifecourse. For example, the idea that the family meal is dead in the UK because it does not seem to occure nightly. If we think carefully the meal could be instead be understood and practiced in a different form--e.g. as breakfast. So while it may look like a archetype is being lost it is often just done differently (Blake et al 2009). In research in the UK and Hungary we found that many families practice family through their foodways, but these foodways may be unique to that family and change over time as circumstances change. It is also the case that many individuals practice their foodways differently when they are eating alone because the eating or cooking or whatever is not contributing to the family project but is instead either adding to or detracting from some other aim that they have. What this way of thinking might help us with is an opportunity to move away from the notion that (usually) mothers are bad because they don't produce a roast meal every night a la June Cleaver (isn't it ironic that here name is Cleaver?). The moral outrage, at least in the UK by many ranging from those concerned with food policy to those who write and read the daily mail should I think be confronted head on rather more (although see a forthcomming book chapter by Peter Jackson in the Changing Families/Changing Food book that will come out this summer and which is the book for the CFCF research programme (www.shef.ac.uk/foodandfamilies --incidently there are a number of programme highlights on this web page as well as a really great downloadable food bibliography, also see work by Murcott 1995). While Jackson and Murcott question weather a family meal ever existed (apparently just for some and only briefly) one might ask what the effect of asking about the demise of the family meal has within society--does it, for example create more pressure on women to work a double workign day to meet some idealised notion? Does it help create a situation whereby (mostly) women feel inadequate because they find it difficult to supply and orchestrate this type of meal to their families on an everyday or even weekly basis? And what does this demonstrate to children? That they do not need to learn to cook until they are older because it is mum's job to do it? That family meals are just those that occure in the evening around a dinning table that they may or may not have (many british houses are very small and a dinning table is a luxury). That cooking needs to be complicated and for food to count as a meal it must be hot and certainly not be leftovers.
Lastly--thinking about really afters... I guess I would encourage further interrogation into what happens when things un-become food (taking off of Roe's comments about things becomming food). Food waste is a huge proportion of the UK greenhouse emmission. The UK government estimates that approximately 40% of all emissions are derived from the activities that we do every day as ordinary people going about ordinary lives. Approximately 20% of all UK emissions are associated with food production, processing, transportation, and storage (Ventour 2008). Research commissioned by WRAP, a UK government funded organisation whose aim is to help reduce carbon emissions in this country, suggests that about one third of all food purchased in the UK is thrown away. Of this discarded food, about one third is untouched and a significant proportion is still in date. Furthermore, while all types of foods are thrown away, fruit and vegetables account for the largest proportion at about 40% of all food waste, which suggests that while consumers are trying to live healthier lifestyles, much of their good intention is finding itself in the rubbish bin. Finally, the households with the greatest amount of food waste are those with children. What is the impact of food waste in other industrialised countries? Certainly people do not buy food with the intention of wasting it--so the question is what happens? WRAP argues that many consumers do not plan appropriately when they purchase food and buy too much. When this is considered against the ways that retailers market foods to consumers (e.g. buy one, get one free offers) it becomes clear why cost-conscious shoppers would end up with more food that they need , especially as care is expressed through the savings achieved when goods are purchased ( see Miller 1998). Likewise, cultural practices such as teaching children about healthy eating and entertaining of guests may contribute to this waste. For example, WRAP finds that poor storage of fruits and vegetables contributes to a shorter lifespan (e.g. non-refrigeration and high light conditions), however ongoing research suggests that parents use a fruit bowl as a way to encourage children to eat more fruits (WRAP estimates 56% of all households have a fruit bowl). Similarly, for some, certain foods are purchased for consumption by others as a treat rather than for oneself or ones family (Blake et al 2010). This treat food includes food to be given as a gift (e.g. a box of biscuits) or served to guests (e.g. cakes). Among middle class households in the UK, good manners dictate that any when guests appear special food should be made available along with a cup of tea. Given that visitors are not always planned, this also necessitates these households keep a constant supply of this type of food, which must be monitored for freshness but never eaten oneself (there is some evidence that the need to store food in case someone comes buy is also a problem for Pakistani families in the UK as well and one presumes the situation may be similar for other minority groups). Thus, when this food is no longer suitable for guests, it becomes part of the waste problem. Finally, national cuisines and food histories are likely to influence how individuals understand food as no longer being edible. For example, amongst the white population in the UK, we found food is often judged by its visual properties rather than by its smell or feel. This is likely to be partly due to an industrial history that separated food production from food consumption and necessitated a food processing and delivery system that required higher amounts of packaging than would be the case if food were produced within very short distances from where it is eaten (Calquhoun 2006, see also Atkins 2007 for a specific discussion in relation to milk). These differences in culture, history, and food provisioning and retailing practices suggest that the social and cultural practices of groups must be understood in order to tackle the problem of food waste.
Maybe a bit of a rant, hopefully something useful here. I hope I have not been too self promoting, but these are just ideas I have been thinking about lately.
I am a bit new at the blog thing and I am not certain how exactly to add my reference to the side column so here they are...
Atkins, Peter (2007) Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 25, 967-89.
Blake, M. K. , Mellor, J. C. L. and L. Crane (2010) Buying Local Food: The rols of shopping practices, place and consumption networks in defining food as "local". Forthcomming in the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
Blake, M. K., Mellor, JCL and L Crane (2009) Eating up time, Eating in Time, in Jackson, P. (ed.) Changing Families/Changing Food, Palgreve-Macmillon (in press).
Calquhoun, Kate. 2007. Taste: The story of Britain Though Its Cooking. London: Bloomsbury.
Hagerstrand, Torston (1982). Diorama, path and project. Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 73(6):323-399.
Jackson, P. (2009) Changing Families Chaning Food, Palgreve-Mcmillon (in press).
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Miller, Daniel. 1998. A theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press.Murcott, A. 1995. Family Meals - a Thing of the Past. In Food, Health and Identity, ed. P. Caplan, 32-49. London: Routledge.
Rouse, J. 2007. Social Practices and Normativity. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37:46-
56.
Schatzki, T. R. 2002. The site of the social. University Park, Pennsylvania: The
Pennsylvania State University
Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Where Times Meet. Cosmos and History: The journal of natural and social philosophy 1(2): 191-212.
The Royal Society (2008) UK and EU Climate Change Policy (available online http://royalsociety.org/landing.asp?id=1278), London: The Royal Society (date last accessed 1 September 2008).
Ventour, Lorrrayne (2008) The food we waste, London: WRAP.
I think I would like to make just a couple of tenative comments concerning practices and materiality.
Firstly, and I am being very tentative here as one is always warry of comming into a conversation that is most of the way through and then just saying somethign that has already been said...but here are some tentative thoughts:
Following on from Rachel: I guess I would like to suggest more work that considers the idea of capacities and learning as part of food practices (see Rouse 2007 and Schatzki 2002 on practice theory) and how in creating the everyday spaces of cooking and shopping and eating, learning is a key aspect which is linked to the continuation but also innovation within food cultures. A critical mass of particular capacities also helps to shape and reshape places (I am sort of thinking Massey (2005) here but applied to foodspaces), which in turn makes it much harder for those with different capacities and different foodways to be engaged with these spaces/places and thier politics (I have a paper forcomming in the Annals that takes on board some of these ideas in relation to "local food").
Linked to this I think is the notion that time-space and space-times (see Schatzki 2005 and also Haggerstrand1982) can contribute a lot to the ways that we understand how food is imbricated in the projects of people within the context of thier lifecourse. For example, the idea that the family meal is dead in the UK because it does not seem to occure nightly. If we think carefully the meal could be instead be understood and practiced in a different form--e.g. as breakfast. So while it may look like a archetype is being lost it is often just done differently (Blake et al 2009). In research in the UK and Hungary we found that many families practice family through their foodways, but these foodways may be unique to that family and change over time as circumstances change. It is also the case that many individuals practice their foodways differently when they are eating alone because the eating or cooking or whatever is not contributing to the family project but is instead either adding to or detracting from some other aim that they have. What this way of thinking might help us with is an opportunity to move away from the notion that (usually) mothers are bad because they don't produce a roast meal every night a la June Cleaver (isn't it ironic that here name is Cleaver?). The moral outrage, at least in the UK by many ranging from those concerned with food policy to those who write and read the daily mail should I think be confronted head on rather more (although see a forthcomming book chapter by Peter Jackson in the Changing Families/Changing Food book that will come out this summer and which is the book for the CFCF research programme (www.shef.ac.uk/foodandfamilies --incidently there are a number of programme highlights on this web page as well as a really great downloadable food bibliography, also see work by Murcott 1995). While Jackson and Murcott question weather a family meal ever existed (apparently just for some and only briefly) one might ask what the effect of asking about the demise of the family meal has within society--does it, for example create more pressure on women to work a double workign day to meet some idealised notion? Does it help create a situation whereby (mostly) women feel inadequate because they find it difficult to supply and orchestrate this type of meal to their families on an everyday or even weekly basis? And what does this demonstrate to children? That they do not need to learn to cook until they are older because it is mum's job to do it? That family meals are just those that occure in the evening around a dinning table that they may or may not have (many british houses are very small and a dinning table is a luxury). That cooking needs to be complicated and for food to count as a meal it must be hot and certainly not be leftovers.
Lastly--thinking about really afters... I guess I would encourage further interrogation into what happens when things un-become food (taking off of Roe's comments about things becomming food). Food waste is a huge proportion of the UK greenhouse emmission. The UK government estimates that approximately 40% of all emissions are derived from the activities that we do every day as ordinary people going about ordinary lives. Approximately 20% of all UK emissions are associated with food production, processing, transportation, and storage (Ventour 2008). Research commissioned by WRAP, a UK government funded organisation whose aim is to help reduce carbon emissions in this country, suggests that about one third of all food purchased in the UK is thrown away. Of this discarded food, about one third is untouched and a significant proportion is still in date. Furthermore, while all types of foods are thrown away, fruit and vegetables account for the largest proportion at about 40% of all food waste, which suggests that while consumers are trying to live healthier lifestyles, much of their good intention is finding itself in the rubbish bin. Finally, the households with the greatest amount of food waste are those with children. What is the impact of food waste in other industrialised countries? Certainly people do not buy food with the intention of wasting it--so the question is what happens? WRAP argues that many consumers do not plan appropriately when they purchase food and buy too much. When this is considered against the ways that retailers market foods to consumers (e.g. buy one, get one free offers) it becomes clear why cost-conscious shoppers would end up with more food that they need , especially as care is expressed through the savings achieved when goods are purchased ( see Miller 1998). Likewise, cultural practices such as teaching children about healthy eating and entertaining of guests may contribute to this waste. For example, WRAP finds that poor storage of fruits and vegetables contributes to a shorter lifespan (e.g. non-refrigeration and high light conditions), however ongoing research suggests that parents use a fruit bowl as a way to encourage children to eat more fruits (WRAP estimates 56% of all households have a fruit bowl). Similarly, for some, certain foods are purchased for consumption by others as a treat rather than for oneself or ones family (Blake et al 2010). This treat food includes food to be given as a gift (e.g. a box of biscuits) or served to guests (e.g. cakes). Among middle class households in the UK, good manners dictate that any when guests appear special food should be made available along with a cup of tea. Given that visitors are not always planned, this also necessitates these households keep a constant supply of this type of food, which must be monitored for freshness but never eaten oneself (there is some evidence that the need to store food in case someone comes buy is also a problem for Pakistani families in the UK as well and one presumes the situation may be similar for other minority groups). Thus, when this food is no longer suitable for guests, it becomes part of the waste problem. Finally, national cuisines and food histories are likely to influence how individuals understand food as no longer being edible. For example, amongst the white population in the UK, we found food is often judged by its visual properties rather than by its smell or feel. This is likely to be partly due to an industrial history that separated food production from food consumption and necessitated a food processing and delivery system that required higher amounts of packaging than would be the case if food were produced within very short distances from where it is eaten (Calquhoun 2006, see also Atkins 2007 for a specific discussion in relation to milk). These differences in culture, history, and food provisioning and retailing practices suggest that the social and cultural practices of groups must be understood in order to tackle the problem of food waste.
Maybe a bit of a rant, hopefully something useful here. I hope I have not been too self promoting, but these are just ideas I have been thinking about lately.
I am a bit new at the blog thing and I am not certain how exactly to add my reference to the side column so here they are...
Atkins, Peter (2007) Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 25, 967-89.
Blake, M. K. , Mellor, J. C. L. and L. Crane (2010) Buying Local Food: The rols of shopping practices, place and consumption networks in defining food as "local". Forthcomming in the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
Blake, M. K., Mellor, JCL and L Crane (2009) Eating up time, Eating in Time, in Jackson, P. (ed.) Changing Families/Changing Food, Palgreve-Macmillon (in press).
Calquhoun, Kate. 2007. Taste: The story of Britain Though Its Cooking. London: Bloomsbury.
Hagerstrand, Torston (1982). Diorama, path and project. Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 73(6):323-399.
Jackson, P. (2009) Changing Families Chaning Food, Palgreve-Mcmillon (in press).
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Miller, Daniel. 1998. A theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press.Murcott, A. 1995. Family Meals - a Thing of the Past. In Food, Health and Identity, ed. P. Caplan, 32-49. London: Routledge.
Rouse, J. 2007. Social Practices and Normativity. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37:46-
56.
Schatzki, T. R. 2002. The site of the social. University Park, Pennsylvania: The
Pennsylvania State University
Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Where Times Meet. Cosmos and History: The journal of natural and social philosophy 1(2): 191-212.
The Royal Society (2008) UK and EU Climate Change Policy (available online http://royalsociety.org/landing.asp?id=1278), London: The Royal Society (date last accessed 1 September 2008).
Ventour, Lorrrayne (2008) The food we waste, London: WRAP.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
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
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
Monday, September 22, 2008
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
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)
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!
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!
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