Published in Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment (Vol. 30, No. 3, 2022)

Abstract This article analyzes the role of the refrigerator in how food becomes waste in socio-material and ethico-cultural practices. The modern food refrigeration technologies and practices have extended food’s useability time. They have transformed ordinary life by allowing households to store ample amounts of fresh food. However, this study suggests that fridges merit more attention not only in

Abstract Peru is the center of origin and diversity of more than 3,000 varieties of native potatoes although only a few varieties are typically consumed beyond the Andean region. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research, I explore the role of standards of size, quality, and colors as well as documents like invoices in formalizing and mobilizing the potatoes in the market. I argue that these standards

Abstract This essay analyzes women’s connections with cooking through the work of three female writers from Argentina. I uncover key moments in the history of the country in which culinary practices represent a channel for larger reflections on gender struggles and women’s rights. I distinguish three representative cases within the complex and rich relationship between women, cooking, and feminism

Abstract Public health and media discourses frequently blame mothers for the size of their children, including parents coping with multiple structural disadvantages. Rural Midwestern American, low-income, self-identified higher-weight women (n = 25) participated in face-to-face, audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews about their beliefs regarding how body size is transmitted across generations

Abstract Based on a case study of Washington State prison food policy and practice, this article traces the use of nutritionism as an enabling epistemology of mass incarceration in the neoliberal era in the United States. To develop this argument, the author develops the concept of carceral nutrition, or ideologies of food and eating that reduce complex relations of nourishment to biopolitical calculations

Abstract In this article, we focus on the agro-environmental dimensions of plantation agriculture in the U.S. South, examining the ways carceral relations constrain foodways through the interrelated control of human and non-human life, the racialized monopolization of land, and the production of hunger. Through a focus on the chemicalization of cotton plantation agriculture and the transformation of

ABSTRACT In recent years, communities invested in transformative food politics in the United States have seen the framework food justice become widely accepted as a core framework for anti-racist practice. Critical food scholars often recognize food justice in practices that: underwrite coalitions and solidarities across difference, tend to collective and historical trauma, and expand land-based political

Abstract This article examines the spatial history of U.S. food production through the evolution of two carceral spaces: rural penitentiaries and Indian reservations. These sites have long provided opportunities to spatially fix surplus labor and capital in U.S. agriculture: from the confinement of Indians during settler colonialism, through the regulation of labor surpluses after Reconstruction, to

ABSTRACT A recipe can function as a list of ingredients and instructions, a method of preserving traditions, and a historical record. These guidelines for cooking particular foods can reveal a longing for the past, using flavors and materials to conjure up memories of people and places, and a sense of possibility, suggesting the potential to achieve something that is currently out of reach. Cookbooks

ABSTRACT Hunger strikes appear to occupy a liminal position within the literature of power and resistance, constituting a contradictory means of empowerment — weakening the body while politically strengthening the subject. As such, this tactic eludes classification, in fact operating as an impure form of contestation. Scholars have also revealed that food refusal operates as a primarily symbolic form

Abstract Carceral spaces—such as neighborhood zones of police surveillance and plantation prisons that exploit incarcerated labor—reflect and reproduce systems of oppression that are also present in the food system. The state regularly polices poverty instead of addressing how racial capitalism perpetuates the lack of access to basic needs like healthy food. Conversely, the food system relies on carceral

Abstract In this article we ethnographically investigate how diasporic Iranians in Aotearoa/New Zealand deployed a variety of foodways in emphasizing varied identity constructs in different contexts and to different audiences. We argue that Iranian migrants experienced a cleft habitus that prompted hyper-reflexivity and associated strategic identity discourses and performances. Moreover, we analyze

Abstract The current systems of food production and consumption are not sustainable due to a high level of resource inefficiency, environmental pollution and unhealthy eating habits. This paper focuses on the issues of wasting food and overeating, which have received increasing attention in other recent studies on the food service sector. A majority of those studies look at the choices made by customers

Abstract In 2020 and 2021, anthropologists confronted the obstacles of conducting fieldwork during the global COVID-19 pandemic. For months, we endured quarantine with others and grieved the loss what many consider the basis of our professional identity: participant observation. We were unable to predict how much our methodological toolkit would have to stretch and shrink to keep up with public health

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has presented major disruptions in not just human interaction on a personal level, but also to food systems. Food insecurity has been exacerbated by the pandemic because of isolation, suspension of travel, and disturbances in food supply chains. This reflection paper highlights the challenges that two female immigrant doctoral students, a Ghanaian and a Zambian, have

Abstract In 2012 in a formerly abandoned meat market in Brussels, Belgium, an NGO was founded to produce social inclusion programs and transform an under-used urban space into a community hub. In attempting to fulfill its goal, the founders, staff, and volunteers have used surplus unsold market produce that would otherwise have been discarded in order to fuel several programs, by inviting people to

Abstract In this article, we applied Wendy Griswold’s concepts of cultural objects and the cultural diamond to examine how a specific food—Southern style biscuits—underwent gourmetization. We provide evidence from observations of seven well-known gourmet biscuit restaurants, as well as a content analysis of their websites, Instagram accounts, and media coverage to understand how some establishments

Abstract In this article, I examine the complications to funerary rituals caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, I consider the breakdowns of normal systems of community food provisions to bereaved families, while reflecting on both the creativity of populations to create new ritual activities and the lingering effects of being unable to complete expected rituals. Beginning with the death of

Abstract Pleasure and pressure are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the unpaid care economy. Food is the lens through which we examine the Janus-faced character of care during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on qualitative empirical findings, we argue that time is crucial to whether people experience ambivalence, joy or constraints in providing food for the self, the family and the wider community

Abstract In February 2021, the French government relaxed the Labor Code and authorized workday lunches in the office and on the shop floor to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in dedicated eating places (canteens, lunch rooms, refectories). The general reception of the measure was indifferent. Conservative media, however, welcomed the news as a long overdue step toward more individual liberty and a less

(2022). Dickinson, Maggie. Feeding the crisis: Care and abandonment in America's food safety net . Berkeley: University of California press, 2019, $29.95 (paperback), $29.95 (ebook), $85.00 (hardback), 224 pages, ISBN:9780520307674. Food and Foodways: Vol. 30, Food and Carcerality: From Confinement to Abolition, Guest Editors: Ashanté M. Reese, Joshua Sbicca, pp. 142-144.

Abstract Food connects people and land, a link that the Italian Fascist regime exploited through their seizure of local culinary culture for the promotion of national demographic goals. This article traces the connections between the regime’s concurrent drives for food production and sexual reproduction. It will show the propagandistic potential of recipes, and also the limits of top-down dietary change

Abstract The disparity between rates of food insecurity experienced in households across Canada (8.3%) and in Indigenous households specifically (nearly half) is alarming. Many previous studies have demonstrated the physical, spiritual, mental, social and emotional benefits of consuming traditional foods (primarily wild animal food sources and wild edible plants), yet many Indigenous peoples in northern

Abstract This article explores the new food experiences of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War, drawing evidence from scholarly works, archives and soldier accounts. Having come from a predominantly British food culture in Australia, the AIF encountered new tastes and eating habits in the Middle East and Europe, which they experienced in dual roles as soldiers and tourists

Abstract During the Covid-19 pandemic, the French Government imposed a strict lockdown from March 17th to May 11th 2020. These extraordinary times challenged the social norm of commensality, a practice that is particularly strong and engrained in France. How has lockdown impacted meal-sharing habits? How have the rules and norms of commensality withstood the weakening of social bonds caused by lockdown

(2021). Italian Food Activism in Urban Sardinia. Place, Taste, and Community. Food and Foodways: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 108-110.

Abstract “Who would have thought that out of all the dishes on our menu, Americans would go nuts for a salad mixed with a dark savory paste of fermented tea?” The demand for Burma Superstar’s laphet thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) came initially as a surprise to San Francisco-restaurateur Desmond Tan. By 2018 the restaurant’s fermented tea leaf salad was the fourth most popular restaurant item in

Abstract In this paper we use duoethnography (collaborative autoethnography) to explore food in our migration experiences between Australia and Scotland. In doing so we highlight how autoethnography is underutilized in food scholarship. Previous research on food and migration highlights how migrants maintain and adapt homeland foodways. By contrast, we show how young migrants from high-income countries

Abstract During the global COVID pandemic, cooking and baking have reemerged as popular at-home pastimes. In this essay, we focus on digital cooking classes offered by Airbnb. Responding to restrictions on physical mobility, as well as to the sudden demand for leisure activities which could be experienced from one’s home, in early April 2020, Airbnb launched a new service called “Online Experiences”

Abstract Relying on auto-ethnography, I reflect on the role sourdough and bread-making practices have played during the COVID-19 pandemic. I explore the agency of a non-human entity—the sourdough—and the relations that emerge from nurturing it. In particular, I inquire what living relationally means for me—a professional migrant—in a time that is not only challenging, due to the pandemic and consequent

Abstract This article explores the complicated place of sugar in the display of family connectedness and health in a white, middle class Australian family. In the context of heightened anxiety about childhood obesity, we present the Baker family as a case study to explore the pleasures and tensions that sugar consumption produces in families. On their birthdays, each child has a luxurious “Hammer Cake”

Abstract The healthfulness of the populations’ diets has long been a concern in Scotland. However, despite policies aimed at improving the healthfulness of people’s diet, it remains poor. The failure of these policies to bring about desired changes is partly because the relationship between dietary advice, understandings of it and the healthfulness of food practices is complex. The Scottish Government

We are excited to publish the following “Reflection” on “Food and the Pandemic” in response to our Call for Papers. “Reflections” are short, peppy essays about topics of contemporary interest; they...

Abstract In 1981 friends and female entrepreneurs Virginia Limansky and Ann Wilder launched a boutique spice business in Baltimore. The company’s name was a fusion of their first names, Virginia and Ann, and the business initially developed out of their home kitchens. Vanns created popular spice blends of high quality and flourished despite being located in the shadow of nearby spice giant McCormick

Abstract Over the past two decades, the Philippines’ leading restaurant brand, Jollibee, has made significant inroads into America’s quick-service dining scene. While previous scholarship has charted the chain’s phenomenal rise domestically, few accounts detail the company’s growing international standing much less discuss its ongoing expansion into major American cities beginning in the late 1990s

Abstract In August, 2020 in San Francisco, everyone, and every restaurant, was just trying to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, three clear plastic domes popped up in front of Hashiri, a Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant on Mint Plaza; Hashiri’s manager explained to reporters that these domes ensconcing wealthy diners were chosen to keep unhoused neighbors out of sight and out of the way. Around

Abstract This essay will interrogate how hip-hop—a form whose sound is not only connected to but defined by ideas of place—uses food and place as discursive objects to construct notions Southern urban particularity. Reading soul food as both a national cuisine symbolizing Black resilience in the face of institutional racial violence and a local cuisine that can symbolize the particularity of place

Abstract Interest in home gardening has burgeoned since governments around the world imposed lockdowns to suppress the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This essay reflects on the growth of home gardens in the locked-down Philippines by analyzing discourses in two home gardening interest groups in Facebook. A particularly salient discourse revolves around the notion of being a “productive” home gardener in a time

Abstract We share in this reflection a selection of our own daily experiences and observations from Turkey and the U.S. of how Covid-19 has affected people’s relationship to shopping for food. We aim to show the multiple shifts that occurred in the mechanisms of trust that used to define how food is procured. We illustrate how disruptions in conventional and alternative food supply chains in both countries

Abstract This paper explores the history of jumbles, a type of cookies, through the duration of American history from the colonial period through today. The evolution of jumbles illustrates the ways that recipes have been continually adapted and put to a variety of political and social uses. In particular, this essay seeks to further debates in food studies over the nature of authenticity by exploring

Abstract Food miles is a concept developed in the 1990s as a critique of the negative social and environmental consequences of transporting foods over very long distances. While intended to draw attention to a contemporary problem, the movement of food has a long history to which the concept of food miles can be usefully applied. Drawing upon government correspondence, statistics and personal journals

Abstract This article analyses food schools in Copenhagen. Organized differently from the majority of Copenhagen schools, twelve food schools have chefs on site and involve pupils in preparing, cooking, and serving the daily meals. Four food schools formed the empirical basis of a qualitative study conducted in 2016, which involved interviewing pupils, food school coordinators, management, and chefs

Globalization has advanced at an accelerated pace during the 20th century. This is also true for the expansion of East Asian cuisines in Germany, which is the major theme discussed in the yearbook ...

Abstract Artisan cheese enthusiasts often celebrate the preservation of tradition, while the marketplace in heritage foods pays a premium for products cast as traditional. But ethnographic research with cheesemakers revealed a complex dynamic between continuity and change. Practices that some considered essential to tradition were considered dispensable—even problematic—by others. While external forces

Abstract Over the last few years on Thursday evenings, the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel’s largest haredi (ultra-Orthodox) cities, becomes a culinary meeting place. The Eastern European Jewish cuisine sustained by the haredi kitchen attracts non-haredi visitors to a society that tends to keep to itself. This article presents an ethnographic investigation of a new culinary scene that brings

Abstract Using food and meals as a basis of approach to a subject establishes almost instant relatability. It can lead to amazing insights, but with the power of this insight comes an equally powerful ability to form cruel judgments and even create myth. Such is the case with Howard Hughes and his compulsive activity regarding meals, especially the size and quantity of the peas served with his customary

Abstract Although food waste is gaining attention as an issue of environmental, social, and economic concern, this topic has only been taken up minimally by food scholars, despite its apparent relevance to food systems scholarship. Through a literature scan of nine food systems journals, we identify and characterize all instances of “food waste” and “food loss” mentions. We find that reference to this

Abstract We confront the expiration date whenever we shop, eat or discard food. This label has changed our foodways in profound and unforeseen manners, on the one hand increasing food safety while on the other reducing our sensory ability to judge food, thus leading to an increase in food waste. Only by understanding how the quality and expiration date of a product are interrelated and co-constructed

Abstract Food insecurity is a significant problem in the U.S., disproportionately impacting people with disabilities. Yet, little scholarship exists about disability and food, particularly on people in institutions, with even less from disabled people’s perspectives. This article presents two ethnographic examples from different types of “community placements.” These first-hand accounts by disabled

Abstract This study looks at the ways in which Israeli female chefs interpret professional cookery and mobilize their position to form feminine restaurant spaces, in which they instill their professional agenda. Israeli female chefs, we argue, maintain that their gender grants them professional flexibility to construct cooking spaces where alternative working norms apply and certain privileges, such

Abstract This contribution analyses the problematics underlying how food related matters act as evidence of parental neglect in child protection work in Iceland. Our intention is to cast a critical light upon child protection workers’ judgments about the foodways practices of parents under investigation and what this says about the child protection system. Neglect on the basis of malnutrition is a

Abstract This article considers the emerging Bolivian gastronomic discourse as a project fraught with tensions. On the one hand, the discourse surrounding Bolivian cuisine, as presented in urban restaurants, highlights a new kind of nationalism that promotes regional cooking and innovation. This process has elevated indigenous ingredients, such as quinoa, chuño (freeze-dried potatoes), and llama meat

Abstract We utilized key informant interviews to examine traditional diet (TD) perceptions among members of the Hispanic Caribbean (HC) community in New York City (Dominicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans, n = 23). While the cuisines share many similarities, the interviews revealed differences in how the TDs were evaluated. Cubans emphasized the unhealthiness of their TD, while Dominicans and Puerto Ricans

Abstract When it comes to food, eating and technologies, convenience is constructed as contradictory: on the one hand as a practice that saves time and effort, and on the other hand, an easy and often “unhealthy” choice, contributing to obesity rates. Moralizing, classed and gendered discourses around health and obesity mean that convenient options are rarely portrayed as “good choices”. Through ethnographic

Abstract In a qualitative content analysis of The Vegan Society’s quarterly publication, The Vegan, spanning 73 years and nearly 300 issues, the trajectory of one of the world’s most radical and compassionate counter cuisine collectives is presented and critically assessed. The Vegan Society’s history provides a case study on the ways in which social movements negotiate difference and conflict. Specifically