Taste, the body and the future of agriculture. A review of Michael S. Carolan "Embodied Food Politics" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction to Beyond the Superficial: Making Sense of Food in a Globalized World
Food is so integral a part of our life that more often than not it is taken for granted. The common understanding of food is that it is one of the basic necessities of life and is essential in terms of nourishment, ensuring survival. However, beyond this basic premise, the ways in which 'food' has been defined over time, in the context of nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion or gender has never ceased to evolve. So, when we embark upon the act of making sense of food, the major concern is to probe the boundaries of this tangible reality. The academic engagement undertaken here is an inter-and multidisciplinary approach, that makes room for an all-encompassing framework aimed at initialising discussions about the nature of food and the ways in which people interact with it on a day-today basis. f 'food' is not reached. What has been triggered instead is an endless and ongoing dialogue on the intricacies and complexities of its presence in a layman's life. This is the basic premise on which this volume operates. So, what exactly does making sense of food imply?
Enriching Tacit Food Knowledges: Towards an embodied food policy
In my home city of Bristol, UK, there is an exciting initiative called the Bristol Food Policy Council (BFPC) that started in 2011. BFPC activity has involved the publication of a fascinating report titled 'Who feeds Bristol?' (Carey, 2011), requests for members of the Bristol community to sign-up to support the 'Good Food' charter (bristolgoodfood.org 2012) and championing local food initiatives. Mike Carolan no doubt would applaud these initiatives but I think these are not what would form an embodied food policy based on his embodied food politics. In his book Embodied Food Politics Carolan gives many examples of how community engagements can foster how people can
Beyond the Sovereign Body: Taking Food Production Seriously
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2014
This conversation is part of a special issue on ‘‘Critical Nutrition’’ in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section, authors reflect on the limits of standard nutrition in understanding the relationship between food and human health. Two authors explore the role of industrial food production in generating foodborne illness and environmental diseases. Such an approach draws attention to the limits of nutrition education per se as a way to encourage dietary health and suggests more emphasis on collective action to regulate how food is produced. Two authors focus on new scientific discoveries, such as the role of gut bacteria and epigenetic programming in bodily function and phenotype. In certain ways this emerging knowledge challenges the idea that health can actually be controlled through diet.
“Let There Be Food”: Evolving Paradigms in Food Studies
Food Studies is not the literal study of Food. Food studies looks at peoples connect with food. It straddles several tropes all together. It addresses issues of Culture and Identity. Food plays a consistent role in how issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and national identity are imagined or perceived. It helps define and characterize as well as show how notions of belonging are affirmed or resisted. Food, then is a central part of the cultural imagination. It interpolates the dynamics of metaphor, symbolism and is a constant point of reference in literature. Almost every study in culture cannot but draw its inferences from how food is seen in literature. Literally and figuratively food provides “food for thought”. This paper discusses the cultural significance of Food as metaphor and the notion of Food as metonym in the elaboration of culture and identity. Key Words: Food studies, food habits, food and identity, food and culture, Identity
Things Becoming Food and the Embodied, Material Practices of An Organic Food Consumer
Sociologia Ruralis, 2006
The challenge to study the embodied, practical experience of consumption is attracting increasing interest in agro-food studies (Lockie 2002). This paper argues for attention to be turned towards the bodies of animals, plants and humans, materially connected through the agro-food network, to enable a study of the embodied, practical experience of consumption. This paper apprehends the relationship between humans and nonhumans in two empirical examples from the agro-food network through applying a ‘relational materialist’ (Thrift 1999) approach. This approach is worked through by drawing upon the concepts of ‘affordances’ (Gibson 1979; 1982) and ‘intercorporeality’ (Weiss 1999) and through introducing the concept of ‘things becoming food’. A live art performance of sushi being made is discussed to show how embodied practices materially transform the fish into sushi, from production to consumption. Excerpts from the video diary of an organic food consumer and his talk are compared to explore the practice of eating or not eating between potato and human. The findings contribute to debates on nonhuman methodologies, embodied consumption practices, food quality and the intimate material connections between bodies that eat and bodies that are eaten.
Environment and Planning A, 2006
Concern about eating biotechnologically produced foodstuffs is embedded within the complex relationship between food, science, politics, and everyday eating practices. In this paper I consider how this concern is expressed less at the reflexive level of opinions and attitudes and more at the nonreflexive level of eating practices. Therefore, I draw upon literatures that talk of a practical everyday aesthetic and literatures that assert the significance of the material to geographical work, and go on to argue for the significance of a material connective aesthetic within eating practices. This argument is developed empirically and theoretically by considering to what extent consumers can discuss the edibility of different types of carrots in terms of superficial material qualities, integral material qualities, and the immaterial. Crucially, the process of edibility formation is thus understood as relationally embedded in the material environment. This provokes a realisation for an ethics and a politics of (im)material connectivities. This work contributes to geographical work in which an embodied affective ethic is employed, by arguing that the transversal qualities of the material are as significant as the transversal qualities of `affect'. It is relevant to those studying consumption, biogeographies, and nonreflexive practices.