Food, Identity and Social Change

2014 ToRS International Food Workshop

on

Food, Identity and Social Change

25 to 26 September 2014

Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Food draws people into the web of life and touches upon everything that matters: it expresses personhood, marks membership (or non-membership) in practically any kind of social grouping, draws lines of where morality begins and ends as well as functions in social allocations, in terms of ethnicity, nationality, individuality, class and gender. Yet, food can also signify very different things from place to place, from kitchen to kitchen and from one time period to another.

Food is a powerful lens for analyzing identity. This is clearly illustrated in the foundational works of food studies that include, Bourdieu’s inquiry into the taste and preferences of the French bourgeoisie and Mintz’s pioneering historical study of how high status sugar produced in the Caribbean became a working class staple to the exciting growth of more recent influential works by Appadurai on how to create a national cuisine and Wilk’s scrutiny of the complex culinary reactions of Belizeans to colonialism, class differentiation and modernity.

In this plethora of studies concerning how people define themselves with food; and how food defines and redefines them, a mystery remains unsolved. People can and have been known to change their food and foodways - as well as their drink and drinkways –radically and quickly: a collective rejection or an eclectic mass movement embracing an alternative ethic and practice of consumption.

The roles of many kinds of social changes – such as peoples on the move (nomads, migrants, refugees, expatriates, tourists), changes in intergroup relations within societies, new technologies (in mass media, biotechnology), mass production of foods and increasing globalization of foods and war – have been relatively neglected in food studies.

The organizers of the workshop welcome contributions on food, identity and social change: Why do we eat what we eat and why have different cultures and societies at different times and different places eaten other things? What fosters social change to affect dietary patterns and changing identities? How can food offer the lens to understand the cultural and social affinities in moments of change and transformation? The topic offers an opportunity to excavate the past, to examine the present and to project into the future.

Organizers and more information
Cynthia Chou
Susanne Kerner