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P48


Tradition is the new normal: food and farming revivalism as response to crises 
Convenors:
Owen McNamara (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Morgan Jenatton (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Mexico))
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Discussants:
Jakob Klein (SOAS)
Daniel Knight (University of St Andrews)
Format:
Panel
Location:
S209
Sessions:
Tuesday 11 April, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

This panel explores how subjects react to crises through a revival of ostensibly traditional food and farming systems. Panellists are invited to discuss how food and farming revivalist practices respond to and are occasioned by different crises (ecological, democratic, economic, epidemiological).

Long Abstract:

This panel speaks to the theme of an "Unwell World?" by exploring how subjects react to crises through a "revival" of ostensibly traditional foods and farming systems. Panellists are invited to reflect on how these revivalist practices respond to and are occasioned by different crises (ecological, democratic, economic, epidemiological).

Anthropologists studying crises have noted that crisis designates an inflection point at which subjects must choose between alternative futures (Barrios 2017; Roitman 2014). The imagined past - that revivalists (re)create through cultivation, crop-care, food preparation and eating - shapes the imagination of possible futures (Angé & Berliner 2020). Reconstructing the past through farming systems might highlight links between the asymmetrical burdens imposed by global industrial-agriculture and the diminishing health conditions of populations increasingly dependent upon hyper-processed foods (Gálvez 2018; Campbell 2009). More locally, connecting with an imagined past through food and farming may enable subjects to contest entrenched class, gender, and racial hierarchies (Suremain & Matta 2013).

While adopting "heritage" food practices (Littaye 2016; Weiss 2016; Ives 2017) might enable futures in which populations are less exposed to environmental and health hazards, it is worth considering what other futures revivalism forecloses. What challenges to industrial-agriculture and globalised capitalism are rendered mute by turning to "tradition" as a political fix? What solidarities are made unimaginable by local revivalisms? What pasts are taken as a reference, and how are they recomposed today? What arbitrations are deployed in the elaboration of what are ultimately new practices reborn from a nostalgic past?

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Tuesday 11 April, 2023, -
Session 2 Tuesday 11 April, 2023, -