Paper short abstract:

My paper explores the sensory and affective dimension of food, cooking and eating in ex-combatants' life narratives in Mozambique. It shows how in their memories, aesthetic aspects of food such as taste and flavor are closely intertwined with the revolutionary ideas of liberation and socio-economic justice.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the sensory and affective dimension of food, cooking and eating in ex-combatants' life narratives in northern Mozambique. It explores the polytemporality reflected in food memories (Abarca and Colby 2016), and the ways in which the past, present and future are connected in the present experience of remembering. For ex-combatants food is strongly linked to their memories of the wartime. During the ten-year war (1964-1974), the combatants and their supporting civilian populations lived in inhospitable environments in the northern bush thickets of the country. In the ex-combatants' memories, these landscapes are shaped by their experiences of forced movement. Due to heavy bombardments by the colonial troops, the cultivation of crops was also extremely difficult and there were periods in which the population experienced intense hunger. This paper is based on my research among Yaawo-speaking ex-combatants in northern Mozambique between 2012 and 2014. It traces the changing ideas and meanings of food and eating in their life narratives from the wartime to the period of 'liberation'. After independence most ex-combatants settled down as subsistence farmers with the expectation that 'finally' they would 'eat well'. Yet for many their experience of independent Mozambique has been that of socio-economic and political marginalization. While food is crucial to survival, this paper looks at how food is so much more than just nutrition. As my analysis shows, in the ex-combatants’ memories aesthetic aspects of food such as taste and flavor are closely intertwined with the revolutionary ideas of liberation and socio-economic justice.

Paper short abstract:

Introduced species and livelihood commodification are transfiguring African landscapes and foodscapes. The consumption of introduced carp, tilapia, and catfish by internal migrants settling around Lake Naivasha (Kenya) in search of employment is exemplary of this change.

Paper long abstract:

In the last twenty years, the population of the Lake Naivasha basin (Kenya) has swollen following waves of internal migration that brought together tens of thousands of people from different ethnic backgrounds, who settled as market-oriented small farmers or employed in the floricultural industry around the lake. In the new context, these migrants are forced into a commodified diet rather composed of the cheapest staples available in local markets (i.e. cabbage, potatoes, maize). Animal proteins largely come from fish sourced in the lake, mostly common carp, tilapia, and catfish. The three species have been introduced in the lake in the last fifty years, catfish as late as few years ago.

The process of fish inclusion into migrants' diet has been influenced, among other factors, by culture and knowledge, with those migrants already familiar with fish and fishing (e.g. the Luo from Lake Victoria) driving demand for fish and teaching fellow workers and neighbors how to cook and appreciate it. At the same time, they had also to adapt their fish consumption and preferences to the species introduced in the new environment, and as well had to change the way of cooking, which shifted (due to lack of firewood) from smoking to deep-frying. While becoming increasingly reliant on capitalist relations for their livelihoods, migrants to Lake Naivasha are also unwittingly adopting a commodified diet based on invasive species which are themselves, like capitalist relations, transfiguring African landscapes and foodscapes.

Paper short abstract:

This study used ethnographic and ethnobiological methods to investigate changes in foodways among work migrants of different ethnicity in Naivasha. Results show that exchange of food and knowledge through migrants' informal networks increases dietary diversity while reinforcing culinary identity.

Paper long abstract:

The basin of Lake Naivasha in Kenya has been for a long time theatre of an intense movement of people. Most Masaai who historically populated the area have been displaced by British settlers at the beginning of the XXth century. A century later, a multitude of people from different ethnic backgrounds are moving to the lake town in search of job opportunities, represented to a large extent by work in the flower farms that surround the lake. This study used ethnographic and ethnobiological methods to investigate the traditional food system and changes in foodways among migrants of different ethnicity that inhabit the compounds built to host the flower farms' workers. On the one hand, results show that urban migration, livelihood commercialization and internal migration indeed pose challenges to accessing traditional foods, with implications for dietary diversity, food and nutritional security. On the other hand, migrants' coping mechanism of bringing food back from their shamba (farms) located in their counties of origin increases household resilience, contributing to the maintenance of ethnic culinary identity and dietary diversification, thus counteracting homogenization of diets. This diversity is generated and supported by a rich social fabric, comprising networks of neighbors, kin and friends within which traditional knowledge and skills are shared, seeds are exchanged, relationship built and values negotiated.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the relationship between the village, the market and the house through an ethnographic approach of the palm oil trade made by women in Congo Central (DRC). Our discussion is about a kind of economic life based on day to day rhythms and the constant management of uncertainties.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the relationship between the village, the house and the market by tracing palm oil in the Congo Central (DRC). Circulations of food, money and persons promote some integration amid different places and open an opportunity for people to make money and make efforts to manage the uncertainties of their lives. The routinely local displacements of those traders ensure the selling and the provision of food in an environment characterized by food insecurity.

This proposal is based on a field research with women traders in the city of Matadi. The palm oil circuits interconnect some small villages in the forest of Mayombe, where palm oil is produced in an artisanal and sustainable fashion, and medium cities, like Matadi. Our goals are: 1. Analyze women displacements to buy and resell palm oil at the markets, observing what kind of knowledge, relationships and associations this activity depends on; 2. Discuss the interconnection between the market and the house, considering the central role of women in these domains, and the mutual implications of the rhythms of selling, on the one hand, and preparing and consuming collectively, on the other. It is believed that it might be possible to think of palm oil not only as merchandise, but also as a bodily substance, when considering that it has many uses associated to life, to the person and to the body.

Paper short abstract:

The paper is meant to analyse the effects of forced migrations on the Ogiek of Mariashoni beekeeping activity. It is also meant to analyse the role the "Slow Food Presidium" in the recovery of the traditional beekeeping practices and in promoting social, economic and environmental development.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is meant to analyse the effects of both land evictions on the subsistence of indigenous communities and the resilience strategies for the preservation and recovery of traditional food production. The study will in particular focus on the Ogiek, a semi-nomadic ethnic group of hunter-gatherer in the Mau Forest of Kenya. Hunting and honey harvesting have always covered a central role in the food system for these people. In the course of the twentieth century, pressures from both the Colonial Government first and later the Kenyan one forced Ogiek to leave their ancestral homelands. These policies are also responsible for the quick degradation of the ecosystem in the Mau Forest. The transition from a semi-nomadic to a sedentary life, fragmentation of the land and the forced coexistence with other ethnic groups caused the impossibility to continue productive activities in accordance with the traditional methods, with the subsequent need to adapt them to the new context. Taking this as a basis, the paper will investigate the adapting strategies implemented by the Ogiek of Mariashoni, focusing on honey harvesting. More specifically, the work will focus on the "Slow Food Presidium" for Ogiek honey and the role such project has on revaluating the traditional practices and knowledge related to beekeeping. The goal is to verify whether the Presidium may be able to promote social, economic and environmental development in the concerned communities and their territories, in order to understand the potential role this project may have as a promoter of local development.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the structure of food market in Kenya and the experience of small-scale farmers. It suggests the fragmentation of the value chain limits farmers' professionalization and links with internal and international migrations.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the economic and geographical structure of food market in Kenya and links it with the datum of internal and international migration from the rural areas of the country.

The ethnography was conducted in Nakuru district in 2018 in the context of the international research project "SASS: Sustainable Agri-food System Strategies". The research was based on multi-sited ethnography and life story method. It detailed the value chain of food commodities in the area and its production and exchange practices. A particular focus was on the cultural biography of agricultural products and neglected and underutilized species.

The research highlighted the high degree of fragmentation of the value chain pointing out at the peripheral role of small-scale farmers in the market. The life stories collected among farmers suggest this marginality affects the way they approach agriculture. In particular, it limits professionalization and keeps farming activities as a secondary field of enterprise, largely limited to subsistence.

The biographies of farmers and traders, though, bring to the fore experiences of migration, mostly linked with a change of jobs and field of work. Thus, the paper reads migration as a form of entrepreneurship of the self deeply connected with the very structure of the market and the possibilities offered to local producers.

In a context in which Western public debate raises the questions about how to limit migration, the paper suggests the key question is how to redirect entrepreneurial spirit to local development.