Paper short abstract:

This paper is based on the fieldwork conducted during break and lunch in a school located in a poor neighbourhood of Palermo. I explore what happens to food education guidelines when they are applied in problematic classroom and encounter children coming from severely deprived households.

Paper long abstract:

In this ethnography I show that when the unquestioned assumptions regarding the role of pedagogy and childhood itself fall apart, food education is emptied of its original meaning: teachers' food rules, when applied, repeatedly target the same children. Recess and lunch, far from being didactic experiences or convivial breaks, are mainly moments of tension between teachers and the most problematic children.

Focusing on a second graders section, I explore what happens to food education guidelines when they are applied in a problematic classroom and encounter children coming from severely deprived households. First, I outline the methods and the context of the study, briefly describing the neighbourhood and the school. Second, I focus on the second graders' recess and lunch, to show how food 'dos and don'ts' are seldom envisioned with a food literacy objective by teachers. During the recess, the arbitrary rules on food and table manners are used to highlight the transgression, but not to teach healthy eating. Similarly, teachers' efforts during lunchtime are solely devoted to keeping children fed and seated, while trying to get to the end of lunch as soon as possible. Teachers' reprimands during recess and lunch always target the most turbulent children, either to prevent or to stop them from violent fights. The food itself is not a matter of concern for anyone, since violent episodes between children monopolize the attention of all the adults nearby. I conclude by reflecting on the limits and capabilities of nutrition education programs applied in such contexts.

Paper short abstract:

In this lecture I will describe a new culinary scene, in one of Israel's largest ultra-Orthodox cities, that enables, and even generates, encounters between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews. In addition, I examine how "boundary-work" still exists in the course of these chance meetings.

Paper long abstract:

The religious schism and division in Israeli society between secular and religious Jews, and especially between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, is described in research as one of the main focal points of tension in Israeli society. In this lecture I will describe a new culinary scene that enables, and even generates, encounters between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews in Israel. This takes place on Thursday nights on the main streets of Bnei Brak, one of Israel's largest ultra-Orthodox cities, when traditional Eastern European Shabbat dishes are sold to the general public. The traditional foodstuffs, which were preserved in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox kitchen over the years, attract many visitors who are not part of the ultra-Orthodox society but regard the traditional dishes with great nostalgia and even longing. In my lecture, based on fieldwork documenting the Thursday-night 'happenings,' I will discuss the encounters between individuals who usually do not meet in daily life and are even hostile to one another. Nevertheless, I show how symbolic boundaries are crossed (Harris 1985; Douglas 1975) and inclusion circles are created around the culinary encounter. In addition, I examine how obvious boundary-work still exists (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont, 2002) in the course of these chance meetings.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research in Vietnamese bistros in inner Prague and at a Vietnamese open market at the edge of Prague, the paper discusses an interplay between recognition of Vietnamese minority, practices of orientalistic Othering and enacting of consumers´ cosmopolitanism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses socio-spatial consequences of production-consumption processes that enact Vietnamese cuisine as is served in Prague. While by the end of the 90s´ the attitude of Czechs to the Vietnamese living in the Czechia was in its majority dismissive, at the beginning of new millennium this relationship is rapidly changing. I argue that a significant role in these changing patterns of interethnic relations have, among others, a celebritization of Vietnamese cuisine as is observable since 2000´s. The growing popularity of Vietnamese food has its spatial consequences. A map of the time-space distribution of Vietnamese bistros in Prague reveals how new forms of entrepreneurship in gastronomy have taken the Vietnamese out of relative invisibility, closer to the Czech customer and coproduce cosmopolitan character of inner Prague neighbourhoods. The paper argues, that ethnic cuisine, advertising by food columnists, food bloggers and by guided tours to the Vietnamese open markets, enabled the Vietnamese to be active elements in the contemporary transformations of urban space. Enactments of highly evaluated authenticity and the diffusion of Vietnamese bistros and restaurants have its effects. 1) Changes the relationship between the Czechs and Vietnamese, 2) results to new types of consumption among Czech urban consumers, 3) contributes to the local development of global foodie culture, and, 4) reshapes the understanding of "the exotic Other". The scope of my arguments is based on my ethnographic research in Vietnamese bistros in the city and at the main Vietnamese open market at the edge of Prague.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will explore the ways in which British Kebab Awards re-imagines the British nation to the inclusion of the abject kebab based on an ethnography of the Awards Ceremony.

Paper long abstract:

Kebab, assumed to originate in the Middle East as a technique of grilling meat "over an open fire is common to all people who hunted animals and knew fire" according to Zubaida (1994). Today predominantly associated with the migrant other, kebab is part of the European landscape of everyday consumption. In cities like London and Berlin where there are condensed migrant populations, kebab shops paint the cityscapes as much as the sensory of the urban. In Britain, kebab take away shops are a major source of income for the Turkish and Kurdish migrants, making them at once participants to urban economies, socialities, cultural and political formations. Despite their contributions and ubiquity, they cannot seem to escape abject associations.

In this paper I will explore how British Kebab Awards translates these everyday street and media utterances of abject and exclusion into a matter of pride and inclusion. British Kebab Awards ceremony does not simply declare Kebab "as a Great British Institution", it also re-imagines being British and contributes to the interethnic and intraethnic relations. Can the contaminated, unhealthy and late-hours' food actually re-imagine Britain as an inclusive nation? Can the messy food of the migrant imagine itself as the proud food at home?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores food sharing initiatives in London and their role in creating collective spaces of care and encounter. Cooking and eating together are examined as practices that become particularly poignant in promoting urban conviviality at times of austerity.

Paper long abstract:

Commensality, the act of eating together, is an important human ritual that benefits beyond the biological need for food and it is well established amongst food studies scholars. At the same time, novel forms of social eating are emerging in urban contexts. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with three urban food sharing initiatives in London - a city which exhibits an active and dynamic urban food sharing ecosystem, to explore the experiences of commensality that are generated. Social isolation and loneliness emerge within this research as important drivers for participating in food sharing initiatives. It is argued that cooking and eating together are employed as strategies to create spaces of care and encounter, which are particularly characterised by a non-judgemental atmosphere. The paper concludes that these collective spaces and the affective qualities that they generate are particularly vital in urban contexts in times of austerity, as these initiatives have capacity to embrace social differences and to facilitate the circulation of ideas of care and solidarity. They also operate as a bridge connecting between people, communities, projects and services, providing the connective tissue in ways which are hard to measure and are rarely articulated.

Paper short abstract:

Building on almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork with food co-ops in London, this paper explores the interplay between the structures, practices and ideals of the food co-op in creating inclusions and exclusions

Paper long abstract:

'There's always power' Lisa tells me as we discuss the 'flat structure' of Fareshares, a volunteer-run, not-for-profit, wholefood food co-op in London, UK. The consequences of this have included members accruing too much power, finding spaces to behave in combative ways, or (inadvertently) creating a less inclusive environment for people of different backgrounds or abilities.

Inevitably, grassroots, retail food co-op participants bring their own (potentially conflicting) values, societal norms (Kadir, 2016) and lived experiences (Poletta, 2012) with them to these spaces. As well as informing the food that a co-op stocks, this has the potential to shape the rationality and social practices of the co-op and its members for better or for worse.

Building on almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork with food co-ops in London, this paper explores the interplay between the structures, practices and ideals of the food co-op in creating inclusions and exclusions. As well as looking at the day to day dynamics of the food co-op, I argue that inclusion/exclusion can be a nexus within the co-operative imaginary in which participants try to differentiate or self-exclude their activities from mainstream economic or societal structures while also attempting to build a new and 'better' system out of the old. While this porosity between inside and out contributes to many of the daily tensions within food co-ops it can also be fundamental to ideals of transformation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the agricultural networks in Turkey with a focus on the relations between food and alternative political and economic visions.

Paper long abstract:

The expansion of capital accumulation in Turkey in the past two decades has predominantly relied on real estate, infrastructure and energy investments to lead to the destruction of large parcels of fertile land and the expropriation of commons such as meadows and rivers. The increasing industrialization of agriculture and animal husbandry around the same time further jeopardized existing food systems as multinational agro-corporations introduced GMO seeds and pushed for unregulated use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Finally, the decreasing quality of life in urban centers, along with the entrenchment of oppressive political practices, instigated some young and urban groups to move to the countryside and build eco-farms and communes, and organic food/permaculture infrastructures.

This paper looks at how some of the politically and economically excluded groups in Turkey including small producers, urban dissidents and leftist politicians imagine the production, consumption and distribution of food as an integral part of doing politics differently. I trace a number of agricultural networks including consumer cooperatives and seed exchange initiatives and institutions such as the Farmers Union Confederation (Çiftçi-Sen) to discuss their attempts to bring to life an inclusive political-economic vision. I also compare these networks with the political movements that have emerged against extraction projects in the 2000s to reflect on their aims and chances for political viability.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses food-recycling practices. It focus on the inclusion and exclusion experience embedded in the pursuit, reclamation, circulation, and consumption of food rejected from the urban food cycle and the transformation of garbage into an edible, social, economic and political object

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses food-recycling practices: the research, reclamation, circulation, and consumption of food rejected from the urban food cycle and the transformation of "garbage" into an edible, social, economic and political object.

Regulation and practices concerning the global circulation of food frame the flow of edible goods that are excluded from the official consumption chain. This situation nourishes new practices through which social actors produce economic and social rearrangements around food.

Every day, food-recyclers play with the urban space. Rigorous observation of theirs practices reveals that they develop specific knowledge that is functional to the social and economic practice of salvaging food. Skills are mobilized to decode and explore the city and its activities; to interact with actors and norms; to reclaim and transform food used not only for nutrition but also as a social resource for creating and consolidating groups around food-sharing and specific ideologies of each group.

Thus, moments and spaces of survival become also moments and spaces for innovation where skills, abilities and knowledge related to food-recycling and urban reality circulate, are transformed, and reproduced collectively within these groups. This way, interpersonal networks become the means of transmission of transferable skills and abilities, providing individuals with support and protection, and promoting inclusion in a specific group

In this context, food-recycling practices appears as daily tactical practices, aimed at maintaining individuals and "activist" groups, in which the production and reproduction of solidarity and sharing networks define political and moral economies parallel to governance regimes and market's economy.