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- Convenors:
-
Rituparna Patgiri
(Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati)
Deepali Aparajita Dungdung (Ranchi University)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 02/013
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the relationship between food and digitalization, with particular emphasis on questions of public visibility, labour exploitation and planetary sustainability.
Long Abstract:
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has been seen as a definitive push towards increasing digitalization of our societies. This push is particularly visible in food. There is an upsurge in the visibility of food in the public sphere in terms of food delivery services, advertisements, photographs, videos and blogs. Even as we have been wrecked by COVID-19, images and visuals of food have not stopped appearing on social media timelines. While on the one hand, we have this visibility, on the other hand, there is increasing food scarcity and growing hunger and malnutrition. There are also questions about sustainability and labour exploitation. Is online food ordering 'good' for the planet has become a legitimate question as there are concerns about the waste material generated from large scale online deliveries. At the same time, delivery workers are exploited employees who perform their duties under extreme work pressure, low wages and difficult working conditions. Fulfilling targets and goals of a fixed number of deliveries in a short time is challenging. Yet, it is the cornerstone of most food businesses moving towards digitalization. The impact of technology on food, thus, has been uneven. Hence, this panel proposes to invite scholars to discuss the varying effects of digitalization and technology on food and its associated practices. Some of the themes that can be covered include:
Food and technology
Food and social media
Food and labour
Food and waste
The future of food
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
The emergence of social media platforms has contributed to the explosion of digital food cultures. The paper explores this phenomenon from the production-end of an ‘alternative’ to understand how and why organic farms in India use social media platforms to ‘know’ the farm, food and farmer.
Paper long abstract:
Food and media have been intertwined even before the advent of social media. With the emergence of digital media platforms, that emphasise a participatory culture and prosumption of content, however, digital food cultures and their dissemination have become ubiquitous. Digitalization of experiences from the farm to the plate via social media enables sharing them with an interconnected virtual community. Most digital food cultures are focused on the realm of consumption. This paper, nevertheless, engages with the production-end and its entanglement with the digital world by looking at how and why organic farms in India use social media platforms. Organic farming has gained popularity as an ‘alternative’ as the fallacies of chemical-based production system garners criticism. In India, the organic food economy is still in its nascent phase and is largely export-oriented. Yet, some organically managed farms have come to the fore to cater to the domestic populace and engage in short-food supply chains. For these farmers, documenting the life of the farm, the produce and its people particularly through audio-visual content in social media, becomes an important avenue for its promotion and virtually (re)connecting with an audience. By analysing data collected through interviews with organic farmers, this paper, therefore, proposes to explore the digitalisation of organic food production activities, the produce and the farm within social media platforms. Through this exploration, the paper delves into how ‘knowing’ the farm and the farmer, otherwise distant and often invisible, is mediated by social media platforms in the case of alternatives.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the popular culture of home baking in Indian cities, illustrating the role of the digital in refashioning domesticity and women's labour in ways that help women navigate and at times resist structural norms of gender through the crafting of an entrepreneurial identity self.
Paper long abstract:
A growing body of scholarship discusses female work cultures in the age of digital media. Digital entrepreneurship that revolves around domestic crafts such as cooking facilitates 'work from home’ cultures by promoting a model of “having it all”, merging elements of passion and profit, and personal and professional obligations of women (Duff and Hund 2015).
While social media platforms like Instagram lend public visibility to women’s labour and creativity, providing an easy entry into entrepreneurship, women’s sustained confirmation to the ‘domestic’ is reflective of the ’digital double bind’ (Duffy and Pruchniewska, 2017) that structures home based businesses such as cooking or baking. An ethnographic enquiry into the growing trend of home baking cultures in the city of Ahmedabad illustrates the ways in which digital platforms help women navigate gendered ideas of home and work and construct an entrepreneurial identity that is rooted in passion, independence, self worth and happiness.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how bubble tea, as a popular culture, influences Finnish youth's choice of drinks through its dissemination on social media.
Paper long abstract:
Bubble tea is today a worldwide phenomenon. Starting in Taiwan in the 1980s, this way of combining tea and multiple other ingredients, such as milk, tapioca, and various sweet materials, is today expanding all over the world (Anon, 2020, Từ, 2020). In line with other European countries, especially Germany and the UK (BBC, 2014), bubble tea has gone from having practically no presence in Finland to becoming an increasingly common and noticeable form of urban beverage consumption in Helsinki in a very short time. Even three years ago, there were practically no bubble tea shops and cafes in the greater Helsinki area. Now there are significant numbers, and these are growing all the time. But different from most other places, where their customers are mainly Asian, the Finnish teenagers are one of the most prominent groups of customers of bubble tea shops in Finland.
The popularity of bubble tea on social media, such as TikTok and Instagram, aroused the desire of Finnish youth for bubble tea. They realized their desire for middle-class consumption through bubble tea, participating in the production of global pop culture.