Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Michele Fontefrancesco
(Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
Dauro Mattia Zocchi (Università di Scienze Gastronomiche)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 14 University Square (UQ), 01/007
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Over the last two decades, growing attention has been paid to food heritage. This ingenerated a process of heritization that entails challenges crucial for anthropology. The panel invites ethnographic and methodological papers that investigate this process of heritization and its consequences.
Long Abstract:
Over the last two decades, growing attention has been paid to the recognition of food as an element of intangible cultural heritage, given its importance as an identity marker and its potentially crucial role in fostering the economic, political, and social empowerment of local communities. In the wake of this phenomenon, several organizations across the world have developed and promoted research activities and dissemination tools aimed at documenting and promoting biocultural diversity linked to traditional food and gastronomic systems. These initiatives often seek to improve knowledge of resources linked to food and gastronomic milieus and also, possibly, to foster processes towards their rescue and promotion.
Overall, thus, food is the subject of a multi-layered process of heritagization that entails different challenges concerning socio-cultural and economic sustainability, commodification, and standardization of traditional knowledge. It also brings to the fore questions concerning indigenous intellectual rights, ethnic exploitation, and new forms of cultural and economic colonization: issues that have a significant impact in those geographical areas where the socio-economic and ecological conditions are more precarious and fragile.
The panel invites ethnographic and methodological papers that investigate the different stages of food heritagization and its consequences. Particular attention will be given to the design and making of food inventories and underlying methodologies, focusing on the impacts of these activities on communities and other local actors.
The panel is organized within the ERC project: DiGe - Ethnobotany of divided generations in the context of centralization.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
The presentation examines the range of products purchased by nomadic reindeer herders in the Iamal tundra, according to the census forms of the first third of the 20th century
Paper long abstract:
The report presents the result of work with household censuses of the population of the Iamal North in the 20s and 30s years of the 20th century. Several censuses in the Northern areas were the result of the state's close attention to the nomadic peoples and purposeful work on their inclusion into a single socio-economic and political space of the country at that period. The survey recorded a variety of information, including what foods each nomadic family bought and how much. Despite the self-sufficient nature of the nomadic economy and self-sufficiency in food products through reindeer herding, hunting and fishing, purchased food products such as bread, salt, sugar already played a big role in the life of nomads at the beginning of the 20th century. Household did not began to move to the summer pastures without a stock of products bought at trading posts (factiriia). Products were purchased with the money that the nomads had at that time, for the delivered products of reindeer breeding, hunting and fishing. The state took various measures to force reindeer herders to buy more, and not only consume the products of their household.
Paper short abstract:
In NW Pakistan a complex set of sociocultural and political factors have influenced the documentation of local food knowledge, hence in this context, the proposal calls for a debate on meaningful strategies for documenting the local food heritage for future food sovereignty and cultural resilience.
Paper long abstract:
Scientists have devised methodologies for recording and disseminating food heritage of various communities across the globe, nevertheless there is a place for scientific debate considering the underlying problems of documenting food heritage in different geopolitical contexts. Our research work in NW Pakistan has revealed some prominent challenges which made it hard to better document the local knowledge on food practices. We have faced huge challenges in approaching women participants who were primarily involved in cooking practices and were considered potential knowledge holders of local food heritage. Similarly the fragile security situation has been one of the major issues among certain minority groups, for instance the sociopolitical and religious marginalization of a few groups, made them afraid of openly interacting with foreigners, and this acted as a barrier in recording their cultural food knowledge. In addition we noticed the lack of proper economic incentives for the local communities in the prevailed policy frameworks for ecosystem and resource management that have made the people less interested in sharing and caring about their local cultural knowledge. Hence, through proper community-centered conservation programs, here we propose the nomination of well-trained local representative - could be known as "food ambassadors" within each of the local communities which would not only be a step forward towards future food sovereignty but it will also work as a baseline strategy for practically revitalizing and incorporating it into the future educational and developmental programs.
Paper short abstract:
The paper looks at local, artisan food productions and their value chains. It explores a qualitative methodology of analysis developed in order to assess the health of these production chains, identifying their main weakness and strengths in terms of sustainable development.
Paper long abstract:
The paper looks at local, artisan food productions and their value chains. It explores a qualitative methodology of analysis developed in order to assess the health of these production chains, identifying their main weakness and strengths in terms of sustainable development.
Specifically, the paper will explore how the methodology was developed for the study of short production chains in marginal rural areas. It presents how its socio-economic indicators were developed and how the data are collected and analyzed in order to fully assess the subjects.
In so doing, the paper contributes to the debate concerning the risk of disappearance of food heritage, considering the future small farms and food enterprises in the current European context of fast marginalization of the rural areas.
The paper stems from the ERC project: DiGe - Ethnobotany of divided generations in the context of centralization.
Paper short abstract:
The paper will present a gastronomic sciences-centred approach to the mapping and documentation of endangered corpora of food heritage. In so doing, it will explore the limits and prospects of the foodscouting methodology developed in the framework of the Ark of Taste project.
Paper long abstract:
In the last decades, scholars and practitioners have devoted attention to the research and documentation of endangered foods and associated heritage, given their potentially crucial role in addressing challenges connected to the contemporary food system.
Acknowledging the strong link between food and place, they have often crossed the analysis of food heritage with the study of foodscape, highlighting the role of places in shaping the food cultures of local communities.
However, few studies so far have discussed methodological tools to map and locate traditional food products and explore the variability in their roles and values according to the places where they are produced, distributed and consumed.
The paper will present a gastronomic sciences-centred approach to identify and document endangered traditional food resources. Specifically, it will outline the foodscouting methodology developed in the framework of the Ark of Taste project. This includes ethnographic-based research tools to address the people-food- territory nexus within a given foodscape, starting from the documentation of tangible and intangible elements tied to local and traditional food and gastronomic cultures.
Drawing from the foodsocuting research carried out in Latin America, East Africa and Ukraine, it will present the approaches used to identify relevant places of food production, distribution, and consumption and the methods to elicit information on endangered food resources therein. In so doing, it will discuss the limits and prospects of these methodologies in mapping and locating endangered food products, as well as in exploring their embeddedness in the local foodscape.