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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 aim of the presentation is to consider whether the pandemic has contributed to changing the ways in which food is sourced in everyday life. Such behaviours as a more rational shopping for food, limiting eating out as well as the use of online food delivery will be examined.
Paper long abstract:
How has the COViD-19 pandemic redefined our thinking about the "essential"? In my presentation I would like to address this topic in the context of food supply strategies. Research carried out over the last two years in various countries in Europe and around the world indicates that the experience of living in a reality of lockdown, which involved, among other things, the need to limit contact with others or to reduce the number of visits to shops, has in many cases forced a change in the food supply strategies used by consumers (see, among others, Bracale, Vaccaro 2020, Janssen et al. 2021, Aday and Aday 2020, De Backer et al. 2021). New practices which we could observe not only in Poland, but also globally, included, among others: striving for more rational planning of shopping and use of previously accumulated food stocks, preparing meals on one's own, or limiting eating out in favour of ordering food deliveries online. Can these experiences contribute to changing the way in which we manage food in the future? Or are they just a temporary adaptation to circumstances? How has the pandemic affected our perception of food as a 'resource'? I would like to answer these questions by referring to the results of my own research - in-depth interviews conducted with a selected group of respondents form Poland.
Paper short abstract:
Firstly, this paper argues that recently surfaced agribusiness models in the Eastern Himalayas have successfully commodified ethno-cultural local foods. Secondly, they have used digitalisation to reach migrant customers in Indian cities and Nepali-Tibetan diaspora outside India.
Paper long abstract:
The Eastern Himalayas have their own distinct food recipes and traditions. However, prices of agricultural produce in Darjeeling and Sikkim have continued to remain minimal contributing to the exploitation of farmers. With ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 as a methodology to collect data, this paper argues that recently surfaced agribusiness models have used digital means to reach customers across India and abroad. In the first section, I argue that farming and agriculture in villages of Darjeeling is socio-economically unviable where farmers remain marginalised from their own produce. In the second section, I show how Rimbick Fresh, a local agribusiness has commodified ethno-cultural heritage food transforming local foods into economically viable products now sold under carefully crafted labels. In the third section, I argue that since a large number of youths work outside the region, this agribusiness has resorted to digitalisation of its produce, selling packaged ethno-cultural food in online stores, helping it to reach to migrant customers in Indian cities and Nepali-Tibetan diaspora outside India. By following the “social life of products” (Appadurai 1988) of packaged ethno-cultural heritage food as it circulates around India and abroad, I show how digitalisation helps this agribusiness reach customers using group specific notions of food heritage to profit in capitalist arenas. In doing so, they join other capitalist producers who use regional identities and aspects of heritage to construct and market cultural productions in selling authentic food in regional and global markets (Cavanaugh and Shankar, 2014).
Paper short abstract:
The domestic kitchen is not usually considered a field of pioneering technoscientific development. Neither is everyday cooking considered a practice of radical transformation. In this proposed paper I argue against these common-sense assumptions.
Paper long abstract:
The domestic kitchen is not usually considered a field of pioneering technoscientific development. Neither is everyday cooking considered a practice of radical transformation. In this proposed paper I argue against these common-sense assumptions. Based on ongoing ethnographic research in domestic kitchens in Germany, I explore the interaction between humans and machines in everyday practices of food provisioning, preparation and eating. While digital kitchen robots like Thermomix/Bimby are perhaps more obvious companions to domestic cooks but less common, smartphones should also be considered as ominpresent kitchen appliances. In the hands of the cook, both technologies contribute to transforming not only domestic cooking practices but the entire food market. It is no accident that when domestic cooking and eating surged during the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the sales of domestic kitchen appliances soared, the delivery service industry boomed and networks of distribution were adapted. While in no way claiming a one-directional or causal link between these different processes, I propose to shift attention to the largely invisible work of the domestic cook – often women or other care-givers. Through conceptualising domestic cooks and their technologies as cyborgs, I will demonstrate that more-than-human cooks are pioneers of radical transformation: digital kitchen robots with access to thousands of online recipes challenge what “cooking from scratch” and cooking knowledge mean; smartphones equipped with online shops, delivery apps and recipe blogs make the upholding of the domestic as bounded seem absurd. Put simply, cyborg cooks are transforming our world every day under our very noses.