Paper short abstract:

Building on a fieldwork experience with fermenters in Barcelona, this paper reflects on a paradigm of anthropological analysis that can be incorporated into the theoretical baggage of food anthropology that is able to engage with the wider anthropological and societal debate: posthumanism.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to reflect on a mode of anthropological analysis that addresses the future challenges of the discipline that are related to climate and environmental debates. This communication will describe an ethnographic work on various initiatives and groups in Barcelona that use cooking as a political practice to address the ecological challenges of the anthropocene and to stand in opposition to the food industry and to capitalism. These heterogeneous groups and initiatives, spaning from community activism to artistic practices, work specifically with vegetable fermentation with the main objective of creating communities between human and non-human beings (microorganisms) and fostering networks of mutual support and communal life in urban environments. This communication will describe the work of these collectives with vegetable fermentation and analyze the posthumanist and multispecies discursive strategies they themselves use to explain and give meaning to their praxis. This paper aims to address how this posthumanist framework emerges as a relational theoretical co-construction between the anthropologist, her interlocutors and various other social actors. In this sense, this paper will reflect on how this posthumanist multispecies approach can be fruitful to address current food anthropology issues. This presentation is based on an ongoing fieldwork carried out in Barcelona in 2023 and 2024.