Paper short abstract:

Millets are increasingly imagined as a panacea for ecological, economic and public health challenges. Drawing on long term ethnographic research in urban Senegal, this paper explores how millet has become emblematic of efforts to slow down, rescale or reform food systems.

Paper long abstract:

Millets are increasingly imagined as a panacea for ecological, economic and public health challenges. Agricultural and dietary interventions promote millet to disrupt dependencies on rice, wheat and maize, seek to remake patterns and promoting food sovereignty. This paper explores the promotion of millets as a food for generating sustainable urban life. Drawing on long term ethnographic research in Dakar, Senegal, the paper traces the production, marking, processing and preparation of millets across laboratories, households and marketplaces, asking how millet become emblematic of efforts to slow down, rescale or reform food systems.

The paper challenges the idea that social practice in African contexts might, without consciously adopting or reproducing its politics, mirror or illustrate the principles of degrowth. Examining day to day consumption reveals how urban Senegalese use food to enact diverse political identities and ideals: dreams of decommodification and aspirations towards consumption. Millets shape and enable critiques of modern foodways and urban consumption, but also engender ambivalence and hesitation.