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- Convenors:
-
Matilda Marshall
(Umeå University)
Liia-Maria Raippalinna (University of Jyväskylä)
Andreas Backa (Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, Åbo Akademi University)
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- Discussants:
-
Cristina Romanelli
(NOVA University Lisbon)
Antje Risius (Sustainable nutrition and distribution)
Alice Brombin (University of Trento, Italy)
Lidia Rakhmanova (HSE-University)
Riikka Aro (University of Jyväskylä)
- Formats:
- Panel Roundtable
- Stream:
- Food
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
The pursuit of sustainable foodways questions our eating habits, and the way we produce and communicate food. It involves the breaking of old rules, making of new ones, and bending of both. What kind of transgressions are, and are not, made when seeking more sustainable foodways?
Long Abstract:
The pursuit of a sustainable future involves the breaking of old rules, making of new ones, and bending of both. What kind of transgressions are, and are not, made when seeking more sustainable foodways?
The current food system is increasingly framed as ecologically unsustainable, requiring major changes in production and consumption practices. Some foods are constructed as threatening while others are presented as 'ethical', 'green', 'climate-friendly', 'carbon-low' etc. Calls for altering foodways question both what and how we eat, and how we produce and communicate food. At the same time, they may challenge norms and relations relating to e.g. economy, gender or national identity.
Meanwhile, food and eating habits are often perceived as inert; changing them may seem impossible. In the Nordic countries for instance, the first tomatoes and pizzas were met with skepticism before eventually incorporated into everyday food culture. What consequences does this inertness have for (transforming) norms around food and eating? How are attempts of norm-breaking facilitated, and on the other hand, opposed?
This panel and subsequent roundtable focus on norm making and norm breaking (practices) relating to food consumption and sustainability (in a broad sense). We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions exploring transgressions and contestations around food norms/rules in different parts of the food chain. In the roundtable, we encourage discussion on, if and how ethnologists can produce practically usable knowledge and participate in the pursuit of sustainable foodways. Please indicate in your proposal if you wish to participate with a paper and/or in the roundtable.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 24 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper aims to provide an insight into the route of food as creative entrepreneurship by a group of refugees in a northeastern Italian town. Focus will be on the attempt to overcome the category of “ethnic” food in a constant interplay between breaking and taming tradition.
Paper long abstract:
This paper provides an insight into the route of food as creative entrepreneurship interpreted by a group of refugees and asylum seekers in the host country. In particular, we aim to present the culinary experience of Peace & Spice, an “ethnic” restaurant located in the centre of the University historical district in the city of Padua and in the milieu of the Veneto region, known for the fertile texture made of small and medium size family business. We intend to describe the project of a gourmet cuisine, designed as an exploratory taste trip alongside routes travelled by a group refugees who started the business and manage the restaurant while keeping hiring other migrants. The project is intended to overcome the category of “ethnic” food, generally assigned by the larger host society to similar venues by offering to a predominantly Italian customer a large variety of dishes in a constant interplay between breaking the home culinary tradition and taming it to meet the local taste. In addition the innovative feature of the project is its preference for the short chain and local vis-à-vis imported products, thus opening up ways to sustainability (Alkon and Agyeman 2011). The food experience proposed by Peace & Spice could be interpreted as a successful strategy of re-inventing (Grasseni 2005) and playing with food heritage (Counihan and Siniscalchi 2014) at the same time challenging the tendencies of fetishism and regression of taste traditionally ascribed to our contemporary societies (Poulain 2002).
Paper short abstract:
Blood meat, hides unsuitable for dressing are consequences of agro-industrial reform, setting a "new norm": electroshock slaughter of reindeer. This technology leads not only to a break with traditional method of slaughtering, but puts a question whether it is eatable and built into the food chains.
Paper long abstract:
Yamal agro-industrial complexes are going through a reform, during which the slaughter of reindeer with electroshock becomes the norm from technological and sanitary point of view. On the one hand, slaughtering technology and "death" technology are saturated with symbolic meanings that may come into conflict with any new technology in reindeer herding tradition. On the other hand, the reason for the serious concern among local people brings situation to a different perspective: it is the meat of a reindeer slaughtered according to state standards that is not edible. Blood stagnating in the body also affects the quality of the hides in which it is absorbed.
The very preparation for "killing by the rules" involves waiting in enclosure for a long time. As a result, the deer are losing weight due to a different temporal regime, in which a modern slaughterhouse operates. In addition, new technologies imply destruction of old forms of collectivity preserved during the Soviet period: previously slaughter was carried out outdoor by a group of local men and ended three times faster.
The inability to dress hides by hand has led to deployment of new distribution networks and attraction of a new technology - chemical dressing - undertaken in another region. This implies breaking up local sales networks and social ties between the company, its employees and village residents. Thus, we propose to look at the new norm of "correct" slaughter as a violation of tradition, breaking the ethical and social norms and temporal regimes of reindeer herding.