Paper short abstract:

This paper explores manuscript cookbooks as a source contributing to the study of uncertainty and coping mechanisms in the times of shortage, as well as a tool for remembering, belonging and dreaming not only in times of uncertainty during WW2, post-war displacement and population shifts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores personal manuscript cookbooks as a source contributing to the study of uncertainty and coping mechanisms in the times of shortage. Presented set of manuscripts (in Czech and German language) stem from the case study carried out in the Czech-Bavarian borderland. The research methodology is based on archival research, written narrative food memories, participant observation and (un-)structured interviews. The theoretical framework is based on food and memory studies: concerning due to post-war displacement and population shifts, topic of remembering and belonging (Sutton 2001, 2020, Counihan 2004, Abarca - Colby 2016), as well as the broad field of identity and memory studies, especially Nora's concept of sites of memory (1989) and Appadurai's concept of armchair nostalgia (1996). The cookbook manuscript handwriting is described as an integral part of foodwork and mundane social interactions of the middle-class women (Theophano 2003, Lakhtikova 2017). Such manuscripts are not only passive places where successful cooking is written down, it is at the same time a tool for planning, dreaming and remembering. Using the magazine clippings, the manuscript integrates the public ideas about the home life and women roles in the authors private creative space. The everyday feeding duty of the women was especially challenging in the times of the uncertainty during WW2 and after war shortages are at the pages of such manuscripts surrounded by back then normalized advices and trends. Together such literary genre presents an interesting counterweight to the official cookbook publishing.

Paper short abstract:

We will focus on how traditional food work can be a way to face emerging crisis, by analysing how women breadwinners in Algeria make and sell traditional food (dishes) (heritage) using social media (technology) and how this became a constant source of income for many housewives/families.

Paper long abstract:

The Covid crisis and its aftermath in Algeria led to a social and economic earthquake that affected many families who suddenly found themselves without a breadwinner because of the death of the father or the loss of his job, which forced the women of the family, whether wives or daughters, to bear the responsibility of feeding their families by preparing and selling some types of food, especially traditional dishes.

Given to their inability to open private shops or official restaurants due to the high costs, especially of rent, in addition to the bureaucracy of the regulations and the difficulty of providing all the required documents, the opted for working from home method. So they prepare and make traditional foods in their homes and use social networks like facebook or instagram to sell their products to public, and this method had a huge success and became very popular, and quickly making and selling traditional foods has become a constant source of income for many housewives/families.

In this paper we will focus on how food work is changed/has changed in the context of the crisis, by trying to analyze this phenomena and explain how fragile women/families in the time of crisis has used a popular heritage (traditional foods) to reproduce it in a way that provides them with an income for their families, and how they has used new technologies efficiently to reach customers and buy their products and achieve their goals, and how this changed their life and the life of their families. the duality of heritage (traditional foods)/technology (social medias) and the possibilties it offers will be also discussed.

Paper short abstract:

Michael Foucault defined heterotopias as places outside of time, spaces which simultaneously connect and divide, that variously braid the natural and the cultural into a political network of power flows. I will try to decode how they impact our imaginaries, practices and materiality of foodworks.

Paper long abstract:

Michael Foucault defined heterotopias as places outside of time, spaces which simultaneously connect and divide, that variously braid the natural and the cultural into a political network of power flows. Places associated with food: gardens, allotments, kitchens and green markets are distinctive examples of such heterotopias. Their role is not limited to moderating processes of purchase, sale or consumption. In doing so, entanglements of food and places are not just a lens through which social processes can be seen. They take an active part positioning actors and have social consequences by mediating or separating humans and objects. In the spirit of Doreen Massey and her critical geography, I assume that the Foucaultian microphysics of power or Arjun Appadurai's gastropolitics are manifested in food heterotopias. By analysing the weaving processes of the domestic garden, one can observe how its space changes, what grows in it, how we process it, what tools, objects and techniques are part of this practice, who can participate and who is excluded from it. In the analyses, I will focus on the social consequences of those entanglements. Looking deep into kitchens, gardens, farmers’ backyards and other food heterotopies, I will try to decode how they impact our imaginaries, practices and materiality of foodworks. I will put special emphasis on how the uncertainties and risks are mitigated through those spaces.

Paper short abstract:

Career shifts from white collar jobs to gastronomy and food production, although niche, became recently visible in Poland. I will consider what happens when foodwork moves beyond domestic space and becomes a basis for the professional projects of those having prior middle-class careers.

Paper long abstract:

Passion driven, middle class career shifts from white collar jobs to gastronomy and food production – similar to those reproduced by global media images – became a part of food landscape in contemporary Poland. In the paper I will look at what happens when foodwork goes beyond domestic space and becomes a basis for the real-life professional projects of those having prior middle-class career. I am interested in the narratives on producing food that accompany and support this niche, but symbolically important, professional mobility. I will analyze the interviews conducted with people who embodied or tried to embody a similar scenario in the Polish pre- and after 2020 context (taking into account the transformations of the Polish food scene, ideas about good food, and the Polish class system).

I am interested in the way foodwork is reinterpreted when moved to public space and framed with narratives of passion and personal fulfilment. I will show how it is described as a complex hybrid with material, bodily, emotional, knowledge-intensive and symbolic dimensions selectively (and not equally) mixed. I will consider how do people deal with the potentially low status of jobs in food sector. What legitimizes or mediates unobvious choices of my interviewees? What happens to manual character and corporeality of foodwork? Which characteristics of foodwork are emphasized and which are marginalized or even silenced? What tensions does it imply?

Paper short abstract:

Through the privileged lens of food, we will see how the fragility of migrants’ informal encampments is converted into channels of communication, experiences of horizontal solidarity, and ways of displaying imagination and agency

Paper long abstract:

Doing food-related fieldwork in turbulent times (such as the pandemic) and fragile settings (such as migrants’ urban encampments) is certainly a challenge. Some associations and politically engaged activists as well as some committed social scientists have accepted the challenge without fear of showing their mutual fragility in situations that have to be handled with care. Through the privileged lens of food such fragility is converted into a channel of communication, experiences of horizontal solidarity, and ways of displaying imagination and agency. The context of our research is represented by a series of informal settlements in the cities of Rome and Ventimiglia that we have followed over a prolonged period of time and where forced migrants have found provisionary shelter. The perspective of our research in such contexts of displacement is on the symbolic dimension, which privileges the relational and creative aspect rather than the dimension of food security and the nutrition variable. In term of methodology, our participatory observation is accompanied by a collection of narratives and images, which draw from memory and rely on digital media

Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork assumes the ability to observe and participate in everyday activities in one or more communities. What happens when circumstances prevent or complicate this? This paper considers the possibility for new understandings to emerge when “normal” fieldwork behavior is disrupted.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork presupposes the ability to observe and participate in everyday activities within a community or communities. What happens when circumstances either prevent or complicate that ability? This paper considers the possibility for new ways of connecting “field” and “home” to emerge when “normal” fieldwork behavior is disrupted. As a food ethnographer from the USA who works primarily in Mexico, restrictions imposed during the global pandemic caused me to change research plans. The pandemic gravely affected people with whom I have longstanding ties and to whom I feel committed both professionally and personally. Most support their families through food production: small scale farming, prepared food sales, or work in restaurants. Many became ill or had to care for sick family members. Almost all faced economic hardships as pandemic related restrictions closed restaurants, complicated the movement of products from producer to consumer, and shut down tourism. Meanwhile, the pandemic exposed many problems and inequities in the food production and distribution systems in my home of Austin, Texas, problems exacerbated by the failure of the state’s power grid in the winter of 2021. Conversations with Mexican colleagues and friends, and experiences in Austin prompted me to ask: what are our roles and responsibilities as scholars when the communities with whom we work and those in which we live confront multiple crises? This paper offers an initial exploration into the connections of affective and material realities.

Paper short abstract:

Using autoethnographic lens this paper explores the embodied, sensorial and affectionate aspects of food-related fieldwork carried out in Mexico. It focuses on foodwork and food self-care strategies of an anthropologist studying food heritage in times of increasing food hazards and uncertainty.

Paper long abstract:

While food-related fieldwork is usually perceived as pleasant or even passionate labor this paper focuses on understudied, omitted and silenced aspects of anthropological food studies - its embodied, sensorial and affectionate (un)pleasant facets. In classic ethnography anthropologist’s body becomes a research tool, often overburden with uncommon activities: taking part in fiestas, excessive eating and drinking, exposed to food risks and hazards as well as emotional distress.

This paper is based on the results of a fieldwork carried out between 2011-17 and 2021-23 in the city of Oaxaca and surrounding communities. Using autoethnographic lens I analyze my ethnographic food-related practice in Oaxaca. Over a decade of studying culinary heritage made me – in the eyes of many Oaxacans engaged in the regional gastronomy - an “expert” on local food(ways). As a result I was often invited (and sometimes obliged) to participate in various gastronomic events e.g. tasting 8 course menus in local restaurants or mezcal (50% agave distillate) savouring at bars and workshops.

In this presentation I focus on my foodwork and food-care strategies while living and doing fieldwork in Oaxaca. Beginning with attempts at negotiating the amount of food/alcohol intake at public events, evaluating the quality and safety of served dishes, avoiding certain risky food-related situations, securing the source of safe drinking water to learning about regional herbs and plants as remedies for indigestion, hangover, food allergies and stress. And last but not least, keeping a healthy diet (in my understanding of the term) while at my Oaxacan home.