Short Abstract:

Anthropogenic environmental changes impact both human and planetary health, necessitating adaptations to our food systems. This panel invites papers unwriting food heritage's role in sustainable dietary transformation and local food practices' connections to global ecological crises.

Long Abstract:

Anthropogenic environmental changes have consequences for human as well as planetary health and there is a growing need to adapt everyday lives to planetary boundaries. Foodways are no exception, as the global food system accounts for one third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, while also contributing to biodiversity loss and land- and soil degradation.

Interdisciplinary efforts to transform the food system are already underway. However, critical perspectives must be a central to these endeavours. The current state of matters is in many ways a consequence of dualistic thinking that has shaped modern science for centuries, manifesting most clearly in the conceptual divide between humans and nature. This panel aims to examine what exists beyond such reductionist theorizing and what kind of approaches best allow for more nuanced cultural understandings of our foodways in both past and present. How can ethnology and related fields bring into light existing or past forms of eating and being that better harmonize with a liveable future on planet earth?

We invite papers that critically examine the potential for actively uncoupling food heritage and traditions to enable sustainable dietary transformations. We also seek interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability transitions in dietary habits, ethnography-based and historical studies illustrating these efforts, and analyses of food-related practices and values in relation to broader ecological concerns and human-nature-animal relations. Additionally, we welcome contributions that adopt more-than-human perspectives on foodways in the (post)Anthropocene, and explore how local food practices, knowledge, and skills relate to global environmental issues.

This Panel has so far received 1 paper proposal(s).
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