Paper short abstract:

This study investigates the drivers behind changes in foodways and their consequent effects on the health and well-being of rural communities in the northern Cederberg region of South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional foodways, steeped in centuries of cultural evolution, face threats driven by historical legacies marked by racial discrimination and rapid modernization. The globalized food system amplifies these challenges, favoring powerful stakeholders and endangering local traditions. Meanwhile, the epidemic of diet-related diseases among rural communities in South Africa has increased dramatically. Beyond the evident health risks, the erosion of traditional foodways has had profound effects on the cultural and social well-being of these communities.

This study examines the drivers and dynamics of foodway changes of communities in the northern Cederberg, South Africa, and highlights its implications for health, culture, and social cohesion. The research is grounded in a relational, decolonial approach, which challenges ingrained concepts and knowledge hierarchies in Western science, and is an extension of an ongoing community-based development project linked to the University of Cape Town. This collaborative approach allowed the research to (re-)build knowledge that is historically, culturally, and socially located, with a strong focus on community benefits and material outcomes.

The findings of the study affirm the role of colonialism in contributing to the disintegration of local foodways. Shifts in land use and access, changing food preferences, the expansion of a Western market economy, modernisation and urbanisation, as well as changes in ecosystems and climate were identified as the main drivers for foodway transitions. The study centres community members’ perceptions about these changes, recognising that traditional practices are not stagnant concepts and constantly adapt to new realities.

Paper short abstract:

In colonial Mexico, the Spaniards upheld racially charged hierarchies between staple foods maize and wheat. This shift still holds sway today, with rising influence of the Western diet. The increasing replacement of maize holds major implications for native groups’ spiritual, communal and land ties.

Paper long abstract:

Maize and still is of major cultural and spiritual importance to many Mesoamerican indigenous peoples, playing a major role in creation myths. In pre-colonial times, it formed the basis of a diverse diet, together with other staple foods such as beans and squash. Early colonial manuscripts depict maize as a marker of development for many native groups. Early on, for the Spaniards, the consumption of European foods like wheat in the Americas was central to their diet and Catholic rituals, whereas eating American plants was considered dangerous and tied to fears of “turning Indian”. This was part of a larger hierarchy between foodstuffs tied up with ideas of health, religion and race. In addition, indigenous ways of working the land were oftentimes replaced by European forms of agriculture, considered superior. Still, maize was then and still is an essential staple of the Mexican diet.

Firstly, this paper discusses the place of maize and its attempted replacement with wheat in central colonial Mexico, with a focus on the Nahua people. Second, drawing on an ethnographic case study with Yucatec Maya people in Mexico, the paper discusses the neoliberal food regime and changing patterns of consumption following NAFTA in the modern era. Currently, traditional hand-made maize tortillas are increasingly replaced by commodified wheat and corn products in people’s daily diet. Based on historical and ethnographic approaches, the paper aims to trace the transformations of food ways by asking what they might mean for spiritual, communal and land ties in Mexican society.

Paper short abstract:

Colonialism disrupted and continues to disrupt indigenous foodways in South Africa through violent dispossession, Eurocentrism and interruption of inter-generational knowledge transmission. Historical materials and interviews with elders in three regions highlight ongoing coloniality and resistance.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents three key mechanisms by which colonialism disrupted indigenous food systems in South Africa: violent dispossession, Eurocentrism and interruption of inter-generational knowledge transmission. Drawing on historical materials, it illustrates how each of these modalities unfolded from the 17th through the 19th centuries, amongst the Khoi and San peoples of the Western Cape, the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape and the Tswana in the Northern Cape/Northwest. While each of these groups lived in different territories, with different cultures and geographies, there are similarities in some of the underlying values or cosmovisions that informed each group's foodways, as well as in the way these were disrupted by colonialism. Then, drawing on interviews with indigenous knowledge holders, the paper uses the lens of coloniality to demonstrate how these three modalities of disruption continue in contemporary South Africa. Finally, the paper shows how some groups are fighting to maintain traditional foodways in the face of these ongoing disruptions, using the struggles and cultural activities of the Amadiba community in Pondoland, Eastern Cape as a case study.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the advent of white settler colonialism in the late 19th Century shaped and contributed to the social, economic and environmental shifts in African foodways over the colonial period.

Paper long abstract:

Food has always been at the heart of African society. However, the advent of white settler colonialism in the late 19th Century in many ways contributed to notable shifts in African foodscapes. Colonialists held negative views of African diets, questioning their aesthetic and nutritional value. Using the story of small grains – sorghum and millet – in colonial Zimbabwe between the 1940s to 1970s, this paper explores the complex history of African foods showing how established white dominance over Africans emphasized crop hegemonies of white maize over African small grains. Relying on a combination of primary and secondary sources including ministerial reports, minutes and newspapers it demonstrates how African small grains challenged the economic development of the increasingly racialized white maize-orientated economy. Through deliberate material and legislative actions, the white government aimed to suppress the consumption of small grains among Africans. This paper demonstrates how African diets and eating patterns were shifted over time owing to their growing social and economic proximity to whiteness in the colonial state. In addition, also shows how state drought interventions further shaped the food and eating patterns of Africans. Concomitantly. At the same time, I also demonstrate how while Africans were compelled and encouraged by social trends to adopt new ideas on what to eat, they equally also exercised agency and their own volition retained some old culinary systems or adopted new ones. African diets and foodways were static nor heterogeneous. Instead, they were ever-oscillating to social and economic contexts.

Paper short abstract:

Amazonian biodiversity and forest reflect a long-term indigenous history of plant cultivation and foodways, highly impacted during European colonization, which this paper aims analyze by comparing archaeological foodway remains to historical documents regarding food consumption and biotechnologies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to address the quality of impact of the European colonialism in traditional indigenous foodways and biotechnologies in the Amazon basin, integrating material culture and written documents. Through archaeobotanical and organic residues data, it is known that the biodiversity of the Amazon results of a long-term process of food management dating back to 14k BP, and that cultural niche construction integrates foodscapes composed by plants, animals and people. The forest structure reflects human preferences for food plants, creating it’s hyperdominance in the biota. The colonial and neo-colonial practices of transforming local foods in global commodities, and the historical ethnocide, human displacement and deforestation has promoted also a biodiversity erosion and the loss of traditional knowledges of forest conservation. Promoting hungry and food insecurity was/is a colonial strategy of domination and an allied in breaking ancestral bounds to the territory and social networks, resulting in a “forgotten” biodiversity and intermit foodways. The “occult” face of the Columbian Exchange acted, among other ways, by replacing what was considered “wild” foods (as the fermented caxiris) by monocultural cultivation of exotic plants of economic importance and industrial logic of consumption (as distilled beverages), contributing to the process of pauperization of indigenous groups. Some of these foods are, however, reemerging in a scenario of land recovery (roots such as aria and mairá) while other remain buried in the ancestral ground (i.e. indigenous breads). In this scenario Archaeology can help unearth the roots of food colonization and present paths through food security and recovery.

Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights the adaptability and resilience of the Mayeyi, a riverine people of Namibia, in adopting new foodways of cattle farming while maintaining revered elements of their traditional foodways of fishing and foraging despite conservation policies that restrict and criminalise access.

Paper long abstract:

Among rural communities foodways are shaped by the landscape and its assemblage of species rendering them vulnerable to development and conservation interventions that prioritise commercially lucrative landscapes and high-value species over food related human-nonhuman entanglements. This is especially true in the landscapes of southern Africa where rural communities are often subject to policies and interventions that restrict and criminalise access to ancestral areas and revered species in the name of biodiversity conservation diminishing traditional foodways over time through a process of slow violence. Drawing on oral accounts, interviews and observation of food-related practices, this paper explores the foodways of the Mayeyi, a riverine people of northern Botswana and Namibia that historically resided across the Okavango-Kwando wetlands. Formerly fishers, hunters, foragers and agriculturists the traditional foodways of the Mayeyi have been systemically eroded since the early 1900s through successive resettlements and unwanted species control in aid of colonial cattle ranching and the creation of national parks, hunting and fishing regulations and no-settlement zones to bolster wildlife populations for trophy hunting and tourism. In response the Mayeyi have adapted to dryland agropastoralism adopting cattle farming and rainfed agricultural practices while maintaining certain cultural, social and economic practices related to fishing and the harvesting of riverine plants for consumption. The paper highlights the resistance and resilience of the Mayeyi in maintaining revered elements of their traditional foodways despite issues of access and points the way towards possibilities for decolonising conservation approaches through elevating traditional foodways.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the transformation of traditional foodways in a settler colony as seen through the gaze of women producers from Gaza, exploring their relationships to food as a site of struggle against intersecting forms of oppression, namely colonialism, neoliberalism and patriarchy.

Paper long abstract:

Our paper investigates the transformation of traditional foodways in a settler colony as seen through the gaze of women producers from Gaza, exploring their relationships to food as a site of struggle against forms of oppression.

Gaza’s foodways have been shaped over millennia by trade, waves of occupation and, more recently, by dispossession as farming families fled violence bringing their food traditions with them. Today, Palestinian foodways are shaped by three intersecting forms of oppression: Settler colonialism that controls access to shrinking resources and imposes a devastating blockade that ensures a captive market for its powerful agro-military industrial complex; Neoliberalism that imposes industrially produced imported food and ‘aid’, that degrade human health and Gaza’s fragile ecosystem in a drive for localised ‘food security’; And patriarchal structures that impose these industrial logics for agricultural intensification that consolidates corporate control and consumes farmland, while devaluing and constraining the work and knowledges of women.

This paper investigates these forms of oppression through the narratives, memories, and identities of Gazan women and their relationships with traditional Palestinian food and farming landscapes, known as the Baladi food system, that tells a parallel story steeped in the richness of interconnection. It navigates neoliberal and gender identities through a process of re-membering that reconnects people and place, while considering the role of food as medicine and as resistance. Contextualising these pressures, it is possible to position Palestinian peoples’ voices and frame them in broader struggles to the corporate industrialisation of the food system by reclaiming traditional foodways.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores women's resistance and role in preserving traditional seeds in Zimbabwe while countering industrialized systems; the challenges from colonial legacies and neoliberalism and the interplay between tradition and modernity, focusing on the Chikukwa community.

Paper long abstract:

This paper delves into the pivotal role of women's differential power within local seed systems in countering the encroachment of industrialised seed systems in Zimbabwe and preserving traditional seeds and food cultures. Traditional seeds have faced erosion since colonial times, and contemporary challenges have emerged from policies influenced by colonial legacies, neoliberalism, and the dominance of developmental and productivist discourses. Focusing on the Chikukwa community in the eastern highlands through a participatory ethnographic approach rooted in Feminist Political Ecology and African feminisms, this study reveals that women, leveraging their expert local seed knowledge and predominant control over local seed systems, have conserved and transmitted traditional foodways across generations through embodied practices. These practices thrive within robust social relationships and networks, nurturing an invisible local economy for traditional food, seeds, and knowledge sharing.

Women's resistance is further evidenced in their steadfast cultivation of local seeds and informal seed exchanges. Their commitment to traditional spiritualities and rituals amid the prevalence of Christianity also contributes to seed preservation. Nevertheless, women's formidable positions within local seed systems face threats from forces advocating for adopting industrialised seeds and the criminalisation of traditional seed systems. Driven by philanthropic, international, and capitalist institutions and supported by gender discourse promoting women's involvement in industrial food landscapes, these pressures endanger traditional food cultures and women's roles in local seed systems. This jeopardises traditional foodways and the power dynamics within local seed systems, underscoring the intricate interplay between tradition and modernity in the realm of seed conservation and food sovereignty.

Paper short abstract:

On the background of multiple crises, this paper critically explores these promises of reviving and revalorising the traditional indigenous agroforestry system in the Ecuadorian Amazon - the 'chakra' - as a sustainable development mechanism of benefit to indigenous communities, especially women.

Paper long abstract:

Mostly restricted from access to their traditional territories, indigenous Amazonians in Ecuador (as elsewhere) are increasingly dependent on the national and global economy. Since the 1970s, subsistence livelihoods have given way to devastating resource extraction industries, increasing colonisation, urbanisation, and agri-monocultures with associated levels of deforestation. The land has been parcelled up – disregarding traditional property relations, access and transit routes – and the rivers polluted. Local communities are under severe pressure as their soil, water, community, and individual health decline dramatically through decades of 'development'. Additionally, their resilience is undermined by increasingly severe climate change effects (floods and droughts).

In response, government officials, aid agencies, indigenous federations and the private sector have recently come together to revive, revalorise and reinvent the traditional indigenous agroforestry system – the ‘chakra’ – as a sustainable and economically viable production unit governed by women. The ‘chakra model’ responds directly to multiple crises and holds promises of prosperity and a resilient, just and culturally appropriate food system.

Reporting back from ethnographic fieldwork and the first year of a participatory video project, we critically explore these promises in their historical and socio-ecological context, inquiring into the opportunities and challenges of developing agroforestry value chains in the complex Upper Napo region. We focus particularly on the impact this development has on traditional knowledges and foodways, as well as gender and other power relations.

Paper short abstract:

This historical research on wild rice (manoomin) presents an analysis of the ways in which appropriation of native foods is the result of repeated acts of erasure and racism that weave a tapestry of gastrocolonialism.

Paper long abstract:

For centuries, the Anishinaabe people of North America have harvested the wild rice that grows in lakes and rivers. Wild rice has been, and continues to be, a central part of the Anishinaabe people’s culture, spirituality, economy and food system. Harvesting this food is one act in a relationship of reciprocity between people and their food, and taking care of this sacred plant as a community is important to the wellbeing of these Indigenous peoples.

Colonization and capitalism radically shifted people’s relationship with this food and their environment. Colonization pushed people off their land, relegating communal care-taking of this sacred plant-being to the reduced areas of reservation land. Capitalism created a market for this food, changing the relationship between people and wild rice from one of care-taking to money-making in a time in which Indigenous people were suffering from considerable economic hardship. Once there was a market for wild rice, breeding and genetic led to the domestication of the plant and the market for the wild-harvested food crashed, leaving Indigenous people again dispossessed, this time from the sources of income they had become accustomed to having. Today, the economic value of hand-harvested wild rice, now an expensive delicatessen, surpasses the cultural value of eating and honoring the food at home for many families out of necessity.

This historical research presents an analysis of the ways in which appropriation of native foods is the result of repeated acts of erasure and racism that weave a tapestry of gastrocolonialism.

Paper short abstract:

India's marine fishing communities, providers of nutrient-rich superfoods are challenged by market forces towards export orientation. Local movements lead to greater sovereignty over ecology, technology and organisation. Also reshape global networks to prioritize sustainability and local well-being.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation delves into the dynamics surrounding artisanal marine fishing communities in India, positioned within the lower strata of the country's caste hierarchy. Historically, they played a pivotal role supplying locally consumed, low-cost, super-foods, rich in protein and micro-nutrients.

Fish is a highly traded commodity because it highly perishable and fishers cannot live by fish alone. Hence, even at very low levels of productivity of the producer, market forces, dominated by merchant capital hold sway through interlocking of the credit and product market. An exploitative situation affecting the overall income and well-being of fishing communities results.

Complicating matters, post-Independence fisheries development plans were dominated by upper caste scientists and policy makers conditioned by western ideas. They failed to acknowledge the fund of knowledge and the merits of ecologically sophisticated technologies of these communities. They imposed industrial modes of harvesting technology from the temperate ecosystems, which were inappropriate to our tropical seas.

A 1960s economic crisis prompted policymakers to pursue export-driven fisheries for quick foreign exchange. This led to an influx of external investment and large-scale modern harvesting technologies, resulting in ecological disaster and socio-economic decline for traditional fishers within two decades.

Indian fishworkers—both men and women—launched socio-ecological movements in the 1980s, protesting inappropriate technology and excessive export focus. This movement revived interest in small-scale, decentralized technology, promoting resource co-management and prioritizing local markets for employment and food security.

Originally local, this initiative transcended national borders, culminating in a "glocal" amalgamation. This fusion harnessed alternative transnational networks' resilience, aligning with national fishworker organizations' aspirations and visions.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to examine the industrial development of soy sauce brewing in the colonial Korea, and how the colonial soy sauce brewing industry developed and was further transformed during the war.

Paper long abstract:

Although soy sauce brewed from soybeans represents a common feature of East Asian food culture, traditional soy sauce in Korea did not use koji [yeast] as in the Japanese brewing system, but instead naturally fermented miso balls made from soybeans and added salt water, which was then allowed to sink out of the miso balls and used as a traditional seasoning. In this respect, the traditional Korean soy sauce was similar to the traditional Japanese homemade tamari. In contrast, soy sauce, commonly called koikuchi [concentrated taste] in Japan, is made from barley as well as soybeans, and is fermented as moromi [unrefined soy sauce] which is obtained by straining it, not by making miso ball. This method of brewing had already taken root in the Edo period (1603-1867), and soy sauce was sold in large quantities for the large urban market.

During the colonial period, the Japanese brewing method was introduced for the seasoning soy sauce, and it took root and spread in Korea after the war, becoming the base of the taste. Soy sauce brewing was separated from the household, which was both producer and consumer, and began to change to a factory system. This paper examines how the traditional Korean soy sauce became an industry capable of mass production through the colonial experience, and became a profit-seeking business. In the process, the original taste was lost, and the new taste was taken for granted. We can rediscover the distorted image of history.

Paper short abstract:

This paper critically analyses the transformation of millets from a rural ‘poor man’s crop’ to an urban/global ‘superfood’ led by India's achievements in millets revival. It draws on a ‘just transition’ framework to explore the tensions and opportunities in the mainstreaming of Indigenous foodways.

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous food crops, such as millets, have long been cultivated by rural and Indigenous communities in India as a vital aspect of Indigenous food and nutrition security and socio-cultural identity. After withstanding waves of marginalisation driven by urbanisation and the dominant logic of agricultural development, recent years have witnessed a resurgence in millets production and consumption in the country. In the current push for revitalising the millets agro-food system, national, state and local governments have emerged as key drivers of millets agro-food system transformation. The consequences of the rapidly changing geographies of millets farming for Indigenous food and nutrition security, for biodiverse farming, and climate justice warrant further investigation. Key questions include to what extent does the global and urban dimension of millets revival address the different forms of justice (i.e., distributional, procedural, inter-generational, environmental)? Does it reflect a shift to ‘just transition’? Drawing on my millets research in the state of Odisha (India), this paper critically analyses the transformation of millets from a rural ‘poor man’s crop’ to an urban/global ‘superfood’ within a ‘just transition’ framework and explores the tensions and opportunities that have emerged in the mainstreaming of Indigenous foodways.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the Maasai diet, traditionally based on the consumption of meat, milk and blood, has changed in a community living in the Northern Tanzania. It explores the historical roots of this change and explains why meat has become a food-medicine to be consumed in ritual contexts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how the Maasai pastoral diet, traditionally based on the consumption of meat, milk and blood, has changed in a community living in the Northern Tanzania. Despite this ideal diet, the ugali – the Tanzanian dish obtained from corn flour – has become the staple food in the community. The younger members eat ugali daily even if they know that their tradition suggest ingesting other types of food. Older people, on the other hand, consider ugali as “non-food”. To them, it reminds how maize was introduced by colonialists during past famines as a food aid. In this context, meat is mainly consumed during collective rituals such as weddings and circumcisions, but also during healing processes.

Drawing upon fieldwork experience in Tanzania between 2017 and 2023, this paper argues that the difficulties faced by the Maasai, and their related food options are the result of politics of inequality and marginalization implemented since the colonial time. These politics have produced unequal forms of land and natural resources distribution and management, which have particularly favoured the intensive agriculture and international tourism to the detriment of pastoral lifeways. Thus, meat has increasingly become a food-medicine that is taken only in some ritual contexts, rituals that define more than ever the meaning of “being Maasai”.

Paper short abstract:

From colonial novelty to global commodity, this paper unveils the journey of tea in India. It explores how colonialism transformed traditional food system with tea, and how it's commercialized today. It highlights tea's dual role in propaganda and resistance, showcasing its colonial legacy.

Paper long abstract:

Tea, one of India's most beloved beverages, carries a rich and complex history that is inextricably linked to the colonial and post-colonial narrative of the subcontinent. This paper aims to explore how tea, as a colonial product, has transformed the traditional food systems of India, and how it has become a commercialized and standardized commodity that caters to the imperial tastes of the global market today. Tracing the history of tea in India from its introduction by the British in the 19th century to its widespread consumption in the 20th and 21st centuries, the paper will be focusing on the similarities and differences between the two epochs of production of tea. It will also examine how tea has been used as a tool of propaganda, nationalism, and resistance by both the colonizers and the colonized, and how it has reflected the complex and contradictory nature of colonialism.

The data will be drawn from historical sources, such as advertisements, newspapers, travelogues, and memoirs, as well as contemporary sources, such as ethnographic studies, surveys, and interviews. By shedding light on the cultural and political symbolism of tea and its profound interconnectedness with India's ever-evolving social and economic landscape, this work contributes significantly to our broader understanding of the beverage's enduring significance in its production and consumption.