Tuesday, April 04, 2006
CFP: Food Politics: Theme Issue of _Cultural Studies_
Call for Papers
Cultural Studies
Theme issue: Food Politics
In the last decade, food has (re) emerged as a serious object of investigation in the humanities and social sciences. Anthropology, sociology, literature, history, rhetoric and cultural studies (among other fields) have recognized food as a topic for criticism, analysis and theoretical reflection. Yet, when the question of the materiality or 'nature' of food is broached, this is usually done within the purview of the natural or agricultural sciences. What results is a problematic and often unquestioned separation of science, culture and politics.
Food tends to evoke appeals to nature, authenticity, and local identity; however contemporary food networks are global, highly technologized and complicated, created and sustained as much by the laboratory and factory as the kitchen and farm. To understand contemporary production, distribution and consumption of food, it is important to bring the dynamics of technoscience and global trade into discussions of cultural politics. Debates over food contamination, imbalanced food markets, public health, genetic modification and emergent food borne diseases raise dilemmas and new points of concern related to risk, safety, control and food sovereignty. In these conversations, food is not simply a medium or an object of analysis; it is also an active agent in configuring new political and cultural alliances.
We request papers that offer theoretically informed perspectives on the articulations among food, politics and science. Our intent, in part, is to create a space for alternative theoretical perspectives and to extend beyond those often evoked in sociological and anthropological discourses about food (theorists like Bourdieu, Elias, Douglas, de Certeau tend to be drawn from quite frequently). We aim to probe the following kinds of questions: In what ways are discourses of and around food challenging or reinforcing traditional boundaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural, culture and science? What new forms of politics are emerging over food? How are scientific discourses mobilized and / or destabilized in relation to food politics? How what insights can discourses about food give us into our contemporary political moment?
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
Biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Haraway) Constructivist accounts of food politics (Latour, Law, Stengers) Politicizing philosophy and food (Deleuze, Derrida) Cultural and political implications of food borne diseases Food governance (sovereignty, global trade, emergent social activism) Cultural issues surrounding healthy consumption and food safety Politics of organic / natural foods Agriculture and bioterrorism Meat consumption and animal welfare.
Deadline for submission is September 1, 2006. Please submit papers via
email to both:
Jessica Mudry
jmudry@cse.concordia.ca
Gwendolyn Blue
gblue@email.unc.edu
Cultural Studies
Theme issue: Food Politics
In the last decade, food has (re) emerged as a serious object of investigation in the humanities and social sciences. Anthropology, sociology, literature, history, rhetoric and cultural studies (among other fields) have recognized food as a topic for criticism, analysis and theoretical reflection. Yet, when the question of the materiality or 'nature' of food is broached, this is usually done within the purview of the natural or agricultural sciences. What results is a problematic and often unquestioned separation of science, culture and politics.
Food tends to evoke appeals to nature, authenticity, and local identity; however contemporary food networks are global, highly technologized and complicated, created and sustained as much by the laboratory and factory as the kitchen and farm. To understand contemporary production, distribution and consumption of food, it is important to bring the dynamics of technoscience and global trade into discussions of cultural politics. Debates over food contamination, imbalanced food markets, public health, genetic modification and emergent food borne diseases raise dilemmas and new points of concern related to risk, safety, control and food sovereignty. In these conversations, food is not simply a medium or an object of analysis; it is also an active agent in configuring new political and cultural alliances.
We request papers that offer theoretically informed perspectives on the articulations among food, politics and science. Our intent, in part, is to create a space for alternative theoretical perspectives and to extend beyond those often evoked in sociological and anthropological discourses about food (theorists like Bourdieu, Elias, Douglas, de Certeau tend to be drawn from quite frequently). We aim to probe the following kinds of questions: In what ways are discourses of and around food challenging or reinforcing traditional boundaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural, culture and science? What new forms of politics are emerging over food? How are scientific discourses mobilized and / or destabilized in relation to food politics? How what insights can discourses about food give us into our contemporary political moment?
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
Biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Haraway) Constructivist accounts of food politics (Latour, Law, Stengers) Politicizing philosophy and food (Deleuze, Derrida) Cultural and political implications of food borne diseases Food governance (sovereignty, global trade, emergent social activism) Cultural issues surrounding healthy consumption and food safety Politics of organic / natural foods Agriculture and bioterrorism Meat consumption and animal welfare.
Deadline for submission is September 1, 2006. Please submit papers via
email to both:
Jessica Mudry
jmudry@cse.concordia.ca
Gwendolyn Blue
gblue@email.unc.edu
# posted by David Michalski @ 9:37 AM 
