Storying Food: An Online Symposium, 17th-18th November

Please note that registrations for the symposium have now closed.

Call for participation and/or work in progress papers

The University of Sussex Business School and the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies (in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities), in conjunction with Brighton and Sussex Universities Food Network present

An Online Symposium: Storying food: gendered, racialised and classed politics and possibilities

11.30 to 17.30 GMT Wednesday 17th and 13.30 - 16.30 GMT approx. Thursday 18th November 2021 (timings for the work-in-progress session TBC)

Organising Committee: Barbora Adlerova, Cardiff University, Naaz Rashid, University of Sussex, Ruth Segal, University of Sussex, Elaine Swan, University of Sussex and Karen Wilkes, Birmingham City University

Part of the activities of the FoodSEqual UKRI project

‘Memo to recipe bloggers: No one wants your life story, says me, an asshole’, Jenny G. Zhang in Eater online magazine. (https://www.eater.com/2020/3/31/21201374/why-are-free-online-recipes-so-long-stop-shaming-food-bloggers)

‘Share your lockdown food stories over a cup of tea or coffee’. Nourish, Scotland online workshop. (https://www.nourishscotland.org/event/exploring-lockdown-food-stories-2)

‘Tools for food stories: flexible ways to capture and tell stories about food and food poverty’. (http://leapfrog.tools/toolbox/tools-for-food-stories)

‘British Library Calls for Caribbean Food Stories’. (https://blogs.bl.uk/americas/2021/02/introducing-caribbean-foodways-at-the-british-library)

‘Sharing our Stories: Strengthening the Food Justice Movement in Southern Ontario’s FoodShed’ (https://sustainontario.com/2012/03/12/sharing-our-stories-strengthening-the-food-justice-movement-in-southern-ontarios-foodshed)

This brief selection of quotations from food media, community groups, a consultancy and the British Library illustrates the intensification of story-telling about food in the UK and North America. They point to both the range of actors and agencies inviting food stories from food producers, growers and consumers, as well as the work that food stories are imagined to do in terms of witnessing, cultural reproduction, consciousness-raising, policy-making and collective politics. However, there is growing activist critique (see Black Book, Sourced, Vittles and The Racist Sandwich) of the colonial, racial and gendered dimensions of mainstream food media, its political economy, orientalist and exoticist narrativisations, amidst the broader politics of representation. Relatedly, academic scholarship challenges poverty and austerity ‘porn’ and ‘suffering stories’ in the media (Allen et al., 2014; Jensen and Tyler, 2015); the obligation on marginalised groups to narrate their lives in policy and community contexts (Skeggs, 2004); the construction of refugees simply as ‘suppliers of stories’ (Cantelli and Shringarpure, 2020); and the cultural appropriation or ‘theft of food stories’ (Mann, 2019: 27). At the same time, there have been calls to rewrite food histories and to make visible hidden food stories to decolonise knowledge production and foster resistance and creativity: what Canadian Indigenous academic Tabitha Robin calls ‘good food stories’ (Abarca, 2006; Cantelli, & Shringarpure, 2020; Chin-Dawe, 2012; Herrington et al., 2020; Joshi, 2021; Nettles-Barcelon, 2012; Reese, 2019; Robin, 2019; Smoyer, 2015). As Lisa Lowe argues:

Forms of individual and collective narratives are not merely representations disconnected from ‘real’ political life; nor are these expressions ‘transparent’ records of histories of struggle. Rather, these forms—life stories, oral histories, histories of community, literature—are crucial media that connect subjects to social relations. (1997: 33)

In this vein, Beth Dixon (2018) offers ethical methods for writing and telling ‘counter-stories’ to challenge stereotypical and oppressive food justice narratives about food systems, obesity, poverty and labour.

Nevertheless, to date there has not been an event to explore the possibilities of storying food in light of these critiques, and previous feminist and postcolonial theories of narratives and media (Probyn, 2003; Richardson, 1990; Ahmed et al., 2000; Warhol and Lanser, 2015); critical food studies; and theories of class and poverty. Our event is designed to bring together scholars from a range of disciplinary locations such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, food studies, geography; to profile thinkers with scholarly and activist expertise; and to create a space for reflection on the politics and possibilities of gender, class and race in storying food, and dilemmas in our own research and writing practices.

Format of the event

Two optional online reading sessions

• 20th October 12.00-13.30 GMT+1

• 3rd November 12.00-13.30 GMT

These are intended to provide an informal, relaxed opportunity for discussions and to introduce some concepts and authors. We will select readings from the following:

Workshop one:

• Olivia M. Aguilar (2021). The critical piece missing from a critical food studies curriculum. Food, Culture & Society, 24(2), 325-335.
• Cantelli, V., & Shringarpure, B. (2020). Resistant recipes: Food, gender and translation in migrant and refugee narratives. In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism (pp. 421-436). London: Routledge.
• Pérez R.(2019). ‘Interviewing epistemologies: from life history to kitchen table ethnography’. In: Chrzan J. and Brett J. (eds.) Food culture: anthropology, linguistics and food studies. New York: Berghahn Books.
• Joshi, T. (2021). Stuffed: the new era of British food writing is here. (https://gal-dem.com/stuffed-the-new-era-of-british-food-writing-is-here/)

Workshop two:

• Allen, K., Tyler, I., & De Benedictis, S. (2014). Thinking with ‘White Dee’: The gender politics of ‘austerity porn’. Sociological Research Online, 19(3), 256-262.
• Patrick, R. ​​(2020). Unsettling the anti-welfare commonsense: The potential in participatory research with people living in poverty. Journal of Social Policy, 49(2), 251-270.
• Skeggs, B. (2002). Techniques for Telling the Reflexive Self. In: Tim May, (ed.) Qualitative Research in Action. London: Sage, pp. 349-375.

Symposium

Day One Wednesday 17th November: Keynotes and group discussions

Professor Beth Dixon is Professor of philosophy at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, USA. She has written on food justice and ethics and animals. Recent work includes her book entitled Food Justice and Narrative Ethics: Reading Stories for Ethical Awareness and Activism and Learning to See Food Justice, in the Journal of Agriculture and Human Values, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer 2014).

Dr Sukhmani Khorana is Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Sydney, Australia and is based at the Young and Resilient Research Centre. Her research, publications and grants span three main areas: diasporic film and culture, refugee media and empathy, and food in multicultural contexts. Recent writing includes The Tastes and Politics of Inter-cultural Food in Australia and Watching to Witness: Responses Beyond Empathy to Refugee Documentaries in Tanja Dreher and Anshuman Mondal (eds.) Ethical Responsiveness and the Politics of Difference. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. 133-149

Dr. Tammara Soma is Assistant Professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She conducts research on food systems planning, community-based research, and waste management. She is co-founder of the Food Systems Lab, bringing the experiences of Indigenous and non Indigenous communities into mapping ‘hidden food infrastructures'. Our Home, Our Food, Our Resilience was published from that work. Co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Food Waste, she recently published Food assets for whom? Community perspectives on food asset mapping in Canada in the Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2021.1918750.

Day Two Thursday 18th November: Workshop and Panel

Work in progress papers workshop – see below

Storying food panel – scholar-activists discuss the intersections of storytelling about food in very different domains and media

• Dr Anna Sulan Masing, Dr Olivia Sheringham and Dr Helen Taylor, and Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer

Bios

Dr Anna Sulan Masing is a writer, editor and academic focusing on food and drink, media and arts, with a PhD investigating identity and storytelling. She established Sourced, a research project which explores global food and drinks pathways. She also co-founded a podcast Voices At The Table and Black Book, a platform for Black & non-white people working within hospitality and food media.

Dr Olivia Sheringham and Dr Helen Taylor. Olivia is a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Birkbeck College, London. Her research interests span migration and belonging, home, cultural diversity and creative and collaborative practice. Helen is a director of Stories & Supper, a project on storytelling, food and welcome with refugees and local residents in Waltham Forest, London.

Sheila Ghelani and Sue Palmer both work individually as artists in performance, audio and moving image. Sheila and Sue collaborated on the project Common Salt, a performance around a table – a ‘show and tell’ – exploring the colonial, geographical and natural history of England and India and narratives of trade, empire and culture. Out of that project came a book published in July 2021, which documents and explores the Common Salt performance text. Sheila is an artist of Indian/English mixed heritage, who makes visible the connections between race, ecology, science, history and the present day. Sue is an artist working across media and form, making things with people, places and nature, in the UK and internationally. Commissions include the collaborative work The 100 Year Old Band in Germany and Finland, alongside work for Battersea Arts Centre, b-side festival and many non-arts organisations.

How to attend and key dates

1. If you would like to attend the Symposium, please book at this eventbrite by November 12th 2021.

2. Please register for the reading groups at the same eventbrite by October 15th 2021.

3. If you would like to speak in the work in progress workshop, please submit an abstract of 300 words to the eventbrite link by October 1st 2021. We will confirm acceptances by October 15th 2021.

More information on work-in-progress workshop

We’re inviting papers for a workshop where participants will be able to present their work-in-progress. Empirical, theoretical, methodological or exploratory musings as well as creative works are welcome. There will be a supportive space for feedback and discussion. Work in progress presentations are expected to be up to 20 minutes duration.

For more information please contact AdlerovaB@cardiff.ac.uk

Potential questions to explore

• How is food storytelling used in the production, distribution and consumption of lived experience and to what ends and effects? What are the benefits and losses? How can the inequalities of the political economy of storying food be challenged?
• What genres of individual and collective stories are told - oral histories, biographies, autobiographies, documentary films, zines, blogs, fiction and poetry, recipes and cookbooks and through which media? And what political work do these genres and forms of mediation do?
• How are gender, race, and class mobilized and reproduced in participatory and storying spaces? How do the contexts and conditions of production inflect what stories can be told? What are the power entanglements at play? What are the politics of ‘giving voice’?
• What is the relationship between lived experience, storytelling and ‘truth’?
• How do we listen to /witness individual and collective food stories of people with lived experience of food insecurity (to achieve more just and sustainable food systems?) What other stories about food need to be told and heard? How can food storytelling redress erasure and discrimination? What counter-stories challenge dominant ‘master’ narratives about food, gender, race, class and other axes of difference?

References

Abarca, M. E. (2006). Voices in the kitchen: Views of food and the world from working-class Mexican and Mexican American women (Vol. 9). Texas A&M University Press.

Ahmed, S., Kilby, J., Lury, C., McNeil, M. and Skeggs, B. (eds.) (2000). Transformations: Thinking Through Feminisms. London: Routledge.

Cantelli, V., & Shringarpure, B. (2020). Resistant recipes: Food, gender and translation in migrant and refugee narratives. In Rebecca Ruth Gould, Kayvan Tahmasebian (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism (pp. 421-436). London: Routledge.

Herrington, T. Patrick, R. and Watson, S. (2019) Poverty2solutions: reflections from collaborative research rooted in the expertise of experience on poverty. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 28 (1): 1–12, DOI: 10.1332/175982719X15759738790370

Jensen, T., Tyler, I. (2015). ‘Benefit broods’: The cultural and political crafting of anti-welfare common sense. Critical Social Policy, 35, 470–491.

Lowe, L. (1997). ‘Work, Immigration, Gender: New Subjects of Cultural Politics’. Social Justice, 25 (3): 31–49.

Mann, A. (2019). Voice and participation in global food politics. London: Routledge.

Nettles-Barcelón, K. (2012). California Soul: Stories of food and place from Oakland's Brown Sugar Kitchen. Boom: A Journal of California, 2(3), 18-24.

Probyn, E. (2003). Sexing the self: Gendered positions in cultural studies. London: Routledge.

Reese, A. M. (2019). Black food geographies: Race, self-reliance, and food access in Washington, DC. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books.

Robin, T. (2019). Our hands at work: Indigenous food sovereignty in Western Canada. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 9(B), 85-99.

Richardson, L. (1990). Writing strategies: Reaching diverse audiences (Vol. 21). London: Sage.

Skeggs, B. (2004) Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge.

Smoyer, A. (2015) “It's the Black Girls That Have the Most”: Foodways Narratives and the Construction of Race in a Women's Prison. Food and Foodways, 23(4), 273-285.

Warhol, R., & Lanser, S. S. (2015). Narrative theory unbound: Queer and feminist interventions. The Ohio State University Press.