Why We Eat How We Eat:
Food Choices, Nutrition and the Politics of Eating
Thursday 24th February 2011
Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London
Richard Hoggart Building: Rooms 137, 137a & 143
Never have individual food choices been so much at the forefront of
political and policy debates. Recent attention on obesity has been
accompanied by campaigns for breastfeeding and the provisioning of
healthy food in schools, while industrial agricultural practices and the
use of pesticides have been questioned both by policy-makers and
consumers. Yet, while nutrition, the politics of eating and modalities
of body management have been increasingly addressed by the
academy, the methodological and theoretical approaches utilised
have been wide-ranging and disparate.
The key objective of this conference is to draw together these
previously diverse perspectives in order to explore and create
exciting interdisciplinary approaches with which to engage with the
complex debates surrounding food choices and eating patterns.
We therefore aim to share the findings of those working in a variety
of relevant fields, from political economy to medical anthropology,
food studies to social policy, and beyond. We anticipate that drawing
together these varied paradigms will forge greater understandings of
the embodied, social, political and economic factors that shape the
ways individuals and social groups eat.
Provisional Programme
9.15am
Registration & Poster Presentations RHB 143
9.45am
Welcome
Conference Objectives
RHB 137a
Opening Comments
10.30am
Parallel Panels 1 & 2
RHB 137a, RHB137
12.10pm
Lunch
Anthropology Dept
12.50pm
Parallel Panels 3 & 4
RHB 137a, RHB137
2.30pm
Coffee & Poster Presentations
RHB 143
3pm
Panels 5 & 6
RHB 137a, RHB137
4.40pm
Closing Comments,
RHB 137a
Professor Harry West, SOAS Food Studies Centre
5.10 – 5.30
Poster presentations
RHB 143
Morning Session
Panel 1: RHB 137a
Self-Care and Safety: Delineating Risks & Benefits of Eating
1) Lucy Aphamor
News from Coventry: How a non-diet approach is refashioning attitudes to
health and wellbeing
2) Dr Julie Botticello
Title tbc
3) Dr Margherita Poto
Europe and China: A Comparative Approach in Food Law
4) Dr Ben Coles, Dr. Angela Meah and Dr. Richard Milne
Good and Bad Cultures: Dairy and the Negotiation of Anxiety
Key Words: Risk, Benefit & Obligation in Body/Food Relationships; Food as
Healing &/or Harm.
Panel 2: RHB 137
Foodscapes: Cartographies of Eating
1) Sidonie Naulin
Can French Gastronomy Become a Political Object?
2) Dr Kaori O’Connor
Invisible Foodscapes: Into the Blue
3) Billur Dokur
Traditional Food as a Condition of Being Modern: The Case of Culinary
Tourism in Cittaslow Seferihisar
4) Maria Yotova
The Bulgarian Yogurt Traditions – Practices and Interpretations in a Postsocialism Reality
Key Words: Culinary Journeys; Nostalgia; Time Politics.
Lunch Session
Panel 3: RHB 137a
Subjection and Subjectivity: Conflicting Models of the Eating Body
1) Anastasia Chamberlen
My Body’s a Cage’: Food as punishment and resistance in women’s prisons
2) Dr Emily Yates-Doerr
The Opposite of Obesity: Thinness and Gordura in Guatemalan Nutrition
Education
3) Goor Somer
Government Control over People's Food Consumption, Daily Food Practices,
and a State of Emergency: Effects on Haifa Residents' Sense of Belonging
during the Austerity Period
4) Lilia Smialkova
To the origins of taste: the impact of a school-based educational intervention
on the food choices of children and adolescents in Belarus
Key words; Intervention; Governance; Bodily Thresholds.
Panel 4: RHB 137
Digesting the World: The Hidden Relations of Eating
1) Dr Deborah Johnston
National Food - Self Sufficiency: the solution?
2) Kim Baker
Proximity and Distance; Stockmen's Relationships With Livestock During
Meat Production
3) Julie Van Kemenade
‘The question is, my sweet, who gets eaten and who gets to eat’
4) Jim Ormond
The Politics of the Carbon Reduction Label: Knowledge, Governance and
Power - M&S Plan A Vs. Tesco Plan ‘C for Carbon
Key Words: Creation & Destruction; Markets & Ethics; Human/Animal
Relations
Afternoon Session
Panel 5: RHB 137a
Food and Intimacy: Affective Relationships of Eating
1) Elizabeth Saleh
A Vineyard cannot be on its own’; Sensory Perceptions of land and vine in the
Bekka Village of Kefraya
2) Diana Mata-Codesal
Contextualising’ food in migrancy. Three vignettes of Ecuadorian eating
practices abroad.
3) Marina Chang
Exploring new spaces for food in London: From a Vegetarian Perspective
4) Dr Manpreet K. Janeja
Cooking Centres, Curved Blades and Everyday Meals
Key Words: Relatedness & (Dis)connection; Scales of Affective Engagement.
Panel 6: RHB 137
Actors of Eating: Knowledge of Bodies / Bodies of Knowledge
1) Dr Sally Brooks
Diet-related chronic disease in the developing world: the new grand challenge?
2) Rachael Kendrick
The Stomach is a Grave: why metabolism matters
3) Heidi Kvalvaag
Why don’t they just change their lifestyle? Exploring the theoretical premise
of three core notions in the lifestyle discourse; body, food and lifestyle
4) Dr Duika Burges-Watson, Centre (with Dr Alizon K. Draper & Dr Wendy
J. Wills)
A discursive analysis of choice in UK food policy: 1976-2010
Key Words: Knowledge Production, Discursive Formations.
Poster Presentations, RHB 143
Frances Thirlway
Young People and Vending Machines
Alison Patterson
Understanding Eating Habits and Beliefs Around Food: Findings from the New
Food Issues Survey
Maria das Gracas Brightwell
London’s Brazilian Flavour
Manoela Dias Onofrio
Changing Problems – Common Solutions: Obesity Prevention and Health in
Promotion Policies in Latin America
Dorota Lewandowska
Taste and Distinction: Wine in the Process of Expressing Elitist Identity in Poland
(mid XVII century to XIX century)
Giada Danesi
Everyday Commensality Amongst Young Adults: An Ethnographic and
Comparative Perspective
Margaret Goodwin
Samosa Consumption in Southall
Elitsa Stoilova
European Food Politics and their Local Appropriation: Bulgarian Yoghurt
Industry after 1989