Transnational Perspectives on Food, Ecology and the Anthropocene

Abstract

While food is at the core of what it means to be human becausewe need it to sustain ourselves, it is not just the case that ‘we are what we eat’ because our collective lives and cultures are structured around and relate to food in multifaceted ways that prompt deeper questions. Far from simply being a fact relevant to diet, nutrition and calories it is also a sociocultural product (Counihan 1999) and highly gendered (Counihan 1999; Inness 2001; Lewis 2015; Meyers 2001; Theophano 2003). Bourdieu (1984) acknowledges food as a key semiotic resource in identity and class hierarchies. The food-centred discursive strategies therefore embody ideological elements that resonate with particular socially constructed ideas, tastes, feelings or desires that are shaped by our diverse contexts. More so, food complicates foodways as a network of activities and systems in its production and consumption (see, for example, Lawrance & De la Peña 2012; Riley & Paugh 2019; Sutton & Hernandez 2007). In several ways, it directs us (beyond its viscerality and biomateriality) (Boxenbaum et al. 2018; Moser et al. 2021) to its circulation as a set of social practices. These ideas point us to thinking about food in far more engaged and reflexive ways that urge attention to the various transformations in the social life of food (from farm to fork for instance) which is crucial to the understanding of how we interpret the production and consumption as meaningful sets of activities. The ever-changing discursive practices and food systems brought about by the forces of globalisation have led to new challenges and opportunities. Some of the challenges are subtle erasure of women’s roles in food work and local taste, including promotion of unhealthy food over health choices.