Food, Society, and Environment in Contemporary Ethnography (C&A) - Adams

Food, Society, and Environment in Contemporary Ethnography (C&A) 

CHAIR: ADAMS, Ryan (Lycoming Coll) 

DISCUSSANTS: SEXTON, Lucy and LOZADA JR. Eriberto P. (Davidson Coll) “Making the Land Healthy”: Food Safety, Sustainability, and the ‘New Chinese Farmer’ 

ADAMS, Ryan (Lycoming Coll) Local and Organic: Distinct Food Movements in Brooklyn 

MILLER, Theresa (U Oxford) Sustainability and Change: Indigenous Bio-Cultural Diversity Conservation in Brazil PARKER, Jason Shaw (U Vermont) Shifting Visions of the U.S. Food System(s) and Structural Barriers to Sustainability

 

ABSTRACT:

ADAMS, Ryan (Lycoming Coll) Food, Society, and Environment in Contemporary Ethnography. Drawing on a geographically varied set of examples ranging across three continents, our panel examines the revitalized attention to food systems in contemporary ethnographic investigations. The panel demonstrates current theoretical approaches used to understand food practices and sustainability, exemplifying some of the ways anthropologists are making sense of the social and environmental impacts of food production, exchange, and consumption. Each paper develops a somewhat different aspect of the dynamic relationship between food system politics, sustainability, and culture, but together they illustrate the important place food plays once again in anthropological concerns with social and environmental change.

 

Session took place in Pittsburgh, PA at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in March 2015.