Why We Eat How We Eat

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 RHB 137a Conference Objectives 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 Post- socialism 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