Call for Papers
Cultural Studies
Theme issue: Food Politics

In the last decade, food has (re) emerged as a serious object of
investigation in the humanities and social sciences. Anthropology,
sociology, literature, history and cultural studies (among other
fields) have recognized food as a topic for criticism, analysis and
theoretical reflection. Yet, when the question of the materiality or
'nature' of food is broached, this is usually done within the purview
of the natural or agricultural sciences. What results is a problematic
and often unquestioned separation of science, culture and politics.

Food tends to evoke appeals to nature, authenticity, and local
identity; however contemporary food networks are global, highly
technologized and complicated, created and sustained as much by the
laboratory and factory as the kitchen and farm. To understand
contemporary production, distribution and consumption of food, it is
important to bring the dynamics of technoscience and global trade into
discussions of cultural politics. Debates over food contamination,
imbalanced food markets, public health, genetic modification and
emergent food borne diseases raise dilemmas and new points of concern
related to risk, safety, control and food sovereignty. In these
conversations, food is not simply a medium or an object of analysis; it
is also an active agent in configuring new political and cultural
alliances.

We request papers that offer theoretically informed perspectives on the
articulations among food, politics and science. Our intent, in part,
is to create a space for alternative theoretical perspectives and to
extend beyond those often evoked in sociological and anthropological
discourses about food (theorists like Bourdieu, Elias, Douglas, de
Certeau tend to be drawn from quite frequently). We aim to probe the
following kinds of questions: In what ways are discourses of and around
food challenging or reinforcing traditional boundaries between nature
and culture, human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural, culture and
science? What new forms of politics are emerging over food? How are
scientific discourses mobilized and / or destabilized in relation to
food politics? How what insights can discourses about food give us
into our contemporary political moment?

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

Biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Haraway)
Constructivist accounts of food politics (Latour, Law, Stengers)
Politicizing philosophy and food (Deleuze, Derrida)
Cultural and political implications of food borne diseases
Food governance (sovereignty, global trade, emergent social activism)
Cultural issues surrounding healthy consumption and food safety
Politics of organic / natural foods
Agriculture and bioterrorism
Meat consumption and animal welfare

Deadline for submission is September 1, 2006. Please submit papers via
email to both:

Jessica Mudry
jmudry@cse.concordia.ca

Gwendolyn Blue
gblue@email.unc.edu

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