Why We Eat, How We Eat: Contemporary Encounters Between Foods and Bodies

327 Pages·2013·1.67 MB·English

by  Emma-jayne Abbots

Why We Eat, How We Eat
Contemporary Encounters between
Foods and Bodies
Edited by
Emma-Jayne Abbots and Anna Lavis
Why We eat, hoW We eat
Critical Food Studies
Series Editor
Michael K. Goodman, Kings College London, UK
the study of food has seldom been more pressing or prescient. From the
intensifying globalization of food, a world-wide food crisis and the continuing
inequalities of its production and consumption, to food’s exploding media
presence, and its growing re-connections to places and people through ‘alternative
food movements’, this series promotes critical explorations of contemporary food
cultures and politics. Building on previous but disparate scholarship, its overall
aims are to develop innovative and theoretical lenses and empirical material in
order to contribute to – but also begin to more fully delineate – the confines and
confluences of an agenda of critical food research and writing.
of particular concern are original theoretical and empirical treatments of the
materializations of food politics, meanings and representations, the shifting
political economies and ecologies of food production and consumption and the
growing transgressions between alternative and corporatist food networks.
Other titles in the series include:
Embodied Food Politics
Michael S. Carolan
9781409422099
Liquid Materialities
A History of Milk, Science and the Law
Peter Atkins
9780754679219
Why We eat, how We eat
Contemporary encounters between Foods and Bodies
Edited by
emma-Jayne aBBotS
University of Wales Trinity St David and
SOAS, University of London, UK
anna LaviS
University of Birmingham and University of Oxford, UK
© emma-Jayne abbots and anna Lavis 2013
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
emma-Jayne abbots and anna Lavis have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court east 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, vt 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7Pt USa
england
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Why we eat, how we eat : contemporary encounters between
foods and bodies. -- (Critical food studies)
1. Food habits. 2. nutrition--Psychological aspects.
3. Food preferences--Psychological aspects. 4. Food--
Symbolic aspects.
i. Series ii. abbots, emma-Jayne. iii. Lavis, anna.
613.2'019-dc23
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
abbots, emma-Jayne.
Why we eat, how we eat : contemporary encounters between foods and bodies / by emma-
Jayne abbots and anna Lavis.
p. cm. -- (Critical food studies)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-1-4094-4725-2 (hardback) -- iSBn 978-1-4094-4726-9 (ebook) -- iSBn 978-
1-4094-7379-4 (epub) 1. Food habits. 2. Food preferences. 3. Food--Symbolic aspects.
i. Lavis, anna. ii. title.
Gt2850.a34 2013
394.1'2--dc23
2012039400
iSBn 9781409447252 (hbk)
iSBn 9781409447269 (ebk – PDF)
iSBn 9781409473794 (ebk – ePUB)
V
Contents
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction: Contours of Eating:
Mapping the Terrain of Body/Food Encounters 1
Emma-Jayne Abbots and Anna Lavis
Part I: absences and Presences:
How we (do not) eat wHat (we tHInk) we eat
1 Invisible Foodscapes: Into the Blue 15
Kaori O’Connor
2 The Substance of Absence: Exploring Eating and Anorexia 35
Anna Lavis
3 Home and Heart, Hand and Eye:
Unseen Links between Pigmen and Pigs in Industrial Farming 53
Kim Baker
Interlude: Eating Practices and Health Behaviour 75
Simon Cohn
Part II: IntImacIes, estrangements and ambIvalences:
How eatIng comforts and dIsquIets
4 Advancing Critical Dietetics: Theorizing Health at Every Size 85
Lucy Aphramor, Jennifer Brady and Jacqui Gingras
5 Eating and Drinking Kefraya: The Karam in the Vineyards 103
Elizabeth Saleh
vi Why We Eat, How We Eat
6 Negotiating Foreign Bodies:
Migration, Trust and the Risky Business of
Eating in Highland Ecuador 119
Emma-Jayne Abbots
Interlude: Reflections on Fraught Food 139
Jon Holtzman
Part III: contradIctIons and coexIstences:
wHat we sHould and sHould not eat
7 Chewing on Choice 149
Sally Brooks, Duika Burges Watson, Alizon Draper,
Michael Goodman, Heidi Kvalvaag and Wendy Wills
8 ‘It is the Bacillus that Makes Our Milk’:
Ethnocentric Perceptions of Yogurt in Postsocialist Bulgaria 169
Maria Yotova
9 The Transition to Low Carbon Milk:
Dairy Consumption and the Changing Politics of
Human-Animal Relations 187
Jim Ormond
Interlude: Reflections on the Elusiveness of Eating 209
Anne Murcott
Part Iv: entanglements and mobIlIzatIons:
tHe multIPle sItes of eatIng encounters
10 Confessions of a Vegan Anthropologist:
Exploring the Trans-Biopolitics of Eating in the Field 219
Samantha Hurn
11 Metabolism as Strategy:
Agency, Evolution and Biological Hinterlands 237
Rachael Kendrick
12 Ingesting Places: Embodied Geographies of Coffee 255
Benjamin Coles
Contents vii
13 Complex Carbohydrates:
On the Relevance of Ethnography in Nutrition Education 271
Emily Yates-Doerr
Interlude: Entanglements: Fish, Guts, and Bio-cultural Sustainability 289
Elspeth Probyn
Index 301
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List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
Figures
1.1 New Welsh seaweed snack 28
1.2 Promotional literature for selling Welsh seaweed to Japan 29
3.1 A unit manager’s ranking of the abilities and aptitudes he
considers essential to good stockmanship.
Vision and sensate skills are paramount and he
draws attention to his family history of working with livestock 59
3.2 Piglets being barrowed to the nursery. Here the piglets are
dependent on the pigman’s ‘mothering’ skills,
which are mediated and augmented by technological means 65
3.3 Much of the daily routine for pigmen involves ‘walking through’
the buildings visually checking the welfare of pigs.
Here the pigman administers medication to a
juvenile animal showing signs of lameness 69
Tables
7.1 Frames of choice in UK Food Policy (1976–2010) 154
9.1 The number of replacement heifers needed to maintain a herd of
100 cows, as featured in Cadbury Dairy Guide to
Low Carbon Dairy Farming 197
Boxes
7.1 A nudge in the right direction? ‘Bigging up healthier favourites’ 156