The Food Matters and Materialities Conference panel titled “Intersections of Food and Memory in Asia: Narratives of Culture, Nationalism, Gender and Conflict” showcased the work of three researchers who explore the connections between memory, gender, and identity through culinary practices in China, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Geetha Sukumaran, Sanchia Desouza, and Ian Turner‘s discussion focused on non-Western feminist narratives in written materials and how these narratives offer a glimpse into different Asian identities and how people express their identity through food.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

The three panelists suggested that we can find personal and national narratives and valuable insights in archives, poems, social media posts, or even notebooks. Their findings demonstrate that Asian experiences are varied and significantly different from Western experiences. For example, Sukumaran explained that Western feminism, although well-intentioned, often forgets the unique experiences of women in non-Western parts of the world. By engaging with non-Western narratives, even Western scholars can develop a more nuanced and more inclusive understanding of people’s diverse lives experiencing overlapping, simultaneous forms of oppression, such as poverty, caste systems, racism, and sexism. Engaging with non-Western realities can also aid scholars in gaining a deeper understanding of the depths and relationships of inequalities in any given context. The importance of food is a common subject in such narratives.

According to Sukumaran, “food itself is both cultural work and cultural identity. The work that stems from that identity is entirely different and specific to each culture”. She emphasized that the struggles women face, vary significantly across regions, but they can be better understood through narratives about “culinary scapes”.

As the three panelists explain, culinary scapes are gendered sites of cultural production where food plays a vital role in consolidating ethnic, national, and personal identity. Similar to landscapes, elements of these ‘scapes’, such as kitchens and homes, are a partial view of wider cultural and historical processes. The three panelists’ presentations demonstrate how culinary scapes in Asia are quite diverse and complex. Sukumaran added that “when we think of conflict zones, food is linked to scarcity and memory, which influences the people involved, and the writings and narratives that have come out of it.”

Moreover, Sukumaran argues that the writings by former Sri Lankan women combatants provide exciting insights into food, memory, and conflict. These memoirs create a space to remember a messy, contentious, and violent past through food. Sri Lanka’s resistance movement had both female and male combatants. Still, some women did not partake in the fighting but did food work to support those fighting. “The care work itself is also a part of the resistance,” explained Sukumaran.

Desouza notes that her study of Dalit men’s writings reflects not only food in conflict and memory but also class and gender struggles. She also looked at women’s writing but found “an evident inner struggle in their narrative because food is so closely related to women’s work.” Desouza added that Dalit (‘lower’ caste) men also wrote about food scarcity, hunger and deprivation while criticizing the ‘upper’ castes and political elites who “yearn for food” made and served by lower caste domestic workers, typically women.

Turner explores how the Newar community in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley has drawn on Indigenous traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism throughout recent decades of modernisation, liberalisation, and crisis. Food is essential for the Newar not only in religious rituals but also for social cohesion. Turner looked at the writings of a recent contributor to Nepalese Newar cultural discourse and social commentator, Motilaxmi Shakya, and he argued that the mere publication of Shakya’s work was a feminist act because it was “written from the perspective of a woman in a society where so much is implicitly male.” Through her book, “we get a sense of what a woman is: someone who has undergone certain experiences marked by gender. And that experience extends through her mother, grandmother, great grandmother, etc. For Shakya, food is about sociality and of thinking about how we should get along with one another.”

Turner found that Motilaxmi Shakya’s writing often defended traditional social hierarchies and gender roles that led to younger women being oppressed by their husbands’ families. However, he argues this contradiction is not in her writing, but instead, reflects her age, upper caste, and anxieties surrounding cultural change. Turner argues that through her writing, Shakya provides a way to understand her within the cultural context in which she writes, adding that it is essential not to see Shakya as a disembodied voice of the contemporary Buddhist woman.

In combination, the panelists’ research demonstrates that written works can reflect aspects of non-Western lived experiences and resistance, which are often omitted in Western feminist scholarship. For example, Dalit autobiographies, Sri Lankan women combatant’s memoirs, and Motilaxmi Shakya’s work are socio-cultural representations describing historical and political situations in local scenarios, alongside the author’s first-hand impressions. These narratives are also compelling accounts of people’s relationships with food, inner struggle, and perseverance.

Thank you, Geetha Sukumaran, and joined by Sanchia Desouza and Ian Turner for a fascinating and enlightening conversation.

Simona Bondavalli is an Associate Professor and Chair of Italian at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, where she teaches Italian language and culture, contemporary literature and film, and food studies. During the Food Matters and Materialities at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University, Bondavalli’s presentation “Dinner’s Ready! Or is It?: Food knowledge, Gender Roles and the Unruly Matter of Italian Cuisine in 1970s Cooking Game Shows” explored the role of early Italian television in redefining Italian national identity.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

Bondavalli talked about how after World War II, Italy became a republic and started to focus on rebranding itself. After two decades of fascism, there was a conscious effort to create a national identity as a democratic country and redefine Italy moving forward. Bondavalli became interested in this period and decided to focus on television as an emerging and popular medium of the time. She found that much of the television content of that era seemed to share a common purpose: rebranding and rebuilding Italian identity after the war.

“I think food played an important role in it. At the same time, there was an increase in the production of documentaries during that period. There seemed to be an overall motivation to make Italians aware of Italy and of what other fellow Italians do.”

Like many parts of the world, prior to the mid-20^th century, Italy struggled with inequality that led to hunger for many for centuries. The post-war era meant major social restructuring and greater food access for more people. According to Bondavalli, Italian public television focused on “convincing Italians they were finally free from hunger”.

By the 1970s, things were changing again in Italy. The Italian women’s movement saw liberation from the kitchen as freedom from other domestic roles. As a direct response, the fairly conservative government sought to reinvent Italian cuisine through trivia games and cooking contests on Italian public television (RAI).

Bondavalli’s research looked at two cooking competition shows, Colazione allo Studio 7 (Breakfast at Studio 7, RAI 1971-73) and its successor, A Tavola alle Sette (Dinner’s ready at seven, RAI 1974). RAI created these shows for an audience increasingly removed from food sources and concerned with the consequences of overeating. As Bondavalli explains, “A Tavola educated, entertained, and comforted viewers with a surrogate of home cooking, and the ritual of sitting down to dinner.” She added that this show’s launch “coincided with the publication of scholarly books on gastronomy, and with cuisine and cooking entering the realm of high culture.”

A Tavola’s two hosts were respected gastronome Luigi Veronelli and beloved character actress Ave Ninchi. Bondavalli argues that “the playful onscreen banter between the co-hosts and their interactions with their guests and the audience revealed underlying gendered tensions between gastronomic expertise and home cooking as a practice; between contemporary women’s lifestyles and traditional expectations; and between cooking as a hobby and as a duty”. Veronelli’s role was the expert, while Ninchi’s was a surrogate mother, a home cook, with a sense of humour. But Veronelli constantly made jokes at Ninchi’s expense, mostly about her weight, skill, and gender.

Bondavalli clarifies that A Tavola did not specifically address gender as a topic, nor did it try to speak to women directly. Instead, the jokes and banter between hosts were a way to convey messages to viewers about women’s bodies, proper food, and who could be a cooking expert. According to Bondavalli, it’s unclear how successfully these shows shaped contemporary Italian identity regarding gender roles and food. In her view, these shows reflected how complex Italian society’s relationship with food was and continues to be. “From the hosts’ interaction with the audience and guests, it becomes clear that people cook in different ways.”

I asked Bondavalli what elements from these earlier shows are a part of modern Italian television, and she responded, “The way things are joked about is different. I haven’t done enough research to describe how it’s changed exactly. I can say that contemporary Italian TV is inundated with cooking shows. American cooking competition shows, like Master Chef, now have an Italian version. But again, the chefs and the authorities on those shows tend to be male.”

Bondavalli explained that the expectation remains that women cook to care for their family as a duty, not for the joy of doing it. She argues that some Italian television shows on RAI still try to educate the viewer and regulate cooking by using gastronomy and tradition on state television to bring Italians together and say, “you’re supposed to do this.”

Bondavalli’s analysis of RAI programming in the 1970s reveals the state media’s role in shaping post-war Italian identity as intimately tied with Italian cuisine while promoting traditional gender roles by modeling citizen behaviour on television. While neither of these threads is unique to Italy, an historical analysis of them in this instance uncovers how state media attempted to shape the intimate space of its citizens’ kitchens by prescribing who should cook and what should be on the menu.

Podcast episode host: Allison Norris

Interviewee: Robert L. Nelson

Podcast theme music: Laura Bruno

Script editor: Kathy Dobson

Script editor & project manager: Irena Knezevic & Myriam Durocher

TranscriptÌę

Allison Norris: Good day folks! You’re listening to the ‘Food Matters’ podcast series, brought to you by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University.

My name is Allison Norris and I’m your host. In this episode I’ll be speaking with Dr. Robert L. Nelson, Head of the Department of History at the University of Windsor, who presented at the Food Matters & Materialities conference. After the conference, I had the chance to speak with Dr. Nelson over Zoom about his research and conference presentation: Food Matters at the Border Arab Foodways in the Windsor/Detroit Region.

*music *

AN: Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan are separated by the Detroit River, which serves as a visual marker of the border between the Canada and the United States. For as long as anyone can remember, people have crossed the Canada/US border between the two cities, for work, leisure, and to visit family on either side. Detroit has the highest percentage of Arab population of any metropolitan area in the United States, many of whom settled in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. The proximity to this thriving Arab community, has attracted the Arab diaspora who came to Canada, to settle nearby in Windsor. Between the two cities is an extended diasporic community, which has long shared jobs, community events, and importantly, food—restaurants, baked goods, and access to specialized ingredients. The ‘foodway’ has been a subject of study for Dr. Robert Nelson. Before we get to what a ‘foodway’ is, Dr. Nelson and I chatted about what brought him to food studies and this particular foodway.

Dr. Robert L. Nelson: First of all, I come out of a very established field, modern German history, history of colonialism. I was always interested in food and became quite a serious cook, starting around 14 years, 15 years ago now. And found that I was very much interested in cooking in terms of a way to learn about other history and cultures around the world. It’s a is really interesting vehicle into history and culture around the world through food. So, I would basically want to cook cuisines in a way in which I was learning history and culture at the same time. And so slowly, but surely, I was realizing I’d never heard of food history. It was becoming more and more clear to me that there must be something like this, so I finally looked into it and realized there really this solid, but very much emerging, field of food history. So, I started reading around and realizing man, I would love to find an academic project so that I could do my hobby as an actual research, academic research, project.

AN: Interested in border studies as well, Robert realized he didn’t have to look too far from home.

RN: It was immediately clear. There’s all kinds of things you could do with food here locally, but in terms of what is the most famous, obvious cross border community that is also a huge part of the food life of Windsor Detroit, it is the Arab diaspora community that is incredibly connected on both sides of the border, in Dearborn, in Windsor. Arab food, it’s just a really major part of Windsor life in terms of where you go and what you eat and grabbing fast food. Getting shawarma at a Lebanese joint is every bit as much as any other kind of food, for anyone in Windsor. So that seemed obvious. So I just thought, let’s look into this, and right away, it seemed to be a really rich field to get into.

AN: So, Robert started this research with two graduate students, one of whom had a Syrian background and helped break the ice with shop and restaurant owners in the community. The other student, of Lebanese background, knew members of the community who said they would love to be interviewed. The students predicted that members would be surprised that their community was an area of academic interest.

RN: I found my interviewee subjects were very eager and told me many times, they never thought anyone would put any attention at an academic level to what they’re involved in; they are very happy that the story was being told. The response we got over and over again was you’re right to treat this as a serious topic, but we’re nevertheless surprised that you’re treating this is a serious topic. And thank you for doing it.

AN: Okay, so, like, what is a foodway? And what makes the Windsor/Detroit Arab foodway particularly interesting to study?

RN: ‘Foodway’ can be any of the various ways in which food moves through culture, history, and society. Arab foodways, that is the mobility of the food trucks that literally cook pita bread in Detroit, in Dearborn in the morning, and physically cross over, literally physically bringing, or the NAFTA highway food trucks that come up and pass through, over the Ambassador Bridge. So, there’s the straightforward mobility of a foodway.

There’s the foodway of ways in which identity is passed from generation to generation. So I really focus a lot on ways in which diaspora communities remake their identity through food—Sunday afternoon gatherings, the family, where members of the family cook food, specifically, that were part of where they came from, and want to pass on to their children—that’s a foodway. If you can think of ways in which food can inform so many elements of society. All of those things, say together, fall into this catch-all term that we use called ‘foodway’.

AN: So, like, a lot of stuff goes into a foodway. It can even be something that’s intergenerational, like passing along cultural knowledge in the form of recipes.

RN: This became one of my kind of favorite areas of food history from studies is exactly how that happens in terms of a migrant community that wants to connect to where they came from when they’re in the new territory. So, for instance, a lot of young men in Windsor, who arrive without family, and have these great stories of calling home to mother, and “how do I make this?” And the amount of times this version of the story was repeated was incredible. “How do I recreate this dish, mom? I need to know. Can you send me the recipe?” First of all, mother saying, “I don’t have a recipe. I didn’t write down a recipe. I know how to make this.” That gets repeated so often that story.

AN: I’m starting have flashbacks of the time I asked my grandmother for a recipe. She handed me a piece of cardboard from the inside of a cereal box, closed her eyes, and for five minutes just described how she cooked it, as I struggled to transcribe and record measurements. Based on what Robert says, I am far from alone in this experience.

RN: This idea we have of recipes being written down, is actually a very specific kind of tradition. So, first of all, mother saying, “No, it’s not written down. Let me just tell you how to do it.” And then another thing, which I never thought was really an invention, our understanding of measurements, tablespoons, half cup measures, etcetera. Mother telling son, “a handful of flour,” the son saying, “mum, my hand is twice as big as yours
 how useful is your handful of flour?” Just these wonderful, rich stories that I got, that is example of generational transfer of these traditions to this kind of way to recreate the homeland in the diaspora in these little very little ways
 language around substitution, “how do I get ingredients that are not available here?” “what is the substitution for those ingredients?” So, all those various things have been a really rich field.

AN: The Windsor/Detroit Arab foodways highlight how folks in the diaspora, who may lack access to traditional ingredients and tools, face additional challenges worth looking into. For most of the Windsor/Detroit Arab foodway’s history, the majority of food production and sales have occurred in Detroit, with folks from Windsor crossing over to buy goods, or commercial trucks from Detroit stocking a limited number of shelves and restaurants in Windsor.

RN: There’s a long history of this border. 1796 is the magical creation of the border down the middle of the Detroit River. But for almost all of that history, the border exists as some kind of imagined construct, but people who live in Windsor/Detroit have crossed back and forth across this imaginary line pretty freely for virtually its entire history.

AN: But two major events over the last twenty years have reshaped this dynamic, despite the close proximity of the communities. Robert says that prior to 9/11, crossing the Windsor/Detroit boarder was fairly easy for people in the Arab communities, which shows how normal and daily an occurrence it was to cross the border along this foodway. But after events of September 11, 2001, crossing that border became far more difficult. Without the access to Detroit on which it had come to reply, with this foodway’s connection under strain, the community in Windsor had to adapt.

RN: The border got a lot more difficult after 9/11 and so, as I spoke about in my paper, the food community here really becomes an independent Windsor-side-of-the-border food community, so you do not have to cross the border anymore. And it kind of explodes into existence early 2002, when people don’t want to cross the border all the time anymore. They do continue to all the time, because the Dearborn community has so much to offer beyond just foodways. Nevertheless, that community explodes in 2002, and continues to grow with increased migration over the last 20 years, to the extent that it had become a rather self-sustaining community.

AN: As a result of the border complications, the Wyandotte corridor, which Robert says was sparse in 1999, had begun to develop into a neighbourhood by 2002, under pressure to create a more localized foodway. Robert observes that by 2005, about 4 blocks were covered with grocery stores and restaurants—the corridor was so well developed, it looked like it had been there for decades. That development would be a very good thing come March 2020.

*clip of newscast: “The world health organization has now confirmed what many epidemiologists have been saying for weeks: the Corona virus is a pandemic
”*

AN: Robert says neither 9/11 or Trump’s 2017 travel ban on Muslim countries, remotely compare to when the Covid-19 pandemic closed the Windsor/Detroit border indefinitely. This only prompted more growth on the Windsor side of the foodway.

RN: That has been such a more significant break in this border community than 9/11 ever was. And one just sees it in the Wyandot corridor, the Arab community in Windsor, just how much more developed has become even since March of 2020, in terms of you now can be live in the world of the Arab diaspora completely on the Windsor side and have no need to cross anymore. That’s been a surprise that the pandemic is much more of a break than anything else.

AN: Having studied the Arab foodway so close to home, what’s next for Robert? Continuing work on the larger cross-border foodway project, closer to his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia.

RN: Chinese foodways was the foodway that I grew up being familiar with, being someone in Vancouver, as the dominant ethnic foodway of Vancouver. The Arab foodways and Chinese foodways are similar in that they’re both migrant food communities along the border, whereas the Mexican foodway is a very different story—it is the hegemonic foodway on one side of that border. So, how does that compare and contrast? And how does the two-hour drive between Vancouver and Seattle make those family connections and foodway connections different from the immediacy of the Windsor/Detroit story? So that’s the larger project.

*music*

AN: Many thanks to Dr. Robert L. Nelson for sharing this research.

*music*

AN: This podcast was brought to you by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. I’m Allison Norris and I was your host for this episode. Thank you to Kathy Dobson and Myriam Durocher, project managers and editors for this series. And to Laura Bruno for creating the theme music. You can find more Food Matters’ podcasts, articles and interviews on the Food Matters website. Thanks for listening!

Ran Xiang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at UBC, focusing on Art Education. During her presentation ”The Magic Leaf: Tea and Materiality” at the Food Matters and Materialities Conference, Xiang explained that tea is a complex object: its taste is affected first by the environment where it grows, second by how it’s harvested and dried, and finally by how it’s served. Moreover, many people are involved in tea production, which means tea is a factor in various social relationships. Xiang’s research explores the concept of materiality through “Yan Cha” or “Cliff/Rock Tea” and the webs of relations connected to this peculiar tea’s production, distribution, and consumption.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

Rock tea is a type of oolong tea produced in China’s Wuyi Mountains, where the soil is rich in minerals, and the moisture is high thanks to the surrounding rivers and bamboo forests. The name comes from the fact that the tea inherits a distinctive mineral, roasted taste, thanks to the soil, or terroir, much like a wine would. Rock tea is usually darker and oxidized. Compared to other types of Oolong tea, Rock tea is twisted into strips instead of rolled.

Tea’s making and aging processes affect its taste and therefore speak of its quality. This lengthy process involves human and non-human “actors” (environmental factors, place, techniques, etc.). Xiang explores how tea’s taste affects people’s emotional and affective states and gives various meanings to tea. She has attended a few tea ceremonies and is keen on learning more about the practice. There are tea experts who, much like sommeliers, can taste all the nuances of tea and assess its quality. Some tea connoisseurs and enthusiasts develop their tea vocabulary using what they learned from professionals through tea ceremonies and other related events. Xiang points out that this rise in popularity and demand for rock tea (and other rare teas) has given way to tea collections by connoisseurs and forgery by some tea merchants.

Although there are hundreds of types of tea, Xiang chose to focus on rock tea because of its complexity. Through her research, Xiang will also try to learn the differences between a Chinese tea ceremony and a Japanese ceremony, something she looks forward to.

“Personally, rock tea is the most interesting because it grows in a particular region in China, and its making process is arguably the most complicated out of the six species of tea. In terms of the taste, to me, it’s the most varied and exuberant.”

During her presentation, Xiang also pointed out the importance of the interaction between the tea leaves and their environment and the machines used to process them. Tea’s final flavour also depends on the skills of those who produce it. For these reasons, tea has become a luxury product, and its price can increase exponentially. According to Xiang, a market has opened for counterfeits and lesser quality products purposely mislabeled as of higher quality.

Physically, tea’s taste changes over time. In 2014, Xiang added aged white tea to her collection, but it was produced in 2010. By the time of our interview in 2021, the tea’s taste and colour were quite different from when it was newly picked and rolled. Tea’s interaction with its environment drives Xiang’s curiosity. Drinking tea also helps her unwind and engage with all her senses:

“Whenever I feel under the weather, I drink strong tea, and it will make me feel a lot better. It creates a sort of moment in the day where I feel peaceful. Tea also has a long history in Zen Buddhism. It has a sort of spirituality within it.”

Tea is a simple drink to most people. Still, to some connoisseurs, it’s a complex cultural object with discernible taste profiles, and teahouses are unique spaces dedicated to bringing people together to sample specialty teas. These places are common across Asia, but there are also some in Canada, especially in Vancouver. Tea houses have a specific layout, lighting, and music to make the experience more poignant. Drinking tea at a teahouse or participating in a tea ceremony are moments that separate it from everyday life.

Xiang explained that, in her view, tea is both soothing and energizing: “I think it’s quite a charming emotion attached to it. “[Tea] satisfies my curiosity and gives me a lot of joy. But when I drink it, I’m also very concentrated and ‘in the moment.’ I want to continue to do fieldwork and interview people. I want to know if that’s what they felt too.”

There is so much to unpack through a little leaf, and research can sometimes be a seemingly endless and lonely endeavour. When I asked Xiang what motivated her to take on this project and how she keeps motivated, she said the key is to have a genuine appreciation for the object of study, but finding joy and taking care of oneself is also important: “It’s a personal interest turned into a scholarly pursuit. I find it fascinating, and it’s also an everyday thing for me. In the morning, I use a big mug and pour hot water on the tea leaves because it makes the smell come out immediately. That kind of sets me in a good tone for the day ahead. I would say it’s an everyday drink, and yet it’s very joyful for me”.

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of history behind tea, and I can understand why it is a fascinating object of study. I hope this conversation inspires you to be curious about what’s behind your next cup of tea!

With global migration increasing and ongoing, communities in countries that receive migrants and refugees have organized ways to support newcomers. Edda Starck and RaĂșl Matta see how food and the material structures around food play a role in how newcomers are welcomed. Currently, a postgraduate student in Anthropology and Cultural Musicology, Edda Starck joined the research project FOOD2GATHER during her master’s degree studies with Principal Investigator RaĂșl Matta, a research fellow at Georg-August-University Göttingen. Presented at the Food Matters & Materialities: Critical Understandings of Food Cultures conference, their paper “Social Integration Through the Kitchen: Cooking and Eating with Others in Germany”, explores two initiatives taking place in Germany.

A RefuEat cart and cyclist. Credits: E. Starck and R. Matta.

Operating since 2016, REFUEAT employs refugees and migrants to run mobile food stalls, converted from a cleverly designed bike-drawn trailer that folds out to a functioning kitchen to prepare and sell Arabic street food. An international organization founded in Germany in 2014, Über den Tellerrand brings together people from different backgrounds to forge community through food. Their portable version of Über den Tellerrand, Kitchen on the Run, uses a shipping container as the infrastructure to host community events. Starck and Matta investigate the materiality of objects associated with food services in Germany to see how they operate as assemblages of food, people, and matter. The researchers worked with the concept of “conviviality” to explore how these three operate and facilitate community-building among migrants, refugees, and local populations. After the conference, I had a chance to speak with them about these initiatives, thinking through human and non-human relationships and where their research might go next.

The RefuEat cart unpacked and open for business. Credits: E. Starck and R. Matta.

Allison Norris: What drew your attention to the projects REFUEAT and Über den Tellerrand?

RaĂșl Matta: The project began looking for funding at the end of 2017 and was created with five other European universities. It is about food and social integration in public spaces in Europe. One of the requirements was to work closely with civil society associations. We looked for initiatives that put food at the center of work with migrants and refugees as a means to gather people to create bridges between encounters. I searched for initiatives in Germany and found REFUEAT through an associate. The founder had already experienced working with research projects and other social initiatives, so he was very keen to participate. Über den Tellerrand was recruited later through a colleague in Berlin. Edda joined the project as a research assistant when we were about to start research in 2019.

Edda Starck: I’m interested in social activism in general. I find it interesting to combine the topics of food and immigration. I was starting my masters at the university, so it was an exciting opportunity to join such a big project, get insight, and participate in the research.

The food storage capacity of the RefuEat cart. Credits: E. Starck and R. Matta.

AN: Can you talk a little bit about what Über den Tellerrand means? And how it informs the research overall?

ES: Über den Tellerrand is a German proverb. It means to broaden your horizon and literally “look beyond the edge of your own plate”. It’s a fitting name for the organization because they are trying to bring communities together and facilitate encounters with food as a medium.

AN: “Conviviality” is, as you say, a notion central to your discussion. Could you explain this term or give an example of how conviviality works in the context of your research and the activities you are observing?

ES: Conviviality comes from the Latin words “living together”. In our research, this has been a really important notion because we work with organizations that try to facilitate social integration. It is important that integration doesn’t mean or doesn’t only mean assimilation. Rather there are possibilities for different communities to live together, as they see fit. The organizations that we work with are trying to facilitate that in different ways. Über den Tellerrand has community cooking events, where they invite migrants and refugees to give cooking classes, and anyone can attend. People come together in the kitchens and make a meal together. That’s an interesting dynamic because it puts refugees in the position of teachers in a way that acknowledges and validates their knowledge. It also makes the spaces created by migrants within their new homes more familiar and accessible to local communities. In that sense, food becomes a medium through which different communities can come together without necessarily already having much in common.

RM: We see conviviality as a humble and non-hierarchical perspective of social life and socializing. Our work reflects on breaking this dichotomy between host and newcomer. The conviviality perspective facilitates focus on collaboration by people from different backgrounds, but also material culture. For instance, the food bikes and kitchen container play a quasi-human role in the sense that they are considered as partners in this project. In the case of Über den Tellerrand, the founders told us that they consider the containers as one partner, so they care for it. [For REFUEAT], the bicycles allow refugees to explore the city in ways they probably would not be able to by themselves in other contexts. This can be seen as a collaboration and also to improve their life. This is what conviviality is about—enhancing the capacities of all the actors, human and non-human.

The Über den Tellerand kitchen and dining area. Credits: Über den Tellerran.

AN: RaĂșl, I think you’re hinting at how human and non-human actors both have agency here. Is there anything to add about how humans and non-humans can act together?

ES: Migrants face many hurdles in Germany—a lot of these are bureaucratic and social. It’s interesting to see how people recruit material objects and artifacts as they develop technologies in order to circumvent these [hurdles]. One of the reasons the food bikes are so ingenious and important is because most driving licenses from the Middle East, which is where a lot of migrants have come from originally, are not acknowledged in Germany. The food bikes permit migrants to set up these food stalls across the city, which wouldn’t otherwise be possible. This is what makes objects so essential in these projects.

RM: Definitely. That’s conviviality. It helps to de-institutionalize what is already established and imposes barriers that make life more difficult for people. It’s something that creates a path to do things differently.

AN: REFUEATS, Über den Tellerrand, and what they bring forward in terms of conviviality all sound pretty hopeful. With world migration projected to continue increasing, what can countries that receive migrants learn from your research? What do you want people to take away from this research?

ES: Hopefully, people can be inspired by the work of these initiatives, think outside the box and be creative with the ways in which they build their social projects. These are quite small-scale projects; it’s difficult to transfer them to a national approach. Food as a medium is something people can keep working with—it’s proven to be quite successful. There’s a lot of racism and xenophobia that has revolved around food and specifically against migrants in Germany and other places in the world.

RM: For instance, our colleagues in Norway and Belgium are using food as a medium to teach the young kids, children of refugees, the Norwegian language, and the French language by making cookbooks. They cook together; they prepare the recipes—this is also a way to play with the material culture, in this case, food. People can be inspired using food.

The portable container that holds the Über den Tellerand kitchen and dining area. Credits: Über den Tellerrand.

AN: Where will this research go next?

ES: What will definitely continue to interest me are the notions of conviviality and more than human agency. These concepts will stay relevant for me.

RM: I’m developing the concept of convivial foodscapes to use the broad concept of conviviality, which is informed in many different ways. For instance, feminist theories, theories of Indigenous knowledge. I’m trying to build a broader concept of community—the idea is to enhance life for relationships between humans, plants, animals, and also the relationship we have with matter. It’s a bit philosophical; it’s the ember in every project.

Many thanks to Edda Starck and RaĂșl Matta for sharing their work and time. For more information about the projects discussed, visit and .

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

During his presentation, “The Invention of Authentic Food: Constructing Traditionality Through Ingredients and Matters,” at the 2021 Food Matters and Materialities Conference, Alessandro Gerosa questioned the concept of ‘authenticity’ and its importance in contemporary food cultures. A postdoctoral researcher in Economic Sociology at the Catholic University of Milan, Gerosa conducted semi-structured interviews with forty bartenders and street food vendors in Milan, Italy, to discuss what they do, how they do it, and the types of technologies they use.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

According to Gerosa, “authenticity” is used so often and for so many different things that its meaning is fluid and can change over time. Gerosa explains that authenticity is a “myth with material qualities when it comes to food.” In other words, a dish contains different components. Over time, the dish’s perceived authenticity will depend on whether or not it includes those components or food products and what type of meaning eaters assign to that dish.

As Gerosa argues, analyzing the interaction between a dish’s material aspects and its meanings helps us critically think of authenticity as a concept. He argues that in a capitalist society, “people think of industrial products as mainstream. Still, so many use the word to create a difference in their products that ‘authenticity’ is the new mainstream. And so here you have these apparent contradictions between the terms.”

Gerosa points out the importance of historical context to understand how “authenticity” has changed. “Society wanted to be technological and look towards the future. So, people looked down on farmers’ traditional products because making them required little technology. But from 1968 and through the 70s, there was a revolt against this idea of industrial production and standardization. And so, the relevance of authenticity in contemporary consumption patterns is a natural and significant outcome of this process.”

Gerosa argues that the idea of authenticity also mythologizes certain products and dishes. We might imagine them as genuine snippets of a place and its culture. He also argues that “authentic products tend to be labour-intensive and require the best possible raw materials.” In addition, Gerosa highlights that certain ingredients are often associated with traditional culinary practices, including, for example, in Italy, which is a source of great pride. In some cases, a product’s authenticity is protected by special labels and laws to ensure they are produced, processed, and prepared in a specific geographical area, using local ingredients and the recognized know-how of local producers.

But authenticity is not a fixed, inherent characteristic of a dish or a product, argues Gerosa. Instead, it’s a fluid, socially constructed concept. Pasta carbonara is a well-known Italian dish and is an excellent example of how authenticity becomes socially constructed. According to Gerosa, there are two dominant theories on the possible origins of carbonara. The first one traces it to shepherds in the Lazio region who had to stay weeks herding their sheep in the mountains. They carried cured meats like guanciale or bacon because they don’t spoil quickly. The shepherds also found raw eggs from the chickens they came across. “You can imagine that it was a very different recipe. It was eggs, bacon and some fat. I don’t know what specific pasta they used. But that’s one, and that’s the most probable origin.”

The second explanation for carbonara’s origin might sound made up, but according to Gerosa, it is plausible. “Carbonara doesn’t appear in Italian recipe books published before WWII; the theory is that authentic carbonara was invented during this time. American forces liberated Rome and stayed for a while following the allied victory. They provided Romans with mostly chocolate, canned bacon, and powdered eggs.”

Gerosa’s points are valid beyond the Italian context. Tacos al pastor are one of Mexico’s most famous tacos, made with marinated pork, cooked on a vertical spit, served with onions, cilantro, and pineapple. This dish dates back to around the 1930s and is the product of Lebanese immigrants’ who, to make a living, used local ingredients and tailored their food to the local’s taste. Think of tacos al pastor as shawarma’s distant-Mexican cousin.

Tempura is another “authentic” dish with vague origins and elements of cultural mixing. It probably originated in the 16th century and is an adaptation of peixinhos da horta – a Portuguese dish of battered and fried green beans deep-fried in oil. Portuguese merchants prepared peixinhos da horta for the Japanese, who then adapted it to their taste.

These examples are just a small glimpse into how complicated and fluid authenticity can be – a socially constructed perception of a dish being attached to a place that sometimes ignores the complex food history and social interactions.

Thank you to Alessandro Gerosa for sharing such a fascinating conversation with me.

Kelsey Speakman, a Ph.D. candidate at York University, is interested in studying how food is provisioned and marketed. During the 2021 Food Matters and Materialities Conference, she presented her research paper, “Meat-ing in the Middle: Supermarkets, Trust, and the Beef Supply Chain in Canada” in which she explored how trust capital is created between companies and consumers by conducting a case study of the beef supply chain and marketing of Loblaw’s products. After her fascinating presentation, I had the opportunity to interview Kelsey and ask her questions about her work.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

Grace Ingraham: To begin, I wondered: what led you to become interested in your field research?

Kelsey Speakman: The research I presented at the conference is part of my doctoral project, which emerged out of lines of thinking that began during my Master of Arts in Performance Studies at New York University. When I was in New York, I was amazed by the diversity of food spaces, from farmers’ markets and food co-ops to 24-hour supermarkets and Trader Joe’s. I was fascinated by the different ways people related with food and began thinking of those relationships as performances.

So, when I moved to Toronto, the Loblaws store at Maple Leaf Gardens had recently opened, and they were using the slogan ‘foods greatest stage’. This was interesting to me because now a supermarket was self consciously thinking about itself as a performance space.

GI: What inspired you to choose Loblaws as your case study over other Canadian grocery store chains?

KS: I selected the chain because I was interested in exploring the experience of shopping in Canadian supermarkets, and Loblaws is Canada’s biggest food retailer. So, a case study of their stores allowed me to observe the kinds of experiences many shoppers in Canada would encounter while still being able to keep my research grounded in empirical details by looking at one as opposed to trying to encompass all grocery stores in Canada.

GI: In your presentation, you used the term ‘trust capital’. Could you explain what it means?

KS: I’m building on Pierre Bourdieu’s extension of Marxist capital to include forms of social and cultural status beyond economic assets. I’m using Bourdieu’s model to define trust capital as the accumulated resources that contribute to the trustworthiness of a person, organization, or business. So basically, all the stuff that makes someone or something trustworthy. When an entity is trustworthy, I think they have more influence over what is seen as ethical.

GI: During your presentation, you discussed whether the supply chain can be trusted to feed Canadian communities. What recommendations would you make to improve broken links in Canada’s beef supply chain?

KS: I don’t think there’s a one size fits all answer, but I particularly liked what one of the keynote speakers for the conference, Dr. Hobart, said about thinking about food systems in terms of melting instead of breakage and repair. Dr. Hobart spoke about how, unlike something breaking and being repaired, something that melts doesn’t become fixed in terms of stability which insists that we need to tend to it continually.

So, with that in mind, a perfect supply chain is one that runs without interruptions, is never broken, and delivers economic growth without human intervention. But as we’ve seen in the pandemic, the illusion of a smooth supply chain is only possible when risks are offloaded to various actors who are responsible for keeping the chain going. So, instead of that approach to maintaining the uninterrupted supply, I think the idea of tending to supply network relationships would create a more even distribution of risk, which I think would decrease risk overall.

To give a more concrete example: In Canada, we have a consolidated beef industry, where a small number of companies and plants control a large amount of the supply. This might seem safer in terms of enforcing top-down health and safety regulations. But as we saw with the closure of meatpacking plants during the pandemic, this kind of consolidated system is actually fragile because it falls apart when something unexpected happens. This breakdown has all kinds of unsafe repercussions for meatpackers, the environment, and the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers.

I think tending to these broken relationships will involve more diversified food networks or food ecologies that are more responsive to contextual regulation. For instance, the National Farmers Union in Canada has been calling for the opening of more provincially regulated or local abattoirs instead of these large federally regulated, consolidated packing plants. This would diversify the supply chain for when unexpected things happen. Lastly, Indigenous communities have been striving for centuries to retain relationships with their traditional territories and foods so that they’re not reliant on foods like beef that come from colonial systems.

GI: Before we wrap up, what do you think might be surprising to readers about your research and results? I was surprised to learn about the various ways beef is marketed towards Canadians.

KS: I think this depends on who you’re talking to what they find surprising. I noticed that Canadian supermarkets and the beef industry rely heavily on the conception that Canada is a nice, trustworthy, and tolerant country in order to present their brands as trustworthy.

Beef is also presented as this natural Canadian product that somehow emerged out of the wild frontier landscape. But it is actually part of ongoing land dispossession because ranching was used to lay claim for agriculture on behalf of the Dominion of Canada in the 19th century. As the beef industry grew, it decimated the bison population, with which Indigenous peoples had essential relationships with. But I don’t think my work would necessarily be surprising for Indigenous people, people of colour, and others whose identities aren’t centered in Canadian patriotism.

GI: Thank you, Kelsey, for taking the time to speak with me and sharing your research. I have certainly gained a new perspective on supply chains and the beef industry in Canada.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In their presentation at the Food Matters & Materialities: Critical Understandings of Food Cultures conference, Katie Konstantopoulos, and Koby Song-Nichols shared their research, which positions Peking and Cantonese roast duck as delicious meals but also as materials sites of cultural meaning. The presentation “It’s in the Duck: Diaspora and Thinking Dialectically in a Settler Colonial Food System” traces the Pekin breed of duck’s place in agriculture, the space it occupies on the table, and even through our own consumption. Farmed at just three locations across Canada and only one location in Ontario, Pekin duck offers an opportunity to think about colonialism, diaspora, food systems, kin, and even imagine new futures of collective action and mutual aid. Konstantopoulos, an independent researcher who also works in sustainable planning, and Koby Song-Nichols, a Ph.D. student in history and food studies at the University of Toronto, examine the lessons we can learn from farming, advertising, cooking, and eating duck. I had a chance to catch up with them after the Foods Matters conference to discuss their research. The following conversation focuses on their work as it pertains to the intersections of the relationships between diaspora, traditional foods, settler-colonial responsibility on Indigenous lands, and how we can all move forward, eating and thinking dialectically.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

Allison Norris: What drew you to diasporic food history and communities? And what drew the two of you to work together?

Katie Konstantopoulos: Initially, the idea was to expand into and learn about diasporic foodways from perspectives other than my own. My background is in Food Studies and diasporic history of Greek, Macedonian, and Balkan communities, specifically in diasporic kitchens. This project came out of an undergrad project I was given when I was studying at University of Toronto, Scarborough – I was asked to learn about duck. This project has a lot to do with the Chinese community, and that was one reason Koby, and I began collaborating. For me, there was a desire to understand my own diasporic history, my family’s immigrant history, and place that within the Canadian context. I was also learning about the history of treaty land and trying to place myself within the context of Indigenous history as well.

Koby Song-Nichols: When Katie first brought this project to me, I was just beginning Food Studies. My previous interests were Asian-American and Chinese-American Studies. When this duck project came about, I had the initial response I think many people have to our research: Duck? Really? Why? But it has been a fascinating way to think about different diasporic connections I have close to my heart. The ways diasporic people relate to settler colonialism are not as straightforward or transparent as other identities.

I was drawn to this project and drawn to research duck based on my family history as a Chinese-American. I have a distinct memory of a family gathering. We had a massive roast Cantonese duck on the table. I was young and sitting next to my great uncle. He kept piling duck on my plate, and I would eat it because I wanted to be polite. I had pretty much eaten the entire roast duck. My uncle said, you’re growing, keep going – I was sick afterward! But this feeling of care and familial connection brought me to this project, to learn or unpack all the meaning behind it.

AN: I love that notion of care or over-care. And that somewhat answers my second question: Why ducks? Why ducks of all the farmed animals in Canada which make it onto our plates?

KK: Kobe and I have talked about this many times. Duck is niche and unique. You can trace duck on a local level and talk about so many different things. Duck is such an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary space to talk about human and non-human and kin studies, but you can have scientific conversations as well. Bringing duck into diaspora and focusing on human interaction [with it] is where we can interrogate our own biases.

KSN: Duck is, in some ways, an obvious choice from a Chinese-Canadian or Chinese-American Studies perspective because the Peking Roast Duck is super prominent in Chinese diasporic cuisines. For many people, Chinese and non-Chinese, the imagery of roast ducks hanging in the window is iconic to Chinatown. Coupled with the origins of these ducks⁠—the one family farm in Ontario that has its own production and promotional imagery of duck⁠—how do we reconcile these two images? What images do we have access to when interacting with both of these duck images, based on our own positionality, interest, and palettes? Duck opens up all of these conversations and research avenues.

KK: We trace our own migration, but do we trace the migration of our food alongside us? We’re trying to tease out the concept of duck as a migrant to Treaty 13, duck as a treaty entity, and what that means for non-human kin. How can we come into relation and understand our food system, not just in a very industrial, capitalistic, and colonial sense, but also learn from our Indigenous kin and the knowledges that have been shared, in order to understand we all have a place and a part to play in the food system. We have to understand how everything that we’ve interacted with, everything that we’ve brought along with us, impacts the food system and Indigenous peoples as well.

KSN: Diaspora has its origins in historical moments where a group has been forced to move away from a homeland and are dispersed large lot across long distances. What does that old homeland mean to you? For immigrants or migrants, that adds to nostalgia or missing home, as a deep interrogation of what home is, or can mean, and all the related conversations. For me to identify as part of a diaspora is to open my heart and mind to different ways of coming into relation to the various places I’ve found myself. It’s a way of recognizing my connection to Chinese culture to various historical Chinese homelands and also to the United States, now that I’m outside that country.

KK: What also ties that together is the ‘imagined community’⁠—an idea from Benedict Anderson and other folks who have taken up this work⁠—the idea that we are all tied by the way that we imagine our homelands, our homes, our communities, and our relations to one another. I see diaspora as a consistent sense of placelessness, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s understanding the way that migration consistently moves us, how we relate to our places, and the spaces that we call home, or the spaces that we are coming to as guests. I’m a white person, and it doesn’t matter how I claim my history – Greek or Macedonian – my settler-colonial ancestry goes much farther back than just being here in Canada.

AN: Your work is done with an orientation toward, as you say, “more ethical engagements with our Indigenous hosts”? Your presentation mentioned a number of non-Indigenous groups, like settler-descendants and diaspora. How are these distinctions important to your research?

KSN: This is part of ongoing debates within academia and various fields. For us and our research, it’s not about teasing out the differences between those categories. We’re finding ways that we can all relate to the colonial-settler system that we’re in, the roles our ancestors have played in these systems, the roles that we can play, and reflect on what we are participating in. We’re asking diaspora studies to continue to ask questions about how we are implicated in various structures and how can we work towards more solidarity or reimagining futures which don’t have the same oppressions or marginalizations that we currently have.

KK: We use diaspora as a way to understand the unsettling that is asked of us – decolonization is meant to unsettle us. What does diaspora bring to us? It brings to us a sense of non-belonging and belonging – this is where our paper specifically originated. What can it mean when a diaspora resists being complicit in the settler-colonial state?

AN: What is the relationship between food and decolonization?

KK: Our food systems are complicated by violences, the migration of other foods here, but also the decimation of food systems long cared for by the Indigenous peoples of this land. Does duck have that flavor? Can you taste it? Can you taste colonialism? Can you taste white supremacy? Does it make you uncomfortable? If you’re interrogating that, being critical, have a critical food consciousness, and are eating dialectically, you will be able to understand how these histories are embodied in foods and how you’re implicated by consuming them.

AN: What does it mean to eat dialectically in our everyday lives? What can people engage with daily, as informed by your research?

KSN: The notion of eating dialectically emerged from Grace Lee Boggs’ notion of thinking dialectically⁠—the process of continually challenging yourself to reimagine yourself and how you relate to everything else. Recognize the ways that our imagination has been shaped or limited based on the realities that we see and things we interact with.

So when I eat Cantonese food, I immediately think of that memory of my uncle caring for me. I can also think about the ways that connect me to Chinese communities here and the different foodways. If I keep going, I see how duck connects me to a rural Ontario farm and histories of settler colonialism. What does Cantonese roast duck in Toronto look like if I more critically engage with food system? How will I have to change? How will my diet have to change? What work will I have to do in this food system to make this duck sit right with my new knowledge of the food system?

It’s a constant evaluation. Our work moves beyond a critical consciousness of food toward a greater sense of freedom or a reimagined future where everyone is better nourished, well-nourished, more sustainably and regeneratively, a future better for everyone.

AN: Your presentation also talked about cultivating relationships, taking responsibility for your actions, a commitment to practice of settler harm reduction. What does this look like? What steps would you encourage people to take?

KK: We are not experts⁠—our positionality holds that we don’t know. Do the research, find out what land you’re on, whose land you’re on. Many Indigenous communities are speaking up and asking us to show up. In some cases, this might also look like paying reparations, donation. Work within your community to figure out your next steps. You might not know them yet, but your space will become known to you. We work in this academic forum because that’s where we are right now. Wherever you are, you’ll find an avenue for this kind of work.

KSN: We are still beginning to walk the walk that we’re talking. Part of what this theoretical model hopes to work toward is the openness of heart and openness of mind needed to make sure that people are in a good place to open these dialogues, to reimagine oneself. What are my own dreams and my own futures? How can I challenge those when I listen to activists, people who work hard to make a difference and help the most vulnerable in our society? When in a crisis, [and] we find ourselves in many crises right now, there are folks trying to make it easier and create the opportunity to help each other. By eating dialectically, we can look for those opportunities, open our hearts, and be able to better help each other, which leads to systemic changes.

Thank you to Katie Konstantopoulos and Koby Song-Nichols for taking the time to speak with me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you’re interested in hearing more about the relationship between decolonialism and food systems, check the podcast about Taylor Wilson’s research on the Canadian Food Guide, available as part of the Food Matters outreach materials.

Podcast episode host: Fleur Esteron

Interviewees: Janis Goldie

Podcast theme music: Laura Bruno

Script editor: Kathy Dobson

Script editor & project manager: Myriam Durocher

Transcript

*music*

Fleur Esteron: Hello, everyone. You’re listening to Food Matters’ podcast series, brought to you by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. My name is Fleur Esteron, and I’ll be your host for this episode.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Janis Goldie, who presented at the Food Matters and Materialities Conference. Here is what came out of this important conversation.

Janis is a Professor and the Chair of the Communication Studies Department at Huntington University in Sudbury, Ontario. During the conference, she presented her research paper entitled, When Every Bite Could Kill: Examining the Material Experiences of Caretakers of Children with Food Allergies.

Her presentation sheds light on common misunderstandings around food allergies and the role of social inequities in food allergy management. Janis’ research focuses on the real-life experiences of caretakers, particularly mothers, of children with food allergies.

I asked Janis what led her to this research, and here is her incredible response:

Janis Goldie: Great question because not probably surprisingly I have children that have food allergies and so that happened later in my life, right. Both of my children were born with severe nut and a few other allergies. So, all of that background informed my interest in it, obviously. It was really eye opening for me doing the interviews because I was very, very cognizant of my own biases. And that’s why we actually did it as a team effort, as well. So there were two other researchers, a student, Masters of Science Communication student helped us out immensely and another professor at Laurentian. So we did the interviews, the analysis, and all those things, each of us separately. Because I was really kind of worried that I was gonna impose my own biases. But that certainly wasn’t the case. And there was a lot of themes that cropped up that were different but a lot of similar themes in terms of the experiences. That’s were I came from it. Always, as Communication Studies specialists, you’re interested in how things are getting defined, and that was one of the questions that we asked everyone right off the hop, what does a food allergy mean to you. To me, those answers were some of the most interesting out of all the research actually. It really showed the difference between the parents and the medical professionals and the education professionals, they defined it quite differently. We look at food as such a personal choice often. It’s something we get to do and we get to make decisions about, and it’s such a socially contested issue in that way. A food allergy isn’t often seen as a disease, but that it’s a nuisance or it’s the child’s choice. Those kinds of things. The policies around food allergies are really different than if you were to think about childhood diabetes, which, again, obviously isn’t a choice. It’s a medical condition. The fact that it’s food makes people think it’s a choice. But that was a really long answer to a very short question. But that’s where it’s coming from.

FE: Hearing Janis’ answer, I realized that, for many of us, there are still misunderstandings around food allergies
 ÌęI asked her to explain why this is so. Here’s what she said:

JG: One of the major themes that kept coming out was the lack of education and the lack of understanding about food allergies. At every turn, whether it was with family members, or whether it was with medical professionals, or whether with you know principals, you name it, team coaches. Story after story was people didn’t understand what food allergies are, what it means to deal with food allergies, and the constant education that these caretakers had to do on a daily basis. They were constantly teaching, constantly communicating. For that reason, I think it’s really important to focus on the education pieces to a broad community, a broad stakeholder community so that different people are understanding how these things come across. Unfortunately, as with many things, we understand things in terms of media representations and the media representations of food allergies are not great. They tend to be comical, or ridiculous, or they’re made fun of, they’re poked fun at. The people who have food allergies are shown to be weak or picky. So this kind of education project that the parents had to do, particularly, it’s the thing that we really need to focus on and work on because, undoubtedly, there was a lot of themes. But that was the overarching theme, that more education is needed.

FE: During her presentation, Janis talked about the material experiences of caretakers of children with food allergies
. Since this was an expression that I hadn’t heard of before, I asked her to explain what she meant by “material experiences” and to provide some examples to put it into context.

JG: The way we looked at it was in terms of the reality of the day-to-day management of caretaking with children with food allergies. An example would be, thinking about, food labour comes to mind for me a lot. Particularly people who had multiple food allergies but also people who had a singular food allergy in a child. They can’t just go to the store and buy crackers or cookies, especially if it’s an egg allergy or soy allergy. It’s very difficult to find prepared food stuffs that don’t have egg or soy or even dairy is a really tricky one. Those parents were the food labourer. They’re making everything from scratch every time there’s an event at school. If you know someone’s bringing in cupcakes or cookies for a birthday party, they have to make and send in something for their child. If there’s a birthday party they’ve got to create their own pizza and send it with the kid or the kid can’t go. We think about how time consuming our own food preparation is, there’s just so much more food labour. And then grocery shopping. So I think that’s what I mean about material experiences, maybe that’s not what everyone means by that term, but I was thinking of the day-to-day management that these parents are experiencing.

FE: As I mentioned earlier, Janis’ research focused on the real-life experiences of caretakers, particularly mothers. This discussion made me realize how much extra work it is for mothers, to help manage their child’s food allergies.

So
 I asked Janis, based on the participant interviews, what she saw as the mothers’ number one need in order to help them feel supported in this often challenging journey of managing their child’s food allergies.

JG: The goal is still to come out with some real outcomes that can be achieved in a community. I think one of the clear outcomes that we’ve heard over and over is that a support group would help immensely whether that means an online support group or physical. These people need to find each other, and their biggest moments of assistance actually came from peers and other people that had food allergies, rather than the medical profession as much as you don’t want to hear that. At some point they felt like they were the experts that they could help other people. And then educational documents. It came very clear that they were moments where certain things could help immensely in their experiences. That’s where the public health unit is going to come in, once we get the report wrapped up and we say these are some of our suggestions, that’s when we’re going to work with them to try to deliver some of those pieces and efforts.

FE: During her presentation, Janis mentioned that one of the challenges for children living with allergies includes social exclusion and lack of social opportunities
. I wanted to know more about this. So I asked her if these children encountered other challenges while living with food allergies.

JG: Especially in terms of social exclusion, the big ones are things that we take for granted like birthday parties, even family potlucks, you can’t just say in a potluck if you have food allergies. It’s probably the worst possible thing. Every time someone wants to go to a restaurant. Those kinds of situations, because food is such a big part of our daily lives and our social lives. Almost every time we socialize, we have food as a part of it. It’s very rare that we get together with people and don’t eat or drink, in Canada anyway. It’s a very interesting north American trait. Because of that, because food is such a big part of social interactions, I think that’s the biggest challenge and that’s when sometimes they get excluded because people assume that we can’t have somebody over because we’ve got peanut butter in our house. They’re too nervous about it, or they don’t want to take the chance and they’re afraid. It’s not necessarily that they don’t want to invite the child over, they’re really worried about it, or they don’t know how to handle it. They’re nervous. There’s a lack of social invites for a lot of the kids. Probably, no surprise, have pretty heightened levels of anxiety. The parents are anxious, I think sometimes kids reflect the parents, not all of them, but quite a few of them are quite anxious, especially about new experiences, when they’re going into new environments and not sure what they’re going to meet. Anxiety was a problem.

A number of the caretakers talked about students and the children having food aversions. Some of the ones that were diagnosed quite late, in fact, when they were having a hard time getting an official diagnosis. The kids got so nervous about food in general that they couldn’t swallow, couldn’t chew. Their anxiety about eating was so heightened, so there were some serious food aversions. Even, I can’t remember the word that the parent used, but development, in terms of chewing and eating development. Some of those things were outcomes, a few of them mentioned bullying, which is pretty common in the literature on food allergy. But I don’t think it was as prevalent in the interviews as it is according to the literature. So that’s kind of interesting and we’d have to delve into that in terms of the research maybe why it’s not. I don’t know if it’s a smaller community, a lot of these kids grow up together. But what was really interesting, I think, is opposite of the bullying. ÌęThis was all through their parents and we didn’t interview the kid so it’s all kind of second hand but that the children felt like their friends and their peers were incredibly supportive. There were stories of their friends telling the teacher, you know, Joe can’t have that, you got to get that out of the classroom. There’s a supply teacher, they don’t know. They’re quite protective and they look out for each other, so they seem to really understand the food allergy world. Unlike sometimes, those of us older who maybe didn’t grow up with it as much. Just about every child has a friend or someone in their class now that has at least one food allergy. That’s not the world I grew up in. So I think there’s that disconnect in a way between the older generation’s understanding and maybe not so much for the younger generation. Which I thought was kind of hopeful and encouraging for those kids. But again I didn’t talk to the kids, it was mainly through the parents. Of course they were focused on their experiences probably more so than their children’s.

FE: Janis’ answers to my question highlight the importance of community, not only for the mothers but also for their children. In her presentation, she mentioned that her participants, again who are caretakers for children with allergies, experience feelings of guilt.

JG: To me that was probably, from my theoretical perspective, I found that part really fascinating because I’ve done other research on gender and feminism. I thought it was really interesting that, first of all, we only had self identified mothers, female mothers, come and talk to us. So that was pretty interesting. It also became very obvious throughout the interviews that the caretaking was their role. So they would talk about, what I do, what I do, what I do. Sometimes we’d ask questions, so who else is involved, who supports you. Very often, if they had anyone, it was really their mothers. Interestingly, this isn’t generalizable, the in-law family sometimes presented a lot of challenges and didn’t believe in the allergy. It was this really interesting generational relationship with females and their mothers. So the only person some of them trusted to take care of the child, besides themselves, was their mothers. So imagine a world where you feel like you can’t walk away from your kids at all. And when you’re working, that’s really stress inducing. We all need that break. So that was interesting.

So as part of that is this idealization of motherhood. That’s a whole other theoretical ball of wax. The idea that as the good mother, as the perfect mother, we self sacrifice. We ensure that it’s the kids above us and that moment in time we’re fully responsible for every piece of their well being. Which is, of course, ridiculous. But that’s the popular construction of what motherhood is. It was very interesting that these women had internalized what it means to be a good mother. Their responses about guilt were, I should have known that my child had a food allergy; I can’t believe I gave him the yogurt that almost killed him; I should have done this and I should have been more aware. When everything they talked about in terms of guilt, they would literally say, I feel like a terrible mother. It was really around mothering. The guilt was so much associated with what being a good mother is.

FE: Janis’ response highlights the layers that exist not just in the “idea” of being a good mother, but specifically around the “idea” of being a good mother while managing your child’s food allergies. It’s apparent that society still has a long way to go in supporting mothers taking care of children with food allergies. Janis’ research helps us take that important first step towards understanding their experiences. There is an apparent need to increase public education and overall support for the caretakers. Janis has truly provided us with some “food for thought.

This concludes today’s podcast. I’d like to thank you, our listeners, for tuning in and to Janis Goldie for sharing her important research on the material experiences of caretakers of children with food allergies and for participating in the 2021 Food Matters and Materialities Conference.

This podcast was brought to you by ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University. My name is Fleur EsteronÌęand I was your host for today’s episode. Thank you to Kathy Dobson and Myriam Durocher, project managers and editors for this show as well as to Laura Bruno for the creation of the theme music. You can find more of Food Matters’ podcasts on the Food MattersÌęwebsite.

Professor Agata Stronciwilk suggests food as a way to illustrate the relations between feminism, resistance, and political acts. “[Food’s] symbolic and social significance make it a powerful medium to engage in artistic practice,” she stated during her presentation at the Food Matters & Materialities conference, “Food Art and Feminism: The Case of the ‘Black Protests’ in Poland”. Stronciwilk situates several food art exhibits in relation to the Black Protests in Poland – so named for the black clothes women wore during the all-women’s strike on to symbolically mourn the death of women’s reproductive rights in Poland – protests which continue as of this writing.

Credits: Illustration by Kit Chokly.

Stronciwilk, assistant professor at Faculty of Fine Arts at Jan DƂugosz Academy in Częstochowa whose research focuses on food in contemporary art, zeros in on one art exhibition, (roughly translated to “She Gastronomes”). The exhibition was curated by Iwona Demko and Renata Kopyto and held in conjunction with one Black Protest on March 8, 2017. Stronciwilk Ìęfound this pairing fascinating. “How can you speak about your identity through food?” asks Stronciwilk. “I started looking at this exhibition, the obvious relation between a woman and cooking, which is so strongly rooted in culture, how feminist scholars tried to deal with this topic, to reframe the way we think about the kitchen and about cooking as a form of oppression.”

The Western feminist movement is commonly/arguably associated with three waves: suffrage in the early 1900s; sexual, labour, and legal rights in the 1960s and 70s;and an ongoing third wave stems from late 20^th century reconsiderations, which now aim for inclusion of marginalized groups. Similar waves reached Poland much later, particularly in terms of art. “There was this moment 10 years ago when we thought, we have achieved have some kind of equality, and now we can think about moving forward. But we are experiencing a moving back in time… there is a fight for the most basic women’s rights” says Stronciwilk.

What she is describing here corresponds to what Western academics currently call “postfeminism”. Western academics consider postfeminism as sensibility or perception that ideals of the feminist movement have been achieved. Postfeminism simultaneously denies feminism’s contemporary relevance while offering antifeminism under a guise of liberation, specifically sexualized liberation or self-determination. The postfeminist figure in Poland is not one empowered via sexualization but rather typified in the Polish mother figure, who chooses to stay in the kitchen and labour tirelessly to support her family. This might seem like a familiar North American housewife trope, but the martyr-like figure of the Polish mother is part of national identity.

“The Polish mother figure is very deeply rooted in our history. There are a lot of books written about it and very good feminist analysis of how this concept is connected with capitalism, traditionalism, and conservatism. The model Polish mother sacrifices herself for her family,” Stronciwilk elaborates. “This figure is very strongly rooted in our history because there is a lot of suffering in our history. Women in the household were also portrayed as someone who has to suffer. They have to suffer for their families because this is what the nation wants them to – you need to suffer because this is your path to be a patriot.”

While this path might have changed, the tensions persist between traditional national identities, women’s rights and freedoms, and the nation-state itself. Stronciwilk points to an exhibit by artist . The food is weaponized as a critique of the state’s lack of support for women who experience intimate partner or domestic violence. resembles a cooking show with Markiewizc playing up the Polish mother figure, but as this host details government negligence around domestic violence, she also details deadly recipes. Stronciwilk explains, “feeding becomes not the act of caring but of violence, which is a response to the abuse. The feeding can be understood as a form of power, here in the most radical aspect – power over the life of others.”

The power of food as a medium for art is also more broadly applicable to feminism, as well as to other concerns for women in Poland. The fabled sweet tooth of Polish women is used subversively by two artists in particular. imprints on homemade cookies disturbing, misogynistic quotes from well-known figures such as politicians, writers, and philosophers. “The sweetness is not sweet – it is used to speak about something very, very difficult, very unsettling,” says Stronciwilk, who identifies that this work, titled “Bez Lukru” (“Without Sugar Coating”), demonstrates the persistence and deeply rooted nature of anti-woman discourse in European culture.

Likewise, ’s “The One” uses sweets in a political critique. In response to comments by Konstanty RadziwiƂƂ, Poland’s former Minister of Health, on the need to limit emergency contraception because women will eat the like sweets, BoĆŒek hides these contraceptives in chocolate, smuggling them into the gallery space and making them available to anyone who might need them. Perhaps for Stronciwilk, the malleability of food as a medium is evident in the ways foods are used: “You can see different approaches towards this relation between food femininity, feminism, and how to use food to speak about women rights.”

Strociwilk also foregrounds the work of , an artist who works with taste. A cafĂ© near the gallery sold KrĂłlikiewicz’s tear-flavoured ice cream. Stronciwilk indicates the ice cream built a narrative about the control over women’s bodies through taste and people’s responses. As they experience and ingest the food, people begin to assess their own responses to the flavour and may also begin to ask questions about why it was made and to what it is related. This kind of questioning is made possible only through the combination of food and art and is accessible to the public because it is outside a formalized exhibition space.

While acknowledging the difficulty in assessing the impact of public art, Stronciwilk also points to the importance of the visibility of this art outside the gallery space. “People who are not directly interested in art can somehow see the artworks and maybe this way, it will somehow affect them, or they start to read about the exhibition. They immediately start to think about the topic of the exhibition.” Perhaps simply prompting people to think is a step on a longer journey toward progress or change.

“How can art change the way we think? Does it have any social impact?” asks Stronciwilk. “I believe it does.”