Unpacking The Social, Political & Cultural Configurations Of Food International Symposium On Food Studies: Transnational Conversations, 22 – 23 July 2016

Food is becoming increasingly central to national and global processes. Its centrality compels us to move beyond exploring consumption, survival and food security and to focus on the complex relationships between food and human experiences.

On 22-23 July 2016, researchers, junior academics, public intellectuals and artists, will gather at the University of Pretoria (UP) to share insights on deepening humanities-oriented food studies and inter-epistemic dialogues about the social, cultural and human meanings of food cultures and systems within transnational encounters.

“The centrality of “food” in discursive and cultural processes compels us to move beyond issues of consumption, survival and food security, to focus also on complex relationships between food and human experiences,” says Professor Desiree Lewis of the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Professor Lewis is one of the symposium organisers and lead researcher in a Mellon-funded project within the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS).

Much like the CoE-FS’s interdisciplinary research focus, this international symposium will expand on areas that “traditional” food security studies tend to neglect.

The themes that will be discussed during the symposium include:

• How excessive consumption is linked to hunger;
• The role of Big Food in shaping transnational “taste”;
• The marketing of food items and food consumption in relation to lifeclass;
• Globalized foodways within national and local cultural and social processes
• Representations and memories of food and eating in relation to contemporary social, cultural and spiritual experiences.

Co-organized by Professor Vasu Reddy, Dean of Humanities at UP, the symposium will also strengthen collaboration between the two South African universities hosting the CoE-FS – UWC and UP. The two-day symposium promises to generate lively debates across disciplinary, geographical and knowledge-producing divides.

For more information please contact: Thembi Bongwana at foodpoliticsandcultures17@gmail.com or Marinda Maree at Marinda.Maree@up.ac.za

Mologadi Makwela
Communications Officer
DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security