Authentic Recipes from Around the World

This is the author accepted manuscript.This book reflects about the term "authenticity" in the context of foods and drinks. It asks how history, time and temporality can be used to make particular cultural products seem "authentic" or the "real" thing. We explore authenticity in relation to foods and drinks from different parts of the world: pulque (alcoholic drink from central Mexico), flaounes (celebration Easter pies from Cyprus), Welsh craft cider, and acarajé (street snack from Brazil). Temporal categories like "origins," "traditions" and "timelessness" and the emotional connections they can evoke, like feelings of nostalgia and belonging, are at the heart of our approach. The book is part of a larger research project, Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in the Construction of Authentic Foods and Drinks, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in relation to their major research theme, Care for the Future: Thinking Forward Through the Past.Arts & Humanities Research Counci

Making waves in education

Making Waves in Education is a book of a collaborative nature, being a collection of chapters written by undergraduates studying B.A. Hons in Education at the Universities of Plymouth and York. Thirteen chapters, each from a different student, cover topics from learning theories to sex education, home education and autism. The chapters are well-organised and written, and they cover key topics in an accessible and thoughtful way. The chapters are generally well - referenced and present critical and balanced arguments. Many use hard statistics in an effective way to back up their points and all include bibliographies as indeed one expects from a serious publication. The collection therefore addresses itself to a wide readership of anyone interested in education, and students and teachers/trainers in HE in particula

Food geographies I: relational foodscapes and the busy-ness of being more-than-food

The study of foodscapes has spread throughout geography at the same time as food scholarship has spearheaded post-disciplinary research. This report argues that geographers have taken to post-disciplinarity to explore the ways that food is ‘more-than-food’ through analyses of the visceral nature of eating and politics and the vital (re)materializations of food’s cultural geographies. Visceral food geographies illuminate what I call the ‘contingent relationalities’ of food in the critical evaluation of the indeterminate, situated politics of ‘feeling food’ and those of the embodied collectivities of obesity. Questions remain, however, about how a visceral framework might be deployed for broader critiques within foodscapes and the study of human geography. The study of food’s vital materialisms opens up investigation into the practices of the ‘makings’ of meat, food waste and eating networks. Analysis of affect, embodiment and cultural practices is central to these theorizations and suggests consideration of the multiple materialisms of food, space and eating. There is, I contend, in the more radical, ‘post-relational’ approaches to food, the need for a note of caution. Exuberant claims for the ontological, vital agency of food should be tempered by, or at least run parallel to, critical questions of the real politik of political and practical agency in light of recent struggles over austerity, food poverty and food justice

Authentic recipes from around the world

This general audience book is the outcome of the AHRC project "Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in the Construction of Authentic Foods and Drinks." It addresses the temporal relationships and ideas that contribute to the construction of narratives of authenticity in relation to four foods and drinks: pulque (an alcoholic drink from Central Mexico), flaounes (celebration Easter pies from Cyprus), Welsh craft cider and acarajé (a street snack from Brazil)

A systematic review to explore the effectiveness of physical health and psychosocial interventions on anxiety, depression and quality of life in people living with blood cancer

Problem identification. Anxiety and depression are more prevalent in hematological cancer patients who experience unpredictable illness trajectories and aggressive treatments compared to solid tumor patients. Efficacy of psychosocial interventions targeted at blood cancer patients is relatively unknown. This systematic review examined trials of physical health and psychosocial interventions intending to improve levels of anxiety, depression, and/or quality of life in adults with hematological cancers. Literature search. PubMed and CINAHL databases were used to perform a systematic review of literature using PRISMA guidelines. Data evaluation/synthesis. Twenty-nine randomized controlled trials of 3232 participants were included. Thirteen studies were physical therapy, nine psychological, five complementary, one nutritional and one spiritual therapy interventions. Improvements were found in all therapy types except nutritional therapy. Conclusions. Interventions that included personal contact with clinicians were more likely to be effective in improving mental health than those without. Implications for psychosocial oncology. Various psychosocial interventions can be offered but interactive components appear crucial for generating long-standing improvements in quality of life, anxiety and depression

Tasting as a social practice: a methodological experiment in making taste public

Based on fieldwork in the UK and Portugal, this paper considers the relationships between cultural analyses of taste and the embodied activity of tasting. As part of a wider project on the multiple ontologies of ‘freshness’, the paper conceptualises taste as an emergent effect of tasting practices. Drawing on evidence from a series of ‘tasting events’ (where research participants were recorded shopping, cooking and eating a meal with friends and family), the paper explores the multiple dimensions of taste concluding that even the most personal and sensory aspects of tasting food involve a social dimension which we interpret through the lens of practice theory. The paper identifies three specific dimensions of tasting as a social practice involving food’s material and visceral qualities; the links between embodiment and emotion; and the contextual significance of family and social relations. Our findings contribute to recent debates about ‘making taste public’, even in the apparently private context of household consumption

Family food practices: relationships, materiality and the everyday at the end of life

This article draws on data from a research project that combined participant observation with in-depth interviews to explore family relationships and experiences of everyday life during life-threatening illness. In it I suggest that death has often been theorised in ways that make its ‘mundane’ practices less discernible. As a means to foreground the everyday, and to demonstrate its importance to the study of dying, this article explores the (re)negotiation of food and eating in families facing the end of life. Three themes that emerged from the study’s broader focus on family life are discussed: ‘food talk’ and making sense of illness; food, family and identity; and food ‘fights’. Together the findings illustrate the material, social and symbolic ways in which food acts relationally in the context of dying, extending conceptual work on materiality in death studies in novel directions. The paper also contributes new empirical insights to a limited sociological literature on food, families and terminal illness, building on work that theorises the entanglements of materiality, food, bodies and care. The article concludes by highlighting the analytical value of everyday materialities such as food practices for future research on dying as a relational experience

The Moral Economy of Ready-Made Food

The aim of this paper is to develop and apply a framework to explore how moralities of consumption are constituted in and through markets. Using the case of ready-made foods, this paper argues moral economies are comprised through interactions between micro, meso and macro level processes in the form of instituted systems of provision, state regulation, collective food customs promoted though media, NGOs and lifestyle practitioners, and the everyday reflections of consumers. Building on a theoretical framework developed to understand the moral economy of work and employment (Bolton and Laaser, 2013), this paper explores how markets for ready-made food are incessantly negotiated in the context of moral ideas about cooking, femininity and individual responsibility. It focuses on ‘new’ market innovations of fresh ready-to-cook meal solutions and explores how these products are both a response to moralizing discourses about cooking ‘properly’, as well as an intervention into the market that offers opportunities for new moral identities to be performed. Using data gathered from interviews with food manufacturers and consumers, I advocate for a multi-layered perspective that captures the dynamic interplay between consumers, markets and moralities of consumption