Meals in the melting-pot: Immigration and dietary change in diversifying cities

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105728.Changes in diets and food practices have implications for personal and planetary health. As these implications have become more apparent, dietary change interventions that seek to promote healthy and sustainable transitions have proliferated, and the processes and drivers of dietary change have come under increasing scrutiny. In particular, dietary acculturation has been recognised as a driver of dietary change in the context of immigration to expanding, cosmopolitan cities. However, research has largely focused on changes in the diets of immigrants and ethnic minorities. In contrast, this study contributes to our understanding of the process of dietary acculturation among the largest population groups in Vancouver, Canada — Chinese- and European-Canadians — in the context of the rapid diversification of the population and food environments in this city. This is done through the analysis of descriptive and contextualised interview and observational data, and a focus on social practices. These data show that food practices, particularly in cosmopolitan urban contexts, are constantly in flux, as diverse ethnic groups come into contact, and new generations develop their own hybrid food cultures. By demonstrating and theorising this process of dietary acculturation, this research offers insights how cultural interactions relate to dietary transitions. It presents an exploratory model for considering how food practices change through dietary acculturation, which is relevant to the design of interventions that aim to support healthier and more sustainable dietary transitions."The field work was kindly funded by the Environmental Change Institute and Pembroke College, University of Oxford. None of the funding sources for this research were involved in study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the article for publication."Ye

Agricultural planning, justice, and municipal governance : an examination of planning conflicts, pluralism, and complexity in southwestern British Columbia, Canada

Since the late 1980s, national and sub-national levels of government in North America have increasingly devolved responsibilities for agricultural planning to local governments. Local government control of farmland and farming through planning and policy tools, unequally distribute benefits and harms among impacted parties (e.g., farmers, Indigenous peoples, farmworkers). Additionally, municipal agricultural planning has the potential to contribute to food justice outcomes. This dissertation examines the role of municipal agricultural governance in achieving food justice through an interdisciplinary qualitative case study conducted in Southwestern British Columbia (BC), Canada. Three substantive dissertation chapters examine this role in food justice. Chapter 2 explores the capacity of municipal governments in Metro Vancouver to govern diverse agricultural systems, characterizing practices that constitute agricultural planning. This chapter shows that the municipal governing system simplifies the agricultural system resulting in disconnected from multiple scales of planning action. Chapter 3 examines representation and engagement of impacted agricultural stakeholders in local planning processes. Applying a justice framework, I show how municipal agricultural planning processes exacerbate injustices in participation, representation, and engagement. In Chapter 4, I analyse land use conflicts in Richmond, Canada showing the politics of land use planning results in debates around farmland uses, place-based identities, and which agricultural stakeholders should be privileged. This chapter describes how political mobilization, by agricultural stakeholders, can shift decision-makers’ stances on who to support with planning policies and legislation. Chapter 5 describes a collaborative research project with the Province of BC addressing a gap in agricultural planning education by developing an introductory agricultural planning course. The overall dissertation findings suggest that in this region, the municipal governing system is at odds with an agricultural system oriented towards justice. Local government approaches to agricultural planning are involved in the creation of privileged agricultural subjects which are, in turn, influenced by the politics of planning and participation in formal planning processes. The findings challenge normative conceptions of municipal governance and agricultural planning as technical and value-neutral exercises. Rather, agricultural planning, in contexts of complexity, requires the development of planning tools that contribute to equitable food systems.Land and Food Systems, Faculty ofGraduat