Introducing a Special Issue on the Reinvention of Food: Connections and Mediations

This introduction to a special issue forwards “the reinvention of food” as an analytical framework within which to make sense, together, of current projects valorizing “traditional” methods of food production as well as efforts to reimagine more sustainable or transparent food provisioning schemes

'If You Desire to Enjoy Life, Avoid Unpunctual People': Women, Timetabling and Domestic Advice, 1850–1910

In the second half of the nineteenth century domestic advice manuals applied the language of modern, public time management to the private sphere. This article uses domestic advice and cookery books, including Isabella Beeton's Book of Household Management, to argue that women in the home operated within multiple, overlapping temporalities that incorporated daily, annual, linear and cyclical scales. I examine how seasonal and annual timescales coexisted with the ticking clock of daily time as a framework within which women were instructed to organize their lives in order to conclude that the increasing concern of advice writers with matters of timekeeping and punctuality towards the end of the nineteenth century indicates not the triumph of 'clock time' but rather its failure to overturn other ways of thinking about and using time

Perspective and power in the ethical foodscape

There is no abstract for this paper.

Alternative food in the Global South: reflections on a direct marketing initiative in Kenya

a b s t r a c t Amidst booming scholarship on alternative food networks (AFNs) in the global North, research on AFN in the global South remains scarce. Partly this is because explicitly alternative initiatives are themselves scarce, except for those focused on export markets. Yet in countries such as Kenya, urban consumers and rural smallholders have good reason to want alternatives to agrichemical dependency, insecure marketing channels, and food of dubious safety. This article describes one attempt to provide an alternative. A pilot box scheme launched by the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming (KIOF) in 2007 aimed to connect organic smallholders to consumers in Nairobi, the capital city. It did not last long, and we reflect on the reasons why. In particular, we argue that efforts to build AFN in "developing" countries must take account of the problematic history of development itself, both as an ideology and as a set of institutions, policies and activities. In the case of the Kenyan box scheme, the pervasive yet often ineffectual presence of aid-dispensing non-governmental organizations, in particular, influenced different actors' perceptions and participation in ways we did not fully anticipate. More broadly, this article emphasizes the need to appreciate the macro-historical and socioeconomic contexts that inform on-the-ground practices and understandings of alternative food

The contradictions of clean Supermarket ethical trade and African horticulture

Includes bibliographical references. Title from coverAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:4089. 225095(no 109) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Social science - STEM collaborations in agriculture, food and beyond: an STSFAN manifesto.

Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors' experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social science expertise and incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset, and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes