Food, Culture, and the Environment: New Directions in Critical Food Studies

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

Perhaps more than any other activity that most humans engage in on a daily basis, eating -- the production, distribution, and consumption of food -- has tremendous environmental, cultural, economic, political, and social effects. From policy debates to the dinner plate, questions about food have increasingly attracted the attention of critical-cultural theorists working at the intersections of social justice, power, sustainability, desire, and affect. This panel brings together scholars from performance studies, critical rhetoric, cultural studies, media studies, ethnography, and environmental communication in order to respond to some of the problematics raised in the January 2009 special issue of Text and Performance Quarterly (edited by Lindenfeld et al) that focuses on food and performance while addressing the concerns raised by Andy Opel et al, guest editors for an upcoming special issue of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture.

Sub Unit

• Critical and Cultural Studies Division

Cosponsor

• Environmental Communication Division

Chair

• Cindy Spurlock, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• How to Cook Your Life: Challenging the Absence of Environmental Discourse in Celebrity Chefdom - Laura Lindenfeld, University of Maine

• Globalizing the Local: Organic Food and the Problem of Production - Jeff Motter, Wabash College

• Coffee and the Environment: How Farmers and Marketers Construct Relationships Between Coffee Cultivation, Environmentalism, and Nature - Leah Sprain, University of Washington

• Edible Virtue: Unpacking the Rhetorics of Community and Sustainability at Whole Foods - Cindy Spurlock, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Respondent

• Andrew Opel, Florida State University

Session Organizer

• Cindy Spurlock, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill