Governing Food - I

Abstract

What and how we eat is governed in many ways. Politics, regulation, markets, culture, individual and group knowledge, engineering and technology all shape what we eat and how we eat it. These governing practices happen at multiple scales, across the micro, the multiple, the macro, and the many “bodies in the system” (Agard-Jones 2013). Despite the multitude of systems put in place to govern eating, however, bodies, institutions, and materials continually overflow and challenge them. This panel asks what happens when diverse STS approaches come together to tackle questions about food and food-making? We invite papers that approach these broad questions through the capacious, multivalent theoretical lens of government. We welcome a wide range of topics exploring the modes and scales of governing food, with particular emphasis on knowledge practice and technology.

Discussant

• Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Individual Presentations

• Reconceiving Danger: Molecularizing Meat Inspection - Saul Halfon, Virginia Tech

• How Epistemic Policies in Food Regulation Shape Public Health - Noemi Sanz Merino, University of Balearic Islands; Oliver Todt, University of Balearic Islands; José Luis Luján, University of Balearic Islands

• Can the Consumer Speak?: How Policymakers (Have) Imagine(d) the Consumer in Food Politics - Xaq Frohlich, Auburn University

• Citizen Science, #Fakenews and the "End of Expertise": Dietary Guidelines and "Failure" of Science Communication - Adele H Hite, North Carolina State University

Session Organizers

• Saul Halfon, Virginia Tech

• Christy Spackman, SFIS - Arizona State University