Governing Food - II

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

• Xaq Frohlich, Auburn University

Individual Presentations

• The Meat of the Matter: Fundamental Issues in the Classification of Food - Carlin Soos, University of California, Los Angeles

• Functional Foods: Innovation of Food, Biomedicalizaton of Life - Maral Erol, Isik University

• Navigating Governance: Moving Foods through Regulatory Changes - Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

• Selective (E)valuations: The Production of Opacity and Transparency of Values in the Swedish Meat Supply Chain - Jonas Bååth, Dept. of service studies, Lund University

Session Organizers

• Saul Halfon, Virginia Tech

• Christy Spackman, SFIS - Arizona State University