Panel 1 – The Sweet Potato as Famine Food, from Ryukyu Kingdom Tokunoshima to Modern Japan
Imported during colonial rule, and linked to near-miraculous bounty as well as food for the enslaved, the sweet potato has assumed near-mythic status, paradoxically as both a famine food and…
Panel 2 – The Riches of Poverty Food: Re-evaluating and Revaluing
Early modern Europeans deemed chillis and pulque as foods of the poor, with different paths to valorization. The lower classes in Europe consumed chillis shortly after introduction, but chillis were…
Panel 3 – Culinary Empathies: Humanitarian Relief Aid and Recipes for Respect
Painting a picture of historical acts of giving aid or writing about hunger and culinary deficits in an empathetic and respectful manner, these papers nonetheless raise questions of power imbalances.
Panel 4 – Culinary Tourism: Slumming, Exoticizing, and Strategies for Reclaiming
Stereotypes, myths and mockeries abound about what poor folks eat; these papers offer strategies for rewriting and recuperating foodways.
Panel 5 – Beyond Economics: The Deep Cultural Root of Social Policy
Contemporary food systems contain paradoxes: these papers consider inequitable distribution of resources and wasted surpluses, responses to those confronting food precarity, and how social worth can be valued beyond the…
Panel 6 – Speak, Memory
Cultural memories are built through rituals and transferred through the generations, including remembrances of hunger and its culinary remedies.
