Food Study Group Conference:  Plenary Speakers

We are delighted to announce the plenary sessions/speakers for this event are:

Commensality and Society

Claude Fischler, CNRS, Paris

At the 2008 Food, Society and Public Health conference, Claude Fischler presented empirical evidence in his plenary lecture on ‘Commensalism vs. Consumerism – ‘Public’ vs. ‘Private’ eating’.  He showed how, for example, Americans perceived food and eating as an individual, private issue, equating food within a nutrition or health discourse.  Italians, on the other hand, prioritised the freshness and quality of food and the French emphasised ‘conviviality’, i.e. the social aspects structuring experiences of food and eating.

In his 2010 plenary address, Claude will again focus on commensality, this time presenting a theoretical review of the concept, on the nature and function of commensality in social structure and formation.

Changing Food Systems: Two Futures

Harriet Friedmann, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

Two futures for agriculture, and consequently for food, are implied by contrasting international reports which appeared in 2008: the World Development Report (WDR) and the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). The food regime approach illuminates the direction implied by the WDR: changes in the global food system are linked to unequal diets, both nutritionally and culturally. The dire direction of present patterns for both North and South are intensified by mounting ecological damage caused by industrial agrifood practices and by recent financialization, which draws actors of all scales into more intimate connection while at the same time complicating older instruments such as futures trading. The very different future implied by the IAASTD is emerging in the interstices of the first. It seeks to re-embed food systems in nested and overlapping ecosystems, human settlements and cultures. A highly urbanized and multicultural region such as Southern Ontario reveals the complexities of an enormous change in direction towards a vibrant “foodshed” in which an emerging community of food practice links land use, social justice, and cultural creativity. It is a multifaceted effort which includes blurring the boundaries between urban and rural which still define political, regulatory, cultural, and economic institutions.