The Whiteness of the Ivory Tower and Food Studies
The senseless death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on the 25th of May has reignited a global conversation around race relations. Across the US people have taken to the streets to proclaim Black Lives Matter. Where I am in Australia, thousands have gathered to honour Floyd and draw attention to our own domestic race crisis: since a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, 437 indigenous people have died while Police had duty of care.
Beyond the solidarity on the streets there has been a reckoning with white complicity and a collective reaching for books, websites, films and podcasts to understand the state of race relations and the work to be done to change the status quo. People of colour are speaking up and rightly asking that it is time for white people to do the work and stop relying on the labour of the marginalised to assuage our guilt. For any seeking anti-racism reading here are a few valuable starting points:
· A running list of anti-racism resources (Dazed)
· An Essential Reading Guide for Fighting Racism (Buzzfeed News)
· An Antiracist Reading List (New York Times)
· Books to help you understand & fight white supremacy (Readings Australia)
· Instagram accounts: @laylafsaad @rachel.cargle @thegreatunlearn @theunapologeticallybrownseries @drmngnow @tiddas4tiddas
The work of anti-racism extends beyond the sharing of an Instagram post, or the attendance at one protest, or two. I have been reflecting on how the spaces in which I live perpetuate and hold power for white supremacy. I work within a university and teach in a number of courses about policy, food politics and sustainable food systems. People of colour are systematically disenfranchised in the food system: they are more food insecure, have less access to land ownership and are more likely to be exploited as labour across the food chain. In the US, black and brown business owners are three times more likely to be denied a loan to start a business, black women are paid the least, and people of colour are less likely to have their cookbooks published. At the same time, people of colour have been at the forefront of food movements from La Via Campesina, to labour rights movements, food justice and food as a part of protest. We routinely devour cuisines from around the world while denying access to cooks, chefs and writers of colour. The Museum of Food and Drink have put together an excellent list of resources in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and to amplify the work of people of colour in the food system.
Reflecting on this, I conducted a quick audit and looked over the reading list for one of the food systems courses I teach in:
Authors from a class reading list in a food studies course at my institution, in which I am a junior staff member. I have purposely blurred this photo as these authors did not choose to be included in this list, and therefore do not deserve to be singled out for its homogeneity.
From around 30 authors, I was able to identify one black author and a smattering of Latinx voices. However, the issues we discuss in this course widely impact people of colour. Further, a large proportion, if not the majority of our students are non-white. Why then are we relying on white voices to address and analyse the many disparities in the food system?
Searching for sources to remedy this I was struck how this problem echoed throughout other academic reading lists and even recommendations from bodies such as the Association for the Study of Food and Society were light on the inclusion of diverse voices.
In response, and with the help of some input from a call-out on social media, I have put together this list of food studies literature addressing race in the food system and books written by people of colour.
I encourage everyone in academia to think about the programs they are curating, the reading lists they are compiling and the guest speakers they are programming and to think about how to incorporate more diverse voices. If you are programming historically disadvantaged people, please think about how to pay participants fairly for their time. People of colour are systemically disenfranchised from being hired and promoted in academic jobs and this will only continue if their publications are continually sidelined by the gatekeepers of academic institutions.
Do not wait for your Black, Brown, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous colleagues to make a fuss for the inclusion of people of colour in reading lists and curriculum. It is incumbent on all of us to think about the daily choices that we make that uphold the structures of systemic racism in our institutions. Take on the labour: argue with your faculty and colleagues, confront racial bias, whether it is writ large or manifest in implicit bias. Change reading lists. Look critically at who is and is not being promoted within your departments. What work can you do to dismantle the tightly guarded barriers to the academy?
I challenge you to look at your reading lists for any of your courses and assess the diversity of voices that are being promoted through your teaching. If it is majority white authors, I encourage you to look through the following list and include non-white perspectives.
A list of diverse perspectives in food studies
A few notes:
There are white authors on this list in the case that they are engaging in critical race and cultural commentary, however, I have tried to prioritise the voices of non-white authors.
This list is not exhaustive, and I welcome recommendations. At the moment I note that perspectives from the Middle East and Africa are particularly absent. Nor are the categories fixed – if there are any suggestions about better ways to arrange these sources or topics that are missing please get in touch.
Currently the list only includes published books, however, I am keen to expand it to include articles and other sources useful for teaching food studies and food systems thinking.
On race and food
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman, eds. Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability. MIT press, 2011.
Alkon, Alison Hope. Black, white, and green: Farmers markets, race, and the green economy. University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Bowens, Natasha. The color of food: Stories of race, resilience and farming. New Society Publishers, 2015.
Curtis, Kimberly, Christopher Neubert, Pascale Joassart-Marcelli, Fernando Bosco, Maryam Khojasteh, Sarah Huang, Katherine Dentzman et al. The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America. MIT Press, 2020.
Garcia, Matt, Melanie Dupois, E and Don Mitchell (eds). Food Across Borders. Rutgers University Press, 2017
Halloran, Vivian Nun. The Immigrant Kitchen: Food, Ethnicity, and Diaspora. The Ohio State University Press, 2016.
Ichijo, Atsuko, and Ronald Ranta. Food, national identity and nationalism: from everyday to global politics. Springer, 2016.
Keyser, Catherine. Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions. Oxford University Press, USA, 2018.
Lum, Casey Man Kong, and Marc de Ferrière Le Vayer, eds. Urban Foodways and Communication: Ethnographic Studies in Intangible Cultural Food Heritages Around the World. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
Mailer, Gideon, and Nicola Hale. Decolonizing the Diet: Nutrition, Immunity, and the Warning from Early America. Anthem Press, 2018.
Ray, Krishnendu. The ethnic restaurateur. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
Shahani, Gitanjali G. Tasting Difference: Food, Race, and Cultural Encounters in Early Modern Literature. Cornell University Press, 2020.
Slocum, Rachel, and Arun Saldanha, eds. Geographies of race and food: Fields, bodies, markets. Routledge, 2016.
Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. NYU Press, 2012
Wu, Emily, Jung Eun Sophia Park, Joshua Graham, Lacy K. Crocker, Gordon Fuller, David Oualaalou, Christa Shusko, and Radikobo Ntsimane. Dying to Eat: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife. University Press of Kentucky, 2017.
Black food politics (US)
Harper, A. Breeze. Sistah vegan: Black female vegans speak on food, identity, health, and society. Lantern Books, 2009.
Kwate, Naa Oyo A. Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now. U of Minnesota Press, 2019.
Penniman, Leah. Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018.
Pérez, Elizabeth. Religion in the kitchen: Cooking, talking, and the making of Black Atlantic traditions. NYU Press, 2016.
Reese, Ashanté M. Black food geographies: Race, self-reliance, and food access in Washington. UNC Press Books, 2019.
Shange, Ntozake. If I Can Cook/You Know God Can: African American Food Memories, Meditations, and Recipes. Vol. 2. Beacon Press, 2019.
Twitty, Michael W. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. HarperCollins, 2017.
Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America. UNC Press Books, 2018.
Williams-Forson, Psyche A. Building houses out of chicken legs: Black women, food, and power. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Witt, Doris. Black hunger: Soul food and America. U of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Latinx food studies
Abarca, Meredith E. Voices in the kitchen: Views of food and the world from working-class Mexican and Mexican American women. Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
Abarca, Meredith E., and Consuelo Carr Salas, eds. Latin@ s' Presence in the Food Industry: Changing How We Think about Food. University of Arkansas Press, 2016.
Arellano, Gustavo. Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. Simon and Schuster, 2012.
Calvo, Luz, and Catriona Rueda Esquibel. Decolonize your diet: plant-based Mexican-American recipes for Health and healing. arsenal pulp press, 2016.
Gálvez, Alyshia. Eating NAFTA: trade, food policies, and the destruction of Mexico. Univ of California Press, 2018.
Garcia, Matt. From the jaws of victory: The triumph and tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. Univ of California Press, 2012.
Lapegna, Pablo. Soybeans and power: genetically modified crops, environmental politics, and social movements in Argentina. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Martinez-Cruz, Paloma. Food Fight!: Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace. University of Arizona Press, 2019.
Olivas, Divana. "Taste, politics, and identities in Mexican food” edited by Steffan Igor Ayora Díaz, London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
Peña, Devon, Luz Calvo, Pancho McFarland, and Gabriel R. Valle, eds. Mexican-origin foods, foodways, and social movements: Decolonial perspectives. University of Arkansas Press, 2017.
Pérez Jr, L.A., 2019. Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba. UNC Press Books.
Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of forests and fields: Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest. Rutgers University Press, 2016.
Tinsman, Heidi. Buying into the regime: grapes and consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States. Duke University Press, 2014.
Asian foodways
Arnold, Bruce Makoto, Tanfer Emin Tunç, and Raymond Douglas Chong, eds. Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States. University of Arkansas Press, 2018.
Bhushi, Kiranmayi, ed. Farm to Fingers: The Culture and Politics of Food in Contemporary India. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Cheung, Sidney C.H., ed.. Rethinking Asian Food Heritage. Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture, 2014
Cwiertka, Katarzyna J., and Yasuhara Miho. Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku. University of Hawaii Press, 2020.
Fu, Jia-Chen. The Other Milk: Reinventing Soy in Republican China. University of Washington Press, 2018.
Jung, John. Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants. Yin & Yang Press, 2010.
Jung, John. Chopsticks in The Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers. Yin & Yang Press, 2008.
Kimura, Aya Hirata. Radiation brain moms and citizen scientists: The gender politics of food contamination after Fukushima. Duke University Press, 2016.
King, Michelle T., ed. Culinary Nationalism in Asia. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.
Kong, Lily. Food, foodways and foodscapes: Culture, community and consumption in post-colonial Singapore. World Scientific, 2015.
Ku, Robert Ji-Song. Dubious gastronomy: The cultural politics of eating Asian in the USA. University of Hawaii Press, 2013.
Ku, Robert Ji-Song, Martin F. Manalansan, and Anita Mannur, eds. Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader. NYU Press, 2013.
Leong-Salobir, Cecilia. Food culture in colonial Asia: a taste of empire. Taylor & Francis, 2011. Harvard
Leung, Angela Ki Che, and Melissa L. Caldwell. Moral Foods: The Construction of Nutrition and Health in Modern Asia. University of Hawai'i Press, 2019.
Liu, Haiming. From Canton restaurant to Panda express: A history of Chinese food in the United States. Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Mannur, Anita. Culinary fictions: food in South Asian diasporic culture. Temple University Press, 2009.
Masami, Yuki. Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers: An Ecocritical Journey around the Hearth of Modernity. Springer, 2016.
Nguyen, Bich Minh. Stealing Buddha's dinner: A memoir. Penguin, 2008.
Oxfeld, Ellen. Bitter and Sweet: Food, Meaning, and Modernity in Rural China. Univ of California Press, 2017.
Padoongpatt, Mark. Flavors of empire: Food and the making of Thai America. Univ of California Press, 2017.
Ray, Krishnendu. The Migrants Table: Meals And Memories In Bengali-American households. Temple University Press, 2004.
Ray, Krishnendu, and Tulasi Srinivas, eds. Curried cultures: globalization, food, and South Asia. Univ of California Press, 2012.
Ryang, Sonia. Eating Korean in America: Gastronomic ethnography of authenticity. University of Hawaii Press, 2015.
Shinichiro Ogata. 2017. JIKIFU: A Japanese Aesthetics of Taste. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press
Smil, Vaclav, and Kazuhiko Kobayashi. Japan's Dietary Transition and Its Impacts. MIT Press, 2012.Indigenous foodways
Fienup-Riordan, Ann, Meade, Marie and Alice Rearden. Akulmiut Neqait : Fish and Food of the Akulmiut. University of Alaska Press, 2019
LaDuke, Winona. Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health. University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.
Mayes, Christopher. Unsettling food politics: Agriculture, dispossession and sovereignty in Australia. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
Sherman, Sean, and Beth Dooley. The Sioux Chef's indigenous kitchen. 2017.
Pascoe, Bruce. Dark emu black seeds: Agriculture or accident?. Magabala Books, 2014.
Robidoux, Michael A., and Courtney W. Mason, eds. A land not forgotten: Indigenous food security and land-based practices in Northern Ontario. Univ. of Manitoba Press, 2017.
Wilson, Marisa L., ed. Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggles for Food Sovereignty: Alternative Food Networks in the Subaltern World. Routledge Research in New Postcolonialisms. Routledge, 2017.
Labour & race in the food system
Barndt, Deborah. Tangled routes: Women, work, and globalization on the tomato trail. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.
Gray, Margaret. Labor and the locavore: The making of a comprehensive food ethic. Univ of California Press, 2013.
Guthman, Julie. Agrarian dreams: The paradox of organic farming in California. Univ of California Press, 2014.
Holmes, Seth. Fresh fruit, broken bodies: Migrant farmworkers in the United States. Univ of California Press, 2013.
Jayaraman, Saru. Behind the kitchen door. Cornell University Press, 2013.
Keller, Julie C. Milking in the Shadows: Migrants and Mobility in America’s Dairyland. Rutgers University Press, 2019.
Mares, Teresa M. Life on the other border: Farmworkers and food justice in Vermont. University of California Press, 2019.
Marquis, Susan L. I am not a tractor!: How Florida farmworkers took on the fast food giants and won. Cornell University Press, 2017.
Minkoff-Zern, L.A., 2019. The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability. MIT Press.
Sifuentez, Mario Jimenez. Of forests and fields: Mexican labor in the Pacific Northwest. Rutgers University Press, 2016.
Food Justice
Agyeman, Julian, Caitlin Matthews, and Hannah Sobel, eds. Food trucks, cultural identity, and social justice: From loncheras to lobsta love. MIT Press, 2017.
Alkon, Alison Hope, Yuki Kato, and Joshua Sbicca, eds. A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City. NYU Press, 2020.
Alkon, Alison Hope, and Julian Agyeman, eds. Cultivating food justice: Race, class, and sustainability. MIT press, 2011.
Alkon, Alison, and Julie Guthman, eds. The new food activism: Opposition, cooperation, and collective action. Univ of California Press, 2017.
Broad, Garrett. More than just food: Food justice and community change. Univ of California Press, 2016.
Fairfax, Sally K., Greig Tor Guthey, Louise Nelson Dyble, Lauren Gwin, and Monica Moore. California cuisine and just food. MIT Press, 2012.
Gottlieb, Robert, and Anupama Joshi. Food justice. Mit Press, 2010.
Mares, Teresa M. Life on the other border: Farmworkers and food justice in Vermont. University of California Press, 2019.
Murguía, Salvador Jimenez. Food as a Mechanism of Control and Resistance in Jails and Prisons: Diets of Disrepute. Lexington Books, 2018
Reynolds, Kristin, and Nevin Cohen. Beyond the kale: Urban agriculture and social justice activism in New York City. Vol. 28. University of Georgia Press, 2016.
Sbicca, Joshua. Food Justice Now!: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle. U of Minnesota Press, 2018.
Williams, Justine M., and Eric Holt-Giménez, eds. Land justice: Re-imagining land, food, and the commons. Food First Books, 2017.
Food Sovereignty
Desmarais, Annette Aurelie, La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants, Pluto Press, 2007
Shiva, Vandana. Who really feeds the world?: The failures of agribusiness and the promise of agroecology. North Atlantic Books, 2016.
Shiva, Vandana. Soil not oil: environmental justice in a time of climate crisis. South End Press, 2008.
Trauger, Amy. We want land to live: Making political space for food sovereignty. Vol. 33. University of Georgia Press, 2017.
Wittman, Hannah, ed. Food sovereignty in Canada: Creating just and sustainable food systems. Fernwood Pub., 2011.
Wittman, Hannah Desmarais, Annette and Nettie Wiebe (eds). Food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community." Fernwood Publishing, 2010
Hunger
Carney, Megan A. The unending hunger: Tracing women and food insecurity across borders. Univ of California Press, 2015.
Chappell, M. Jahi. Beginning to end hunger: Food and the environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and beyond. Univ of California Press, 2018.
Kimura, Aya: Hidden hunger: gender and the politics of smarter foods, Cornell University Press, 2013
Bellows, Anne C., Flavio LS Valente, Stefanie Lemke, and María Daniela Núñez Burbano de Lara, eds. Gender, nutrition, and the human right to adequate food: toward an inclusive framework. Routledge, 2015.
Other (specific foods/regions)
Abu-Jaber, Diana. The Language of Baklava: a memoir. Anchor, 2007.
Bowen, Sarah. Divided spirits: Tequila, mezcal, and the politics of production. Vol. 56. Univ of California Press, 2015.
Chapman, Peter. Bananas: how the United Fruit Company shaped the world. Open Road+ Grove/Atlantic, 2014.
Field, Julie S., and Michael W. Graves, eds. Abundance and Resilience: Farming and Foraging in Ancient Kaua ‘i. University of Hawaii Press, 2015.
Gvion, Liora, David Wesley, and Elana Wesley. Beyond Hummus and Falafel: Social and Political Aspects of Palestinian Food in Israel. Univ of California Press, 2012.
Ives, Sarah Fleming. Steeped in Heritage: The Racial Politics of South African Rooibos Tea. Duke University Press, 2017.
Parasecoli, Fabio. Knowing where it comes from: Labelling traditional foods to compete in a global market. University of Iowa Press, 2017.
Stephen C.. Schlesinger, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Harvard University, 1999.
Yamashita, Samuel Hideo. Hawai ‘i Regional Cuisine: The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawai ‘i Eats. University of Hawaii Press, 2019.
For any suggestions to add to the reading list please email sophie.lamond@unimelb.edu.au
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie Lamond is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Government where she is researching institutional food environments and transformative action for better food systems. She recently returned from four months fieldwork visiting American college campuses. Sophie loves teaching students about food, policy and systems thinking, and working with students to change institutions to be fairer, more sustainable and more equitable. In her spare time Sophie can be found pottering about in the kitchen cooking, drinking and talking. Sophie is an alumna of the World Food Systems Summer School 2015.