This email has been sent to members of the BSA food study group/SCOFF. Please help to publicise the work of the study group by forwarding this email to other colleagues or networks who may be interested in research on the sociology of food production and consumption. If you would like us to send information about jobs, conferences, funding, research, papers and reviews of relevant meetings, reports, books/papers to members of the group then please email Rebecca O’Connell [[log in to unmask]]. Links to relevant research can also be added to the study group website (http://www.britsoc.co.uk/specialisms/Food.htm). Please also contact Rebecca with queries relating to membership. The food study group is a specialist study group of the British Sociological Association (http://www.britsoc.co.uk/).  

Food Study Group news: 

1. *New convenors needed - deadline approaching - two days to go*

The BSA Food Study Group is seeking one or two new co-convenors with a passion for encouraging the sociological analysis of food, fostering dialogue across disciplines and promoting engagement beyond academia.
 
The role of the Food Study Group co-convenor includes:
 
•      Liaising with the BSA to organise events (such as seminars, workshops and reading groups) throughout the UK and the international Food & Society conference (every two years)
 
•      Coordinating the Food Study Group’s participation in the BSA annual conference
 
•      Maintaining an accurate membership list and using the JiscMail e-news bulletin to share information with members
 
•      Participating in the annual Study Group Convenors’ meeting called by the BSA Board of Trustees to ensure that the Association continues to meet the needs of its study groups and vice versa

Please note that Study Group convenors must be paid up members of the BSA and refer to BSA Study Group Terms of Reference for further details about how Study Groups work and convenors’ duties: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/24129/study_group_terms_of_reference_september_2016.pdf
 
Co-convening the Food Study Group is a really excellent opportunity to meet others with an interest in the Sociology of Food and help shape the development of the field.
 
To apply, please email the convenors by Friday 15th September with a brief statement outlining why you are interested in the post and your suitability for the role. We welcome informal enquiries.
 
BSA Food Study Group Convenors
 
Rebecca O’Connell [log in to unmask]
Andrea Tonner [log in to unmask]
Hannah Lambie-Mumford [log in to unmask]
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Non food study group news:

1.Two job opportunities at the Food Ethics Council 
http://foodethicscouncil.org/getinvolved/jobs/

a) Vacancy: Project Lead, Farm animal welfare metrics
________________________________________
We're looking for an experienced P/T project lead for our Farm animal welfare metrics project for a 12 month period. 
Our exciting new project to establish farm animal welfare as a key indicator of sustainable food systems aims to leverage the power of indexes to drive a ‘race to the top’ on farm animal welfare standards and practice in the UK (and beyond). We're looking for an individual with the ability to engage with key influencers, providing them with evidence to enable them to put pressure on the UK Government and Devolved Administrations to protect and further strengthen standards of farm animal welfare, and progressive businesses to improve farm animal practices.

You will set up and manage the project - conducting research, organising workshops and round tables, liaising with senior stakeholders and doing advocacy work to promote both the uptake of ‘better’ animal welfare metrics and solutions to improve the UK’s animal welfare standards and practice. You will have a passion for farm animal welfare and sustainable food systems, and a keen interest in metrics. You will have experience engaging with key influencers. You will be self-motivated, able to work independently, and able to prosper as part of a small but dynamic team.

Salary and hours: We estimate this project will require roughly 100 days over a 12-month period, at a salary level of £34,000-£37,000 calculated on a pro rata basis (£13,077-£14,231), which can be either on an employment or consultancy basis. If you are our preferred candidate, we will work with you to agree the terms of your engagement and your working schedule.
Location: Kings Cross, London
Deadline for applications: midday on Thursday 5th October 2017
Interviews: Friday 13th October 2017, London
Preferred start date: As soon as possible following interviews
Go to our website for full application details.

b) We're seeking an exceptional Communications Officer
________________________________________
There are less than two weeks left to apply for the position of part-time Communications Officer to work in our shared office in Kings Cross, London. This is an exciting opportunity to join a small but dynamic team in an organisation that has been at the forefront of thinking on ethical concerns in food and farming since 1998.
Our influence depends on good communication. That doesn’t mean telling people what to do. We see ethics as a sharp ear and a helping hand, not a wagging finger. We need a dynamic Communications Officer to help us engage the people we work with, raise our profile and get our messages across. You will support the Executive Director in developing and implementing our communications strategy. You will build our brand and support our external affairs. You will manage our social media, co-ordinate our media relations and work with colleagues to put good communication at the heart of all our work. You must be prepared to write copy and to represent us, as well as to co-ordinate and advise your colleagues. You will have an eye for the story in research work and be good at distilling complex issues to their key points. You will take a strategic view of communication and be practiced at weighing the pros and cons of different media. You will understand how to communicate with different audiences about controversial issues and recognise that integrity is paramount.
Salary: £25,000 - £27,000 pro rata
Hours: Part time – 18.75 hours per week (0.5 FTE)
Location: Kings Cross, London
Deadline for applications: midday on Tuesday 26th September 2017
Interviews: Monday 2nd October 2017, London

Go to our website for application details.

2. Call for papers 
Gender, Work and Organization 10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Conference Sydney, 13-­16 June 2018
Critical race and feminist studies of food work and organizing
Stream Convenors:
Elaine Swan, University of Sussex, UK;;
Rick Flowers, University of Technology Sydney, Australia;;
Maud Perrier, University of Bristol, UK;;
Janet Sayers, Massey University, New Zealand.

This stream brings feminist and critical race theories to studies of food in organizational studies and will select suitable papers for a special issue proposal of the Gender, Work and Organization journal. We seek to establish an agenda for critical race and feminist studies of food in organizational studies. Critical race feminist theorists insist on the political, cultural and social significance of race, gender and class in the production and consumption of food in the private and public spheres, and related forms of oppression, exploitation and inequality. Whilst organization theorists are starting to study food, very little attention has been given to critical race, feminist and decolonizing theories in food studies or racialized, gendered and classed practices and politics. For instance, the papers in the special issue of Human Relations in 2009, and the call for papers for CMS 2009, 2016 and EGOS 2016, which make notable contributions to our understanding of food practices in organizations, largely ignore critical race and feminist scholars, and the centrality of gender, race and class in relation to food work, practices and organizing. This underplaying of the significance of race and gender undermines how scholars conceptualize food practices, politics, food work, organizing and activism, and disregards the perspectives of critical race and feminist scholars, limiting our understanding of gender, class, race and food. Critical race and feminist food scholars emphasize the gendered and racialized social relations and social and cultural meanings of food which reproduce the unequal division of labour in the home and the invisibilization and devaluation of feminized, racialized and classed food work and organizing. The food work of minoritized groups performs reproductive work for capitalism, sustaining and nurturing labour power. The social and cultural feminization of food and
food’s associations with the body, instincts, and appetites means that feminized disciplines such as home economics are held in less prestige than male dominated areas of industrial agriculture and food technology (Avakian and Haber 2005;; Allen and Sachs 2007). 

Food is freighted with meaning and constitutes bodily nutrition but also pleasure, anxiety, labour, and morality, all of which have raced, classed, gendered and sexualized connotations and practices. Meals in the public and private spheres are symbolic, social, religious, emotional and material events which define, reproduce and perform families, gender, race, femininities and class (Flowers and Swan 2015). Food and food work matters to critical race and feminist organizational studies because they challenge binaries of productive and reproductive work, public and private, and the formal and informal economy and speak to pressing political themes of work, embodiment, class, race, feminist activism, emotional labour, body work, animals and debates on the sensory, political, material and discursive (Swan and Flowers 2017;; Sayers 2010). 

Outside the boundaries of organizational studies, there has been a recent flurry of feminist and critical race writing on food, indicated by the special issues of Feminist Review on Food (2016) and Feminist Studies on Food and Ecology (2014) and edited book on intersectional approaches to feminist food studies (Parker et al., forthcoming). This scholarship encompasses the gendered and racialized division of labour in the domestic sphere;; racialized, classed and gendered inequality regimes in the food labour market;; the political economy, globalization and colonialism of food production and consumption;; food violences, hunger and starvation;; gender and race in the agri food industry;; gender, class and race and whiteness in food activism and alternative food movements;; gender, race, class and food in popular culture, films and TV cooking programmes;; gender and ethnicity in cookbooks and memoirs;; class, race and gender in food pedagogies;; fat studies and eating disorders;; gender and foodiesm;; vegetarianism and veganism;; and critical animal studies. At the heart of these studies is an understanding of food work in the public and domestic spheres as a side of gendered, racialized and classed oppression, exploitation and disadvantage but also agency, empowerment, pleasure and feminist solidarity (Perrier and Swan 2017). And as Marjorie DeVault’s (1991) groundbreaking study shows, food work entails multifaceted, skillful, complex physical, emotional, mental and caring labour. 

Feminist and critical race food scholarship emphasizes the inequalities in women’s paid food labour (Allen and Sachs 2007;; Sachs et al. 2014). As they show us, women work in farming, food processing and manufacturing plants, retailing, schools, hospitals, prisons, and restaurants, undertaking work that women previously performed in the domestic sphere. Moreover, women are over-­represented among low-­wage food workers, but under-­represented in food management and science, and the leadership of agribusiness and food activism (ibid). Although cooking is feminized, women work much less that men as chefs in in fast food or fine dining restaurants. Moreover, critical race theorists remind white feminists and activists of the centre of race and racial discrimination in the production, distribution and consumption of food, with racially minoritized women positioned in dirty, low status, low paid work (Sachs et al. 2014;; Williams-­Forson and Wilkerson 2011). 

And yet women of colour and white women are at the forefront of food activism and food social entrepreneurship (Sachs et al., 2014). They labour to change food systems and consumption practices individually and collectively to establish healthy, environmentally sustainable, and socially just food cultures and systems (Sachs at al., 2014). However, the ‘eating for change’ or ‘eating for good’ (Johnston, Szabo and Rodney 2011) in the form of localism, organic foods, fair trade are roundly critiqued for elitism, moralism, whiteness and classism;; a lack of attention to feminism;; and adding to women’s already overburdened workload in food production, procurement and preparation in the home (Guthman 2008;; Kimura 2011;; Paddock 2010;; Slocum 2007). 

There are complex politics too in relation to the representations of gender, race, class and heteronormativity in relation to food work on TV, popular culture, films, cookbooks and digital food cultures. Some of this discussion centres on critical assessments of food in postfeminist culture, the idealization and romanticization of home-­cooking;; and women’s ‘retreatism’ to the domestic pleasures of labour-­intensive cooking and baking (Dejmanee 2015).

Indicative themes:
The stream convenors welcome critical race and feminist papers which examine aspects of food production, provisioning and/or consumption through the lenses of work, labour, organization and organizing, inequality and exploitation in material, socio-­cultural and bodily domains related to work, and any of intersections of gender, race, class, age, disability and studies of racism, colonialism, whiteness, disableism, and heteronormativity. Such papers may include, but are not limited to, considerations of questions of gender, race, class, sexuality, age, disability, heteronormativity applied to topics such as:
Food organizations and food in organizations: Workplaces;; schools;; museums;; culinary tourism;; restaurants and cafes;; food social enterprises;; food banks;; food shops;; hospitals;; farms;; abattoirs;; activist cafes;; food festivals;; cooking classes;; tasting events;; supermarkets;; markets;; gastro-­pubs;; health agencies;; food processing and manufacturing plants;; grocery stores;; and prisons;; inequality regimes;; churches;; mosques and other faith based organizations NGOs;; multinationals;; food social enterprises;;
Food work: Paid and unpaid feeding work in the home;; service sector;; agriculture;; shopping;; cooking;; cleaning up;; waste management;; care work;; emotional labour;; breastfeeding;; postfeminist ‘retreatism’ and neo-­domesticity;; food hospitality;; performativity and performance;; race;; class and feeding workers;; food blogging;; the dark side of food care work;; multifaceted;; skillful;; physical;; mental;; and emotional facets of food work;; 
Food pedagogies: chefs;; TV chefs;; home cooks;; ethnic chefs;; postfeminism and representations of women chefs in films;; celebrity chef campaigns;; nutritionists;; nurses and doctors;; school teachers;; health educators;; domestic science teachers;; museum
educators;; 
Food aesthetics: domestic arts;; household management;; domestic science teaching;; ethnic taste aesthetics;; food design;; food marketing;; feminine food;; feminine taste;; working class taste;; cupcakes;; baking;; icing;; slow food;; food artists;; foodies;;
Food work occupations: cooks;; chefs;; waitresses;; nurses;; domestic science teachers;; food technologists;; farmers;; fishermen/women;; market stall owners;; fast food workers;; fine dining workers;; bar workers;; retailer buyers;; mothers;; careers;; sommeliers;; celebrity farmers;; artists;; curators;; food tour guides;; nutritionists;; workers in food factories;; butchers;; food critics and journalists;;
Food and eating in organizations: eating in hospitals and old people’s homes;; ethnic food in institutions;; fine dining;; fast food;; fasting;; binge eating competitions;; working in cafes;; school lunches;; working lunches;; breakfast meetings;; corporate dinners;; cultural capital;; eating practices;;
Food activism: decolonizing food and social justice;; food sustainability and environmentalism;; hunger;; food desserts;; food health;; permaculture;; organic food;; community gardens;; food social movements;; veganism;; animal studies;; dumpsterism;; whiteness and food activism;; classism and food activism;; nutritionalism;; Indigenous foods;; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ food;; food social movement leadership;; alternative agro-­food movement;;
fat activism;; anti-­globalization.
Organizing food, affect and the senses: laboratory work;; food technology;; body-­work;; racialized senses;; racism and senses;; tasting workshops;; tourism;; sensory work;; pleasure, guilt and anxiety.
Food, bodies and labour: eating well;; good and bad fat;; healthy food;; dieting;; eating disorders;; Weight Watchers;; gyms;; eating for good;; burdens of food activism;; dirty work;; allergies;; body work.
Food work special events and sociality: inequality regimes;; Christmas;; Ramadan;; birthdays;; weddings;; wakes;; funerals;; hospitality;; eating the Other;; work parties;; work outings;; corporate dinners;; conviviality;; commensality;; micropolitics of working in cafes and
third spaces;;
Representations of food work;; food workers;; food organizations in the media and popular culture: Culinary TV;; digital food cultures;; Masterchef;; films;; cookbooks;; recipes;; magazines;; advertising;; marketing;; multiculturalism;; academic writing and ‘carnophallogocentricism’ (Sayers 2010);; Grandmothers;; Nonnas and Mothers;;
Food work and organizing methodologies: Sensory ethnography;; walking methods;; decolonizing methods;; art practices;; participant observation;; cooking conversations.

For submission details go to: www.mq.edu.au/events/gwosydney
For stream enquiries please contact: Elaine Swan at [log in to unmask]
Papers from the stream will be selected for a special issue proposal of the Gender, Work and Organization journal.

References:
Allen, P., & Sachs, C. (2007). Women and food chains: The gendered politics of food.
International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. 15(1): 1-­23.
Avakian, A. V., & Haber, B. (2005). Feminist food studies: A brief history. From Betty
Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food, 1-­26.
Dejmanee, T. (2015). ‘Food Porn’ as Postfeminist Play: Digital Femininity and the Female
Body on Food Blogs. Television and New Media. 1-­20.
DeVault, M. L. (1991). Feeding the family: the social organization of caring as gendered
work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Flowers, R. and Swan, E. (2015). Multiculturalism as Work: The Emotional Labour of Ethnic
Food Tour Guides' in Abbots, E.J., Lavis, A. & Attala, M.L. (eds), Careful Eating: Bodies,
Food and Care. London: Routledge: 25-­41.
Gardiner, J. and Tambe, A. (2014) (eds) Food and Ecology Special Issue, Feminist Studies
40(2).
Guthman, J. (2008). Bringing good food to others: investigating the subjects of alternative
food practice. Cultural Geographies, Vol. 15 (4): 431-­447.
Hemmings, C. Al-­Ali, N. and Wearing, S. (2016) (eds) Food Special Issue, Feminist Review
114(1).
Johnston J., Szabo M., Rodney A. (2011). Good food, good people: Understanding the
cultural repertoire of ethical eating. Journal of Consumer Culture 11(3): 293–318
Kimura, A. H. (2011). Food education as food literacy: privatized and gendered food
knowledge in contemporary Japan, Agriculture and Human Values, 28 (4): 465-­482.
Paddock, J. (2010). Economy, ecology, society: the importance of class for the sustainable
development agenda. Cardiff University. Cardiff School of Social Sciences Paper: 125.
Parker, B., Brady, J., Power. E. and Belyea, S. (forthcoming) (eds) Feminist Food Studies:
Exploring Intersectionality.
Perrier, M. and Swan. E. (2017) Women Food Social Entrepreneurs: Spaces of
Transnational feminist solidarity? Paper given at Feminist Sociology, Gender, & Food
stream, CSA Conference, University of Toronto, May 29th –June 1st.
Sachs, C., Allen, P., Terman, A., Hayden, J., & Hatcher, C. (2014). Front and back of the
house: socio-­spatial inequalities in food work. Agricultural Human Values, 31(1), 3-­17.
Sayers, J. (2010). Flat Whites: How and why do people work in cafes? New Zealand
Journal of Employment Relations, 34(2), 74—86.
Slocum, R. (2007). Whiteness, space and alternative food practice. Geoforum 38(3):520-­
533.
Swan, E. (2013). Cooking up a storm: politics, labour and bodies. Leisure/Loisir, 37(4), 433-­
443.
Swan, E. and Flowers, R. (2017) ‘We would have no wars if there were more Dinners’:
Food Hospitality Activism in Sydney, paper given at Organization Studies Workshop on
Food, Platanias, May 16-­20.
Williams-­Forson, P., & Wilkerson, A. (2011). Intersectionality and Food Studies. Food,
Culture & Society, 14(1), 7-­28.