Hi everyone,
2nd CFP RGS-IBG AC2014:
Consumed, entangled, intermingled, co-constituted? Eating and the co-production of bodies .
Convenors: Suzanne Hocknell & Louise Macallister (University of Exeter).
Session sponsored by the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group.
I eat an apple. Bite, chew, swallow. Where has it gone? (Mol, 2008: 29).
Recent work in Social & Cultural Geographies following amongst others Haraway (2008), Mol (2008) & Bennett (2010), suggests that we cannot continue to conceptualize either 'I' or 'apples' as discrete bodies. For example Hinchliffe et al call for a shift from comprehending bodies as bounded by borderlines, to imagining 'topological spaces of the borderland' (2013:541) 'wherein pathogens, hosts, knowledge practices and others beside intra-act to make life more or less safe' (2013:540).
'Where does eating apples happen?' (Mol, 2008: 28).
I eat an apple - apple and human fold with gut microbiota to create new material formations with(in) the body, and together we are eating amongst other things, industrial food practices, the labour of migrant workers, and socio-economic norms about who should eat what and how much. But it doesn't stop there - when I eat an apple I enter assemblages with dental plaque, endocrine hormones, with sewage systems, public health policies and marketing strategies.
'"I eat an apple"?' (Mol, 2008: 28).
Alimentary assemblages reveal 'glimpses...of intermingling bodies that suggest other ways of inhabiting the world' (Probyn, 2000: 8). For Hayes-Conroy & Hayes-Conroy 'small-scale resistances' to food logics and food practices 'such as a conscious attempt to retrain tastebuds - are...politically relevant on multiple scales' (2008: 469).
For this session we invite reflections on how our logics and practices of eating co-produce bodies materially, socially, ethically and politically with multitude others. Possible themes include:
Who, where, and what are eater & eaten?
Geographies of digestion
Eating and epigenetics
Alimentary identities
The biological co-production of body size
'Industrial' foods & the co-production of bodies
Eating hierarchies
Eating, conviviality and the co-production of communities
Eating well? 'Ethical' eating and (re)making the world
Please email proposals (title, 250 word abstract) or questions to Suzanne Hocknell ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) and Louise Macallister ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) by Monday 10th February.
Best wishes
Suzanne Hocknell & Louise Macallister.
.......
Suzanne Hocknell
PhD Researcher: The Fat of the Land: Eating-well with margarine-assemblages
Human Geography
College of Life and Environmental Sciences
University of Exeter
http://eprofile.exeter.ac.uk/portfolio.php?uid=sh422
https://twitter.com/SuzanneHocknell
http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/
https://twitter.com/#!/exetergeography
