Exploring children's foodscapes

In this article, we discuss children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. We draw from a project, Children as co-researchers of foodscapes, where we have been working with children as co-researchers, using basically ethnographic methods, and as co-designers in a collaborative design effort. This article focuses on the findings from a theoretically inspired perspective, using the concept of foodscapes. These are food-related structures of different kinds, which evolve as the child explores them and where children as food consumers are generated. In this article, we highlight the scapes of taste, routines, people, things, commerce, child (as opposed to adult) and health and give brief accounts of the way the children related to them. Finally, we turn to the benefits of working with foodscapes for a better understanding of children's becoming as food consumers in the intersection of various foodscapes. This article is based on data gathered by the children, but also on our fieldwork notes and observations following the children in their foodscapes.     

Beyond Alternative: Exploring the Potential for Autonomous Food Spaces

Abstract: Much attention has been given in recent years to the rise of alternative food networks However, the very concept of “alternative” has come under increasing scrutiny, as theorists grapple with what is meant by alternative and whether the concept adequately captures the key components of such a diverse range of networks and communities. Drawing on poststructuralist political economy, I propose the concept of autonomous food spaces as one possible lens for approaches food‐provisioning activities that situate food within the broader context of non‐capitalist communities seeking to build relationships of mutual aid and non‐market exchanges. I use the examples of a radical collective kitchen, Food Not Bombs, and a community‐supported agriculture operation, Vegetables Unplugged, to explore the potential for autonomous food spaces as part of a broader “politics of possibilities” beyond capitalism.     

The Socio‐Nature of Local Organic Food

Abstract: The concept of socio‐nature asserts that social relations are inherently ecological and that ecological relations are inherently social. This paper examines how, and with what consequences, discourses and practices of support for local and organic food reflect this idea. It argues that proponents of local organic agriculture view the food they promote as simultaneously social and the product of human labor. However, advocates’ understanding of the concept is partial and constrained by social privilege. It does not extend to industrial agriculture or paid farm labor. The literature on socio‐nature coheres around the revelation that what is understood as natural is also social and vice versa. In contrast, this paper takes a new approach, examining socio‐nature as a practice‐shaping discourse already embedded in social life. Investigating the on‐the‐ground ideological work performed by the concept also allows for assessment of its political consequences.     

“If I were hungry,I would not tell you” (Ps 50, 12): Perspectives on the Care and Feeding of the Gods in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

In the Hebrew Bible, sacrifices are described as food for Yahweh and thus the sacrificial system corresponds with the general Ancient Near Eastern system of the “care and feeding of the gods” At the same time, human-divine commensality is problematized in narrative texts such as Judges 6 and 13, where the burnt offering is stressed as the only and necessarily different way the deity may consume food. Finally, some passages, such as Psalm 50, quoted above, explicitly reject the notion that sacrifices and offerings should be required as sustenance for Yahweh since he is the creator and owner of the world and everything in it.

This article offers a survey of various views on sacrifice as food for the deity in the Hebrew Bible and discusses these views in their Ancient Near Eastern context. It is suggested that the main understanding of sacrifice as meal in the Hebrew Bible is one that emphasizes difference through commensality and stresses the incompatibility of the human and the divine sphere through the social locus of the meal.     

A Late Neolithic vertebrate food web based on stable isotope analyses

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bone collagen, and stable carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of the bone's structural carbonate, were performed on 120 individuals representing 33 vertebrate species, including a single human bone find, collected from the Late Neolithic settlement at Pestenacker, Bavaria, Germany. We were thus capable of reconstructing a rather complex food web and could also address particular issues, such as whether humans influenced the diet of their domestic animals as opposed to their wild relatives, or whether humans perhaps had to compete over food with their domesticates. A rather unexpected result was that freshwater fish, which could be captured in the nearby river Lech, a major tributary of the Danube, contributed to the human diet only occasionally. As for mammals, it was also possible to recognise different trophic levels for birds and aquatic vertebrates, applying stable isotope analyses to both bone collagen and structural carbonate. In the case of fish, δ¹⁸O values at least revealed a physiological regularity in terms of temperature preference, besides diet. Conceivably, variability of δ¹⁸O in surface water as reflected, for example, by species that avoided human settlements, may help to characterise past ecosystems and to define site catchment exploited by Neolithic man in the course of food acquisition. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

绿色食品生产基地农业生态环境综合评价模式构建——以苏北里下河地区为例

发展绿色食品生产是生态农业建设规划的重要组成部分。本文根据绿色食品产地环境质量标准要求,客观评价里下河地区发展绿色食品生产的环境状况,得出里下河地区具有发展绿色食品生产显著的农业生态环境优势,并且,从苏北里下河地区评判案例出发,总结出绿色食品生产基地农业生态环境综合评价模式,从模式的原理、指标的选取、具体评价方法等进行论述。为各地开展绿色食品综合评价提供模式和方法。同时从农业循环经济的原理论述绿色食品,有机食品是高效生态农业的产物。为地方政府在制定发展绿色食品生产基地建设规划时参考。     

Feasts and gifts: sharing food in the middle ages

This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History on feasting and gifts of food from the early middle ages through to the early modern period. It discusses the tensions between hierarchy and community, largesse and luxury in the feast, and the continued importance of communal eating throughout the medieval period.     

Economic Protectorate in Britain’s Informal Empire: The Trucial Coast during the Second World War

This article examines the economic and political impact of the Second World War upon a small outpost of Britain’s informal empire. It analyses the multiple ways in which the economy, trade and governance of the Trucial Coast were disrupted, disturbed and challenged by the exceptional circumstances of the war. In response to these circumstances, a variety of emergency arrangements were introduced, resulting in an unprecedented degree of involvement of outsiders and foreign agencies in the management of the local economy. The transformation of Britain’s traditional policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Trucial Coast is traced back to the exigencies of wartime conditions.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

Current issues in Chinese Neolithic archaeology

Every year archaeologists in China discover numerous rich sites demonstrating significant regional variability in Neolithic cultures, primarily from about 6500 B.C. to 1900 B.C. This paper discusses a topic not covered in detail in current or forthcoming publications, the origins and development of agricultural systems. Recent fieldwork in both northern and southern China suggests that initial steps toward settled agricultural villages began circa 11,000 B.P. I review evidence for the cultivation of millet, rice, and other plants as well as animal husbandry in different regions of China. There are several later Neolithic sites in northern China with evidence for rice cultivation. I suggest how future research projects can investigate regional variation and change over time in subsistence and settlement during the Neolithic Period.