‘The Constructive Use of Abundance’: the UN World Food Programme and the Evolution of the International Food-Aid System during the Post-War Decades

This article studies the expansion of multilateral economic development aid in the early 1960s by exploring the history of the United Nations (UN) World Food Program. It analyses the pivotal role played by key development economists within the UN Secretariat, such as Hans Singer, alongside US policy-makers in the Kennedy administration in framing and directing the debate on multilateral food aid. It specifically argues that this period marked a shift in how food aid was perceived and utilised by donor and recipient countries - as well as international organisations like the UN and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Ultimately, what began in the 1950s as a bilateral method to feed the hungry through the disposal of surplus agricultural commodities evolved into an international food-aid system by the 1960s centred on the utilisation of surplus agriculture for economic development. This change showcased both the common goals and competing interests of US and UN policy-makers as food aid now joined the wider debate on various doctrines of development.     

Youth,Temporality, and Territorial Stigma: Finding Good in Camden,New Jersey

The concept of “territorial stigmatisation” identifies the role of symbolic denigration in the production of marginalised places. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research with a food justice organisation in Camden, New Jersey, to examine youth's responses to territorial stigma. The analysis demonstrates how Black and Latinx youth rewrite the story of Camden in a way that locates the “good” within it, using narratives of the city's prosperous history and possible futures to recuperate value within a stigmatised place. I argue that the perspectives of youth illuminate the temporal dimensions of territorial stigma, situating the blemish of place in relation to conceptions of individual and social change. The article contributes to a growing literature examining the strategic responses of those who dwell in pathologised places. Because youth are uniquely situated within the production of place, their perspectives offer important insights in this process.     

女性老年人肥胖的建成环境影响因素及规划响应研究

随着老龄化的快速发展,老年人在中国已经构成重要的群体,而因肥胖导致的一系列慢性疾病严重影响老年人的寿命和生命质量。身体质量指数（BMI）是衡量肥胖的重要指标。本文以女性老年人为研究对象,运用有序多分类Logistic回归模型,分析建成环境对女性老年人身体质量指数的影响。结果表明,居住地附近是否有适宜的休闲体力活动场所、居住地到休闲体力活动场所的步行时间、一周内去商场的频率、高热量食物的可获得性等建成环境变量与因变量女性老年人BMI等级存在显著联系。根据研究结论,从城市规划的角度提出建成环境优化建议,为构建老龄友好型的健康城市提供基础。     

On containers: A forum. Introduction

This forum, involving anthropologists, archaeologists and historians, lays out the theoretical groundwork for a deep history of the container. By isolating its contents from transaction, and by enabling the manipulation of time, the container serves as an engine of history.     

Women’s sense of farming: ecofeminism in sustainable farming and local food in Vermont,U.S.A

Abstract

Women’s Sense of Farming is a qualitative study of women farming as part of the local food movement in Vermont, U.S.A. The study puts the lives of women farmers in conversation with ecofeminist theory in order to examine how women farmers simultaneously enact critiques of culture, while also mimicking dominant narratives. The study subjects’ narratives of their lives show how they navigate the reason/nature dualism (as articulated by philosopher Val Plumwood). The result of the study is a set of values and experiences that show the successes and challenges of local food farmers working toward social, environmental, and economic sustainability.     

Eating Archaeology: Experimenting with Food in Public Outreach

Public engagement is becoming increasingly common practice in archaeological projects, capitalizing on the interactions of field archaeologists with local communities as well as with the descendants of the people under study, in a variety of ways: from the use of social media to engaging the local public with onsite presentations and exhibitions. However, public engagement efforts are often less robust when archaeologists return to their home institutions, with most of the researchers’ time and energies spent fulfilling their academic duties. Interactions between archaeologists and their local communities — those closer to their home institutions — are often minimal, creating insular university departments. To secure a future as a vibrant, relevant field of research, archaeology must develop greater interest and skill in engaging with its neighbours both within and outside the academy. The study of past meals and foodways provides an exceptional avenue for public outreach, which in turn is further enhanced through fruitful collaboration among various university departments and museums. Here we present the results of the multidisciplinary outreach project ‘Eating Archaeology’, designed with the intention of building collaborations across disciplines and a new narrative with which to engage the public.     

Alternative adaptive regimes for integrating foraging and farming activities

There are two distinct forager-farmer adaptive regimes evidenced in the ethnographic record: an ancillary and surplus cultivation regime. Societies characterized by these different regimes define different systems for allocating time to the production of domesticated plants. Cross-cultural patterns support the proposition that two socioecological conditions are logically necessary in order for an ancillary cultivation regime to develop and persist within a population of foragers. Wild resources must be sufficiently available, and farmers who produce a surplus of crops must be available to exchange with, live with or raid to redistribute crops after an episode of crop loss. The cross-cultural presence of two empirically distinct regimes for integrating foraging and farming is a useful frame of reference for evaluating how prehistoric foragers first integrated foraging and farming activities in archaeological contexts of secondary crop acquisition. A preliminary examination indicates that the ethnographic patterns are most consistent with the interpretation that the earliest farmers to inhabit the American Southwest produced at least a minimal surplus of domesticated plants. It is postulated that the adoption of a surplus cultivation regime by a population creates the adaptive opportunity for ancillary cultivation to develop and persist on a landscape.     

Stone Soup: photo-elicitation as a learning tool in the food geography classroom

This paper showcases self-reflective and inclusive pedagogy using photo-elicitation in a food geography course assignment. The Stone Soup project positions students as both researchers and participant-subjects in a participant-driven photo-elicitation (PDPE) study of students' foodways. Student papers for this assignment demonstrate rich understandings of the factors enabling and constraining food practices. We suggest that PDPE has value beyond being a research tool; it can empower students as learners and can offer a quality of insight and depth of engagement that are complementary to critical themes in food studies courses.     

Food mapping: a psychogeographical method for raising food consciousness

Food mapping is a new, participatory, interdisciplinary pedagogical approach to learning about our modern food systems. This method is inspired by the Situationist International's practice of the “dérive” and draws from the discourses of critical geography, the food movement's research on food deserts, and participatory action research. Using a “critical food lens,” this experiential exercise encourages participants to look beyond their plates and think about the health, economic, and ecological impacts of food. This ethnographic activity produces user-generated data and has the potential to transform participants' understanding of how agricultural practices effect other societal institutions.