Food and the middle ages

The study of food in the middle ages attracted much interest among antiquarians from the eighteenth century on. New perspectives came with the growth of social and economic history. Over the last two decades, re-evaluations of historical sources, along with contributions from other disciplines, especially archaeology, the archaeological sciences, anthropology and sociology, have changed the possibilities for this area of research. The study of cooking, of cuisine and its cultural context, as much as food production and the material conditions of life, is now central to developing our understanding of consumption. This paper explores new possibilities for the study of taste and demotic cuisine, food and virtue, the association of women with food, and the role of food in society and in cultural change.     

Eating Hawai'i: local foods and place-making in Hawai'i Regional Cuisine

In this paper, we look at what it means to ‘eat Hawai'i’ and examine how Hawai'i Regional Cuisine (HRC) imagines, produces, and consumes place through particular constructions of local foods. The term ‘local’ attaches to foods as a marker of numerous positive attributes such as seasonal, sustainable, and community-based. Drawing upon ongoing ethnographic research on Hawai'i Island, we examine spatial and discursive constructions of local and how this particular cuisine places itself in local food networks while simultaneously using place to localize itself within the Island's food networks. Using a case study approach to carefully contextualize localness, we show how Merriman's Restaurant and HRC complicate notions of alternative and local food systems in its discursive and material production and reproduction of Local food and locally grown food.     

Losing it in Hawai‘i: Weight Watchers and the paradoxical nature of weight gain and loss

In Hawai‘i, bodies may be big, successful, widely accepted, and revered by their public, yet some subjects may simultaneously be seeking a thinner body even with what appears to be ‘fat acceptance’ by many state residents. This article analyses weight and weight loss narratives of two prominent public and nonwhite men, Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole and Sam Choy. We connect these narratives to Weight Watchers International discourses of slimming as these apply to ‘nonwhite’ subjects in Hawai‘i. We suggest that Weight Watchers normalizes thinness through discourses of whiteness inherent in particular foods. Hawai‘i's regional cuisine known as ‘Local Food’ is framed as ‘exotic,’ which is distinct from what the organization proposes is ‘good’ food that produces ‘healthy’ bodies. Weight Watchers narrates slim bodies and health while normalizing ‘white’ cuisine and the bodies who consume it thereby excluding Local brown bodies in Hawai‘i.     

一“鲜”难求？地方流动对可持续饮食系统的影响机制

可持续饮食系统的研究愈发受人重视，当前从关系主义视角的研究，偏重于与食物前向关联的“身体”，忽视了与食物后向关联的“地方”。本文选择福建省罗源县为案例研究地，分析了20世纪90年代至今罗源饮食地理的变化情况，旨在探究地方流动对地方饮食系统的影响机制。研究发现，罗源从“海味、清鲜、笋糟、非标准”的闽菜系主导的地方饮食特征变为多元菜系并存的标准化饮食特点，原来日常生活中常见的“新鲜”变得一“鲜”难求。该变化是由工业化、城镇化造成的“去地化”结构性因素与乡贤回家投资、三峡移民饮食跨地方迁移等“再地化”因素共同影响形成的。本文提出地方饮食系统的可持续性取决于个体的差异化感知，不能用生产—消费饮食系统的可持续性来替代个体对“可持续”的具身感知认同。