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University of Edinburgh School of Social & Political Science
Sociology 2018-19
The Social Life of Food SCIL10081 2018-2019
Semester 2
Key Information
Course Organiser
Dr Isabelle Darmon Email: [email protected] Room: No. 6.27, Chrystal MacMillan Building Guidance & Feedback Hours: Tuesdays 3:00-5:00pm
Location Semester 2 Thursdays 09:00-10:50 Seminar Room 1, 7 George square
Tutor Llibi Mendez de Vigo
[email protected] Course Secretary
Laura Thiessen Email: [email protected]
Undergraduate Teaching Office Assessment Deadlines
Short essay: Tuesday 12th February 2019, 12noon Long essay: Wednesday 24th April 2019, 12 noon
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Contents
Key Information..................................................................................................................................... 1
A warm welcome to The Social Life of Food… ....................................................................................... 3
Aims, Objectives and Outcomes ............................................................................................................ 4
Participation .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Office Hours ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Course Outline ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Assessment ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Indicative General Readings .................................................................................................................. 7
Detailed Course Outline ........................................................................................................................ 8
Appendix 1 – General Information ...................................................................................................... 17
Students with Disabilities ............................................................................................................... 17
Learning Resources for Undergraduates ........................................................................................ 17
Discussing Sensitive Topics ............................................................................................................. 18
Attendance Monitoring .................................................................................................................. 18
External Examiner ........................................................................................................................... 18
Appendix 2 - Course Work Submission and Penalties ........................................................................ 19
Penalties that can be applied to your work and how to avoid them. ............................................ 19
ELMA: Submission and Return of Coursework ............................................................................... 20
Extensions ....................................................................................................................................... 20
Exam Feedback and Viewing Exam Scripts: .................................................................................... 20
Plagiarism Guidance for Students: Avoiding Plagiarism ................................................................. 21
Data Protection Guidance for Students .......................................................................................... 21
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A warm welcome to The Social Life of Food…
… a course developed by Niamh Moore and Isabelle Darmon, convened this semester by Isabelle, and team-taught with Imogen Bevan, Isabel Fletcher and Sophia Woodman. Hello also from Llibi Mendez de Vigo, the course tutor.
Why the social life of food? Food has long been, and will continue to be, an intense socio-cultural, material, ethical and political issue. Taking sustainability and food justice/equality as specific lenses, the course examines what we eat, how we eat, where food comes from, and goes, what food is wasted, and how food brings us together and divides us.
Food appears in the course: • as good to think (and act) with; • as an area of debate and inquiry in its own right; • as a force which acts on us and on the world; • as a site where we can explore the use of, and apply, key concepts in social science
study – these include, but are not limited to: globalization; industrialization; colonialism; sustainability; standardisation and measurement; normalisation; inequalities and social justice; family relations and sociability; identity; the body; gender and feminism; illness, health and well-being; naturalisation, nature/culture dualisms and posthumanism. We will not address all of these in equal depth each year; our focus will depend on what comes up in different sessions.
The course will introduce students to key debates about food practices through a range of different case studies each week, and thus to build towards a set of analytic and critical skills which students will be able to continue to apply to emerging food issues. Case studies will be systematically introduced through historical, theoretical and comparative spotlights, so as to introduce students to the diversity and complexity of current questions, controversies and initiatives around food. The course is designed to provide students with key critical analytic skills and to enable them to continue to apply them as new theories, practices and controversies over food, and how to transform, the current food system, emerge. Readings include a range of academic texts (theory; methodology; ethnographic case studies; different disciplines etc.) as well as policy documents, food industry and alternative food movement literature, blogs, websites and other literature from a range of food activists.
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Aims, Objectives and Outcomes
By the end of the course you will have an understanding of key concepts and contemporary debates about food, and be able to critically evaluate how past, current and future issues are framed and dealt with locally and globally. You will be able to analyse how food emerges as a key social issue, and identify and evaluate major debates within the study of food.
More specifically you will be able to:
1. Demonstrate knowledge of some of the main terminologies, theories and
disciplinary boundaries in the study of food, including through the lens of sustainability
2. Apply the newly acquired knowledge by using methodological and theoretical skills to make sense of historical, contemporary and newly emerging food debates
3. Apply the acquired methodological and theoretical skills to critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse complex problems around food
4. Apply the acquired methodological and theoretical skills to assess currently debated ‘solutions’ to issues of food sustainability
5. Present and convey information about contemporary debates around food to informed audiences.
Food Researchers in Edinburgh network (FRIED)
Isabelle, Isabel, Imogen, Llibi, Niamh and Sophia are all members of the Food Researchers in Edinburgh network (FRIED), which is enthusiastically supporting the development of this course. FRIED run regular seminars and events for those of you interested in further food activities. For more information on the activities of the network, for current seminars and to subscribe to the mailing list, please see http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/research/research_centres/cross_school_research_clusters/food_researchers_in_edinburgh_fried
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Participation
The course involves one two-hour participatory session every week. Each session will vary in structure and throughout the course activities might include lectures and mini-lectures, discussions, working alone, in pairs, in groups, and as a whole class, games, impromptu presentations, film and video, quiet time and some noise, writing, making notes, summarising, synthesising, drawing, playing, thinking, debating, and even some eating! So please come prepared for active participation each week, and please do readings in advance, so we are all prepared for discussions during the weekly sessions.
To support learning in the course we will organise students into study groups of 6-8, and students will remain with that group throughout the course. The purposes of the study groups are: • to help each other with the readings: whilst everybody is expected to do the required
readings, further readings can be distributed among the members of the group – for example each member might be in charge of one additional reading and make sure that they brief their peers on the purpose of the reading, its structure, key arguments and points of discussion.
• to collectively discuss key take home points for each session. • to support each other for the assignments: members of each group will pair up with
another member, read each other’s draft mid-term essays and hold a work session outside of class time to discuss each other’s drafts, make suggestions etc.
Office Hours
Please discuss with us as soon as possible if you have any suggestions for the course, or questions, or if are having any problems with the course, if you would find it helpful to have an individual chat about group work or essays, or if there are any other aspects of the course you would like to chat about. We are always happy to discuss ideas, questions or problems with any students.
Isabelle’s office hours are Tuesdays 3:00-5:00pm. Her office is 6.27 on the 6th floor of the Chrystal MacMillan Building. Llibi’s office hour is tbc
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Course Outline
Week Topic Lead lecturers
1: 17 January Introduction to the course. The social life and practice of food and eating
Isabelle Darmon (ID)
I - TASTES, FLAVOURS, CUISINES 2: 24 Jan Tastes and flavours ID 3: 31 Jan Tastes and the senses Imogen Bevan 4: 7 February The raw, the cooked and the rotten – freeganism and waste ID
SHORT ESSAY DUE BY TUESDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 12 NOON II - DIETS
5: 14 Feb Meat Niamh Moore (NM) Festival of Creative Learning, 18-22 February 2019
6: 28 Feb Healthy and sustainable diets? Isabel Fletcher 7: 7 March Measuring food NM 8: 14 March Food inequality and poverty IF
III – MEALS, SOCIABILITY AND THE COLLECTIVE 9: 21 March Food, collective identities [or festivals] Sophia Woodman 10: 28 March Sociability ID 11: 4 April Course review + assignment ID
FINAL ESSAY DUE BY WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL, 12 NOON
Assessment Students will be assessed by:
Assessment
Word count limit
Do not exceed the word limit
or penalties will be applied
Weighting Submission date Return of feedback
Short Essay
Between 1501-1700 words max
(excluding bibliography)*
25%
12/02/2019 (all coursework is due at 12 noon on the
date of submission)
05/03/2019
Long Essay
Between 3,501 and 4,000 words max (excluding bibliography)*
75%
24/04/2019 (all coursework is due at 12 noon on the
date of submission)
16/05/19
Note: All coursework is submitted electronically through ELMA. Please read the School Policies and Coursework Submission Procedures which you will find here.
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Indicative General Readings
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A political ecology of things. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Berry, W. (1997) The Unsettling of America: Culture & agriculture (Rev. reprint. ed.). San Francisco; [Great Britain]: Sierra Club Books.
Counihan, C. and Van Esterik, P. (2013) Food and Culture: A reader. Routledge.
Counihan, C., & Højlund, S. (2018). Making taste public : Ethnographies of food and the senses. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.
Crouch, D., & Ward, C. (1994) The Allotment: Its landscape and culture. Nottingham:
Mushroom.
Crowther, Gillian. 2018. Eating Culture: An Anthropological Guide to Food. Second Edition. 2
edition. University of Toronto Press, Higher Education Division.
Guthman, J. (2004) Agrarian Dreams: The paradox of organic farming in California. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Jarosz, L. (2011) Nourishing women: Toward a feminist political ecology of community supported agriculture in the United States. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 18(3): 307 - 326.
Lang, T., Barling, D., & Caraher, M. (2009) Food Policy: Integrating health, environment and society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lang, T., Dibb, S., & Reddy, S. (2011) Looking Back, Looking Forward: Sustainability and UK food policy 2000-2011. London: Sustainable Development Commission.
Murcott, A., Belasco, W., & Jackson, P. (Eds.) (2013) The Handbook of Food Research. A&C
Black
Relevant journals include Agriculture and Human Values; Appetite; Food and Foodways; Food, Culture and Society; Gastronomica; The Anthropology of Food; and the British Food Journal. Also see Ecology of Food & Nutrition, Food Policy, Food & History, and Petits Propos Culinaires.
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Detailed Course Outline
Week 1:
Introduction to the course (the framework) – the social life and practice of food and eating (Isabelle Darmon)
In this course, despite the name, we do not study ‘food’ only but ‘food and eating’ – and this introductory class will explain why this matters... Food has become a major object of concern, debate, policy intervention – but the field tends to be focused by (very necessary) discussions around the transformation of food systems, on the one hand, and the need to ‘educate the consumer’, ‘educate ourselves’ etc. on the other hand. But food and eating is enmeshed in tastes, skills and habits, routines and relations, as well as dietary patterns which have their logic, as well as their structures of inequality, and cannot just be wished away or disciplined. In this introductory class, we’ll therefore explore what it can mean to study ‘food and eating’ as social practices – looking into two approaches to ‘practices’, and a case study around the ‘New Nordic Diet’. This introductory class will also serve to present the course, our ways of working together, assignments etc.
Key readings
Micheelsen, A., Holm, L., & Jensen, K. O. D. (2013). Consumer acceptance of the New Nordic Diet. An exploratory study. Appetite, 70, 14-21.
Gronow, Jukka and Alan Warde, eds. 2001. Ordinary Consumption. New York: Routledge. Chapter 13, pp. 219-231. (scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder)
To go further
De Certeau, M. Giard, L. and Mayol, P. (1998) The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol 2:
Living and Cooking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chapter 10, pp. 151-170. (scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder)
Warde, A. (2013). What sort of a practice is eating? In Sustainable Practices: Social Theory and Climate Change (pp. 17–30). London, UK: Routledge. [e-book]
TASTES, FLAVOURS, CUISINES
Week 2: Tastes and flavours (Isabelle Darmon)
Taste has been a central topic in social science, especially in sociology, with Pierre Bourdieu as leading, and contested, figure. Taste, in that arena, is judgment of taste and/or pattern of consumer preference, and key questions include distinction and the much debated erosion of high brow/low brow tastes, and we’ll address that notion of taste for reference. However taste is also gustatory taste, and dishes and cuisines organise tastes in ways which cannot be reduced to questions of distinction, or at least not directly so. Should taste be rescued from ‘sociologism’ and what for? Is it possible to identify logics organising the tastes and flavours of traditional and contemporary cuisines? And how does this shape our tastes? We’ll explore these questions with the help of psychosociologists, historians and media material.
Key readings
Bourdieu, P. (2013) Social critique of a judgment of taste. In Counihan, C., & Van Esterik, P. Food and culture: A reader. Routledge: 31-39 [e-book]. http://www.gastronomica.org/bourdieus-food-space/
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Rozin, E. and Paul Rozin (2017) Culinary Temes and Variations, in The Taste Culture Reader. Edited by C. Korsmeyer. 2nd edition. Pp. 37-44. Bloomsbury. [on the flavor principle]
To go further
Bartoshuk, L. and Duffy, V. (2017) Chemical senses: Taste and Smell. in The Taste Culture Reader. Edited by C. Korsmeyer. 2nd edition. Pp. 21-28. Bloomsbury. [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder]
Berenstein, N. (2018) Designing flavors for mass consumption, The Senses and Society, 13:1, 19-40. [on artificial flavourings]
de Morais Sato, P., Gittelsohn, J., Unsain, R. F., Roble, O. J., & Scagliusi, F. B. (2016). The use of Pierre Bourdieu's distinction concepts in scientific articles studying food and eating: A narrative review. Appetite, 96, 174-186.
Flandrin, J.-L. (1999a) Seasoning, cooking and dietetics in the late middle ages. In Flandrin and Montanari (Eds.) Food. A culinary history. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 313-327.
Flandrin, J.-L. (1999b) From dietetics to gastronomy: The liberation of the gourmet. In Flandrin & Montanari (Eds.), op. cit. Pp. 418-434.Paxson, H. (2010). Locating value in artisan cheese: reverse engineering terroir for new-world landscapes. American Anthropologist, 112(3), 444-457.
Leschziner, V., & Dakin, A. (2011). Theorizing cuisine from medieval to modern times: cognitive structures, the biology of taste, and culinary conventions. Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development, 7, 347–376.
Leschziner, V. (2015). At the chef’s table: culinary creativity in elite restaurants. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
VanWinkle, T. N. (2017). “Savor the earth to save it!”—The pedagogy of sustainable pleasure and relational ecology in a place-based public culinary culture. Food and Foodways, 25(1), 40-57.
Warde, A. (2016) The practice of eating. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chapter 4 [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder] [for a critique of Bourdieu]
Week 3: Taste and the senses (Imogen Bevan)
Our sensory relations with food are increasingly mobilised – by food marketers who urge us to “indulge” our senses, by obesity research scientists interested in sensory feedback mechanisms, and in the context of new therapies focused on mindful eating and pleasure. Other projects meanwhile require radically tasteless subjects – the case of humanitarian food aid for example. But what is taste, and what do our food tastes say about who we are? This session explores how social scientists might engage with the senses and the notion of ‘sensorium’. How is the sensorium employed by different social actors, and to what ends? How might we use our sensory capacities as both an object of study and a means of inquiry?
Key readings
Trapp, M. (2016) You will kill me beans: Taste and the Politics of Necessity in Humanitarian Aid. Cultural Anthropology, 31 (3): 412–437.
Howes, D. & Classen, C. (2014) “Introduction: Ways and meanings” in Howes, D. & Classen, C. (eds) Ways of sensing: understanding the senses in society. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-13. [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder]
Bourdieu, P. (2005) “Taste of Luxury, Taste of Necessity”, in Korsmeyer, C. (ed). The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Berg: Oxford, pp. 72-78. [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder]
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To go further
Classen, C. (1993) “The odour of the rose”, in Classen, C. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures. Routledge: London and New York, pp. 15-26. [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder]
Howes, D. (2003) “On the pleasures of fasting, appearing, and being heard in the Massim world”, in Howes, D. Sensual Relations: engaging the senses in culture and social theory. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. [Hub Reserve]
Sanabria, E. (2015) Sensorial pedagogies, hungry fat cells and the limits of nutritional health education. BioSocieties, 10 (2): 125–142.
Seremetakis, C.N., (2005) “The Breast of Aphrodite”, in Korsmeyer, C. (ed) The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Berg: Oxford and New York, pp. 297-303. [scanned chapter on LEARN, additional literature folder]
Sutton, D. (2001) “Sensory Memory and the Construction of ‘Worlds’”, in Sutton, D. Remembrance of repasts an anthropology of food and memory. Oxford: Berg, pp. 73-102. [e-book]
Teil, G. & Hennion, A. (2004) “Discovering quality or performing taste? A sociology of the amateur”, in M. Harvey, A. McMeekin, & A. Warde, (eds.) Qualities of Food. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 19–37. [e-book]
Week 4: The raw, the cooked and the rotten. Freeganism and waste (Isabelle Darmon)
Culinary systems are, for Levi Strauss, a language through which peoples and societies have ‘revealed their structures’ as well as contradictions, and culinary categories express an ordering of the world and structural divisions (eg nature/culture). Even though this language may have become blurred through the development of mass industrial foods, the categories of the raw, the cooked and the rotten can be used metaphorically to explore the boundaries between food and waste, real food and junk food etc. We explore these questions through contemporary uses of Levi-Strauss’ culinary triangle, as well as going back to the practices approach discussed in the introductory class. We will have a group activity on freeganism.
For this class, all 4 key readings are important: Please browse through all of them + distribute more in-depth reading in your study groups.
Key Readings
Lévi-Strauss, C. (2013) The culinary triangle. In Counihan, C., & Van Esterik, P. Food and Culture: A reader. Routledge: 40-47 [e-book].
Murcott, A. (1982). The cultural significance of food and eating. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 41(02): 203-210.
Clark, D. (2004). The raw and the rotten: Punk cuisine. Ethnology, 19-31
Mourad, M., & Barnard, A. (2016). 'Don't Waste the Waste': Dumpster Dinners among Garbage Gourmands. In The Practice of the Meal: Food, Families and the Market Place. Routledge. Edited by Cappellini, B., Marshall, D., & Parsons, E. Pp. 220-232. [e-book].
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To go further:
Alexander, C., Gregson, N. and Zsuzsa Gille (2013) Food waste In The handbook of food research. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Edited by A. Murcott, Belasco, W., & Jackson, P. (Chapter 28).
Carolsfeld, A. L., & Erikson, S. L. (2013). Beyond desperation: motivations for dumpster™ diving for food in Vancouver. Food and Foodways, 21(4), 245-266.
DIETS
Week 5: When do animals become meat? (Niamh Moore)
In this session, we ask what is meat and when do animals become meat? We will begin with Carol Adam’s concept of the ‘absent referent’ introduced in her groundbreaking book The Sexual Politics of Meat, and explore how she applies this to understanding the difference between ‘animals’ and ‘meat’. Adams’s work also links the exploitation of animals with the oppression of women. Marjorie Spiegel’s work, The Dreaded Comparison, links histories of slavery and histories of the exploitation of animals. Both these work raise questions about the boundaries between human and animal, and animals and meat, and how these have shifted over time. New technological innovations also challenge our understanding of what is meat – we will also discuss growing burgers in labs, ‘bleeding’ vegetarian burgers, eating insects and the practice of veganism. Thus our approach to meat will draw on the work of feminist, critical race and disability scholars to also explore cultures of meat eating and alternative food practices.
Key reading
Adams, Carol J. (1996) The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, London: Continuum.
Breeze Harper, Amie, The Black Sistah Vegan Project blog: http://www.sistahvegan.com/
To go further
Stephens, N. (2013) Growing Meat in Laboratories: The Promise, Ontology and Ethical Boundary-Work of Using Muscle Cells to Make Food. Configurations 21(2): 159-181.
Seager, J. (1993) Earth follies: feminism, politics and the environment. London: Earthscan
Slocum, Rachel. 2011. Race in the study of food. Progress in Human Geography 35(3): 303–327.
Spiegel, M. (1996) The Dreaded Comparison: Human and animal slavery, Mirror Books/IDEA
Taylor, Sunaura. 2011. Beasts of burden: Disability studies and animal rights. Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 19(2): 191–222.
Week 6: Healthy and sustainable diets? (Isabel Fletcher)
This week will examine official dietary advice. The UK’s Eatwell Guide and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans tell us how to eat a healthy diet. How are they developed and why do they cause so much controversy? Furthermore, what happens when we try to incorporate environmental criteria, and develop new guidelines promoting healthy and sustainable diets?
Key Readings
Garnett, Tara (2016) Plating up solutions: Can eating patterns be both healthier and more sustainable? Science, volume 353, issue 6305, pp. 1202-4 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah4765
Lang, Tim and Barling, David (2013) Nutrition and sustainability: an emerging food policy discourse.
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Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 72 (1), pp. 1-12 https://doi.org/10.1017/S002966511200290X
Nestle, Marion (2000) Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, chapters 1 and 3 (available as an ebook from EUL)
Further Reading
Friedberg, Susanne (2016) Wicked Nutrition: The Controversial Greening of Official Dietary Guidance. Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 16 (2), pp. 69-80, https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2016.16.2.69
Garnett, Tara (2015) Gut feelings and possible tomorrows: (where) does animal farming fit? Oxford: Food Climate Research Network. Available at: https://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrn-publications/discussion-papers/gut-feelings-and-possible-tomorrows-where-does-animal-farming
Mason, Pamela and Lang, Tim (2018) Sustainable diet policy development: implications of multi-criteria and other approaches, 2008–2017. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 77 (3), pp. 331-346 https://doi-org.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/10.1017/S0029665117004074
Week 7: Measuring food: the work that calories do (Niamh Moore)
Food is commonly measured in calories – but what is a calorie and is a calorie always the same? The concepts of measurement, standardisation and normalisation are key to our relationship with food. We will discuss what standards the calorie relies on; whether the calorie was discovered – or invented; and what work calories do in the world. Food activists have also created new measurements, such as the concept of the food mile, to point to the environmental impact of such food travels. Finally we will look at whether new ways of tracking calories using apps might be changing everday life and our sense of self.
Key readings
Cullather, Nick, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Calorie’. The American Historical Review, 1 April 2007, Vol. 112(2): 337-364
Lampland, M., & Star, S. L. (2009) Standards and their Stories: How quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Especially chapter 1
To go further
Didžiokaitė, G., Saukko, P., Greiffenhagen, C. (2018) ‘The mundane experience of everyday calorie trackers: Beyond the metaphor of Quantified Self’. New Media and Society, 20(4): 1470–1487.
Harris, E. (2009) ‘Neoliberal Subjectivities or a Politics of the Possible? Reading for difference in alternative food networks’. Area, 41(1): 55-63.
Morgan, K. (2010) ‘Local and Green, Global and Fair: The ethical foodscape and the politics of care’. Environment and Planning A, 42(8): 1852-1867.
Scrinis, G. (2013) Nutritionism: The science and politics of dietary advice. Columbia: Columbia University Press. [online access]
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Week 8 Food, inequality and poverty (Isabel Fletcher)
This week we will examine food poverty looking at debates around the increasing use of foodbanks in the UK since 2008. Health inequalities and poverty are not new, even in a rich country like Britain, but foodbanks are a novel response to these social problems. Is charity the best response to this situation and, if not, what else should be done?
Essential Reading
Dowler, Liz (2004) Food and poverty: insights from the UK. Development Policy Review, 21 (5-6), pp. 569-580. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2003.00224.x
Fabian Society (2015) Hungry for Change: The final report of the Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty (pp. 8 – 33). Available at: http://www.fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Hungry-for-Change-web-27.10.pdf
Garthwaite, Kayleigh and Bambra, Clare (2015) “Food poverty, welfare reform and health inequalities” in Foster, Liam Brunton, Anne Deeming, Chris and Haux, Tina (eds) (2015) In Defence of Welfare 2 (pp. 121-4) Bristol: Policy Press. Available at http://www.social-policy.org.uk/what-we-do/publications/in-defence-of-welfare-2/
Further Reading
Caplan, Pat (2017) Win-win? Food poverty, food aid and food surplus in the UK today. Anthropology Today, 33 (3), pp. 17-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12350 (the same author also produces the FoodPovertyUK blog https://sites.gold.ac.uk/food-poverty/)
Garthwaite, Kayleigh (2016) Stigma, shame and 'people like us': an ethnographic study of foodbank use in the UK. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24 (3), pp. 277-289 https://doi.org/10.1332/175982716X14721954314922
Lambie-Mumford, Hannah (2015) Food poverty and food charity in the United Kingdom. In Escajedo San-Epifanio, Leire and de Renobales Scheifler, Mertxe (eds) (2015) Envisioning a Future Without Food Waste and Food Poverty: Societal Challenges (pp. 247-258). Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers [e-book].
MEALS, SOCIABILITY AND THE COLLECTIVE
Week 9 How collectivities matter for thinking about what food sources mean - salmon farming and questions of justice (Sophia Woodman)
Salmon has always been a global fish, but since the 1960s, it has become global in a new way, with a massive expansion in salmon aquaculture in many parts of the world, led by Norwegian multinationals. In this class, we’ll explore some of the reasons why campaigns against salmon farming are so different in Scotland (and Ireland) and in the Pacific coast of Canada. We’ll particularly consider collective identities and how they matter for thinking about how people perceive a food source such as salmon, and the resources such identities can provide for campaigns to protect traditional ways of provisioning.
Key readings
Crowther, Jim, Akiko Hemmi, and Eurig Scandrett. 2012. Learning Environmental Justice and Adult Education in a Scottish Community Campaign against Fish Farming. Local Environment 17 (1): 115–30.
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Willette, Mirranda, Kari Norgaard, Ron Reed, and Karuk Tribe. 2016. You Got to Have Fish: Families, Environmental Decline and Cultural Reproduction. Families, Relationships and Societies 5 (3): 375–92.
Woodman, Sophia, and Menzies, Charles R. 2016. Justice for the salmon—indigenous ways of life as a critical resource in envisioning alternative futures. In Marisa Wilson (ed.), Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggles for Food Sovereignty: Alternative food networks in subaltern spaces. Routledge. pp.57-80. [e-book]
To go further
Ladd, A. E. 2011. Feedlots of the Sea: Movement Frames and Activist Claims in the Protest over Salmon Farming in the Pacific Northwest. Humanity & Society 35 (4): 343–75.
Lien, Marianne Elisabeth, and John Law. 2011. ‘Emergent Aliens’: On Salmon, Nature, and Their Enactment. Ethnos 76 (1): 65–87.
Menzies, Charles. 2012. The Disturbed Environment: The Indigenous Cultivation of Salmon. In Keystone Nations: Indigenous Peoples and Salmon Across the North Pacific, edited by Benedict J. Colombi and James R. Brooks. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 161–82.
Miller, David. 2007. Spinning Farmed Salmon. In Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy, edited by David Miller and William Dinan. London: Pluto Press, 67–93. [available in Readings folder on LEARN]
Page, Justin. 2007. Salmon Farming in First Nations’ Territories: A Case of Environmental Injustice on Canada’s West Coast. Local Environment 12 (6): 613–26.
Phyne, John. 1996. Biological Warfare: Salmon Farming, Angling Tourism and the Sea Trout Dispute in the West of Ireland, 1989-1995. Irish Journal of Sociology 6.
Schreiber, Dorothee, and Dianne Newell. 2006. Why Spend a Lot of Time Dwelling on the Past? Understanding Resistance to Contemporary Salmon Farming in Kwakwaka’wakw Territory. In Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest, edited by Arif Dirlik. Boulder, CO; London: Paradigm Publishers, 217–32.
Soguk, Nevzat. 2007. Indigenous Peoples and Radical Futures in Global Politics. New Political Science 29 (1): 1–22.
Week 10: Sharing food. Conviviality and boundaries: who is (not) at the table? (Isabelle Darmon)
Food is a social act, food brings people together and divides people, yet food sociability is still an understudied theme. In this class we reflect on limits, boundaries, inclusions and exclusions at the table and the differentiated role of drinks and food to that end as well as the issue of table manners.
Key readings
Murcott, A. (1982). On the social significance of the" cooked dinner" in South Wales. Social Science Information/sur les sciences sociales. [available in Readings folder on LEARN]
Simmel, G. (1994) [1910] ‘The Sociology of the Meal’ Food and Foodways 5(4) 345-350.
To go further
Douglas M. (1972) Deciphering a meal. Daedalus 101(1): 61-81. This is a great paper. Please read but do not get worried by the details of the argument: aim is to get her overall thesis
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Elias, N. (1978) [1939] The Civilising Process. Oxford: Blackwell.
Giacoman, C. (2016) The dimensions and role of commensality: a theoretical model drawn from the significance of communal eating among adults in Santiago, Chile. Appetite, 107 (2016), pp. 460-470
Grignon, C. (2001). Commensality and Social Morphology: An Essay of Typology. IN Scholliers, P.(Ed.) Food, Drink and Identity; Cooking, Eating and Drinking in Europe since the Middle Ages. Oxford: Berg
Julier, A. P. (2004) Entangled in our Meals, Food, Culture & Society, 7:1, 13-21
Julier, A. P. (2013) Eating Together: Food, friendship, and inequality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Murcott, A. (2013). Models of Food and Eating in the United Kingdom. Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 13(3), 32-41.
Wouters, C. (2004) Changing regimes of manners and emotions: from disciplining to informalizing in Loyal, S., & Quilley, S. (eds). The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge University Press: 193-211 [available on line via Discover Ed]
Week 11: Food politics and course review (Isabelle Darmon)
We end the course with an assessment of recent food politics initiatives, such as urban food sharing. This last session is also for a course review and some preparation for final essay writing.
Key readings
Davies, A., & Evans, D. (2018). Urban food sharing: Emerging geographies of production, consumption and exchange. Geoforum. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.11.015
Marovelli, B. (2018). Cooking and eating together in London: Food sharing initiatives as collective spaces oencounter. Geoforum.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.006
To go further
Cronin, James, McCarthy, Mary, & Collins, Alan. 2014. Covert distinction: how hipsters practice food-based resistance strategies in the production of identity. Consumption Markets & Culture. 17(1): 2-28.
Evans, Bryce (2014) ‘Selling out on the Revolution for a Plate of Beans’? Communal dining in Peru and what we can learn from it’, available at: http://www.wcmt.org.uk/fellows/reports/community-kitchens-genesis-and-history-delivery
Goodman, M. and Sage, C. (Eds.) (2014) Food Transgressions: Making Sense of Contemporary Food Politics, Ashgate.
Lien, M.E. and Nerlich, B. (Eds.) (2001) The Politics of Food. Oxford: Berg.
Naccarato, P. & Lebesco, K. (2012) Culinary Capital. Berg: London & New York. Chapter 5.
Sherriff, G. (2009) Towards healthy local food: Issues in achieving just sustainability. Local Environment 14(1): 73-92.
Watson J.L. and Caldwell, M.L. (Eds.) (2005) The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating, Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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Course Assessment Undergraduates and visiting students are assessed via: (1) A mid-term Short Essay which makes up 25% of your marks for the course. You must submit your Short Essay through ELMA (see below) no later than 12 noon on Tuesday 12th February 2019. Penalties apply for late submission. Your short essay should be between 1501-1700 words. Essays submitted on time will be returned to you through ELMA on the 5th of March 2019. (2) A Long Essay which makes up 75% of your marks for the course. Long essays must be submitted through ELMA no later than 12 noon on Wednesday the 24th of April 2019. Penalties apply for late submission. Your long essay should be between 3,501 and 4,000 words. Essays submitted on time will be returned to you through ELMA on the 15th of May.
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Appendix 1 – General Information
Students with Disabilities The School welcomes disabled students with disabilities (including those with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia) and is working to make all its courses as accessible as possible. If you have a disability special needs which means that you may require adjustments to be made to ensure access to lectures, tutorials or exams, or any other aspect of your studies, you can discuss these with your Student Support Officer or Personal Tutor who will advise on the appropriate procedures.
You can also contact the Student Disability Service, based on the University of Edinburgh, Third Floor, Main Library, You can find their details as well as information on all of the support they can offer at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/student-disability-service
Learning Resources for Undergraduates
The Study Development Team at the Institute for Academic Development (IAD) provides resources and workshops aimed at helping all students to enhance their learning skills and develop effective study techniques. Resources and workshops cover a range of topics, such as managing your own learning, reading, note-making, essay and report writing, exam preparation and exam techniques.
The study development resources are housed on ‘LearnBetter’ (undergraduate), part of Learn, the University’s virtual learning environment. Follow the link from the IAD Study Development web page to enrol: www.ed.ac.uk/iad/undergraduates
Workshops are interactive: they will give you the chance to take part in activities, have discussions, exchange strategies, share ideas and ask questions. They are 90 minutes long and held on Wednesday afternoons at 1.30pm or 3.30pm. The schedule is available from the IAD Undergraduate web page (see above).
Workshops are open to all undergraduates but you need to book in advance, using the MyEd booking system. Each workshop opens for booking two weeks before the date of the workshop itself. If you book and then cannot attend, please cancel in advance through MyEd so that another student can have your place. (To be fair to all students, anyone who persistently books on workshops and fails to attend may be barred from signing up for future events).
Study Development Advisors are also available for an individual consultation if you have specific questions about your own approach to studying, working more effectively, strategies for improving your learning and your academic work. Please note, however, that Study Development Advisors are not subject specialists so they cannot comment on the content of your work. They also do not check or proof read students' work.
Students can book a study skills consultation https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/undergraduate/services/quick-consultations
Academic English support can also be accessed at https://www.ed.ac.uk/english-language-teaching
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Discussing Sensitive Topics
The discipline of Sociology addresses a number of topics that some might find sensitive or, in some cases, distressing. You should read this Course Guide carefully and if there are any topics that you may feel distressed by you should seek advice from the course convenor and/or your Personal Tutor.
For more general issues you may consider seeking the advice of the Student Counsellig Service, http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-counselling
Attendance Monitoring
In accordance with the University general degree regulations you are expected to attend all teaching and assessment events associated with all courses that you are enrolled on. The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences undertakes routine monitoring of attendance at tutorials and seminars for all students enrolled on courses delivered by Schools within our College. We undertake monitoring of attendance and engagement to enable us to identify where individual students may be experiencing difficulties and to ensure that timely and appropriate intervention can be delivered to provide support and guidance. We also undertake monitoring for sponsored students specifically to meet our obligations to the UKVI. If you miss one or more of your tutorials and/or seminars you may be contacted by your local Student Support Team and be asked to provide an explanation for your absence.
All data is gathered and stored in line with the University policies and guidance on data handling and you can view the privacy statement at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/student-systems/use-of-data/policies-and-regulations/privacy-statement
External Examiner
The External Examiner for this Sociology course is Dr Kate Reed, University of Sheffield.
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Appendix 2 - Course Work Submission and Penalties
Penalties that can be applied to your work and how to avoid them.
Below is a list of penalties that can be applied to your course work. Students must read the full description on each of these at: http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/undergrad/current_students/teaching_and_learning/assessment_and_regulations/coursework_penalties
Make sure you are aware of each of these penalties and know how to avoid them. Students are responsible for taking the time to read guidance and for ensuring their coursework submissions comply with guidance.
• Lateness Penalty
If you miss the submission deadline for any piece of assessed work 5 marks will be deducted for each calendar day that work is late, up to a maximum of seven calendar days (35 marks). Thereafter, a mark of zero will be recorded. There is no grace period for lateness and penalties begin to apply immediately following the deadline.
• Word Count Penalty Your course handbook will specify the word length of your assessments. All coursework submitted by students must state the word count on the front page. All courses in the School have a standard penalty for going over the word length; if you are taking courses from other Schools, check with them what their penalties are.
The penalty for excessive word length in coursework is a 5-mark penalty. These 5 marks will be deducted regardless of how many words over the limit the work is (whether it is by 1 word or by 500!). In exceptional circumstances, a marker may also decide that any text beyond the word limit will be excluded from the assignment and it will be marked only on the text up to the word limit. In most cases, appendices and bibliography are not included in the word count whilst in-text references, tables, charts, graphs and footnotes are counted.
In most cases, appendices and bibliography are not included in the word count whilst in-text references, tables, charts, graphs and footnotes are counted. Make sure you know what is and what is not included in the word count. Again, check the course handbook for this information and if you are unsure, contact the Course Organiser to check.
You will not be penalised for submitting work below the word limit. However, you should note that shorter essays are unlikely to achieve the required depth and that this will be reflected in your mark.
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ELMA: Submission and Return of Coursework Coursework is submitted online using our electronic submission system, ELMA. You will not be required to submit a paper copy of your work. Marked coursework, grades and feedback will be returned to you via ELMA. You will not receive a paper copy of your marked course work or feedback. For details of how to submit your course work to ELMA, please see our webpages here. Please note that all submissions to ELMA should be formatted as a Word document (doc or.docx.). If you are permitted or required to submit in a different format, this will be detailed in your course handbook. Any submission that is not in word format will be converted by the Undergraduate Teaching Office into word where possible. By submitting in any format other than word, you are accepting this process and the possibility that errors may occur during conversion. The UTO will do everything possible to ensure the integrity of any document converted but to avoid issue, please submit in Word format as requested.
Extensions
If you have good reason for not meeting a coursework deadline, you may request an extension. Before you request an extension, make sure you have read all the guidance on our webpages and take note of the key points below. You will also be able to access the online extension request form through our webpages.
• Extensions are granted for 7 calendar days. • If you miss the deadline for requesting an extension for a valid reason, you should submit
your coursework as soon as you are able, and apply for Special Circumstances to disregard penalties for late submission. You should also contact your Student Support Officer or Personal Tutor and make them aware of your situation.
• If you have a valid reason and require an extension of more than 7 calendar days, you should submit your coursework as soon as you are able, and apply for Special Circumstances to disregard penalties for late submission. You should also contact your Student Support Officer or Personal Tutor and make them aware of your situation.
• If you have a Learning Profile from the Disability Service allowing you potential for flexibility over deadlines, you must still make an extension request for this to be taken into account.
Exam Feedback and Viewing Exam Scripts:
General exam feedback will be provided for all courses with an examination. General feedback will be uploaded to the relevant course learn page within 24 hours of the overall marks for the course being returned to Students.
Students who sit the exam will also receive individual feedback. The relevant Course Secretary will contact students to let them know when this is available and how to access it.
If students wish to view their scripts for any reason, they must contact the relevant Course Secretary via email to arrange this.
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Plagiarism Guidance for Students: Avoiding Plagiarism
Material you submit for assessment, such as your essays, must be your own work. You can, and should, draw upon published work, ideas from lectures and class discussions, and (if appropriate) even upon discussions with other students, but you must always make clear that you are doing so. Passing off anyone else’s work (including another student’s work or material from the Web or a published author) as your own is plagiarism and can be punished severely.
Copying part of one of your own assignments previously submitted for credit for the same or another course is self-plagiarism, which is also not allowed. This is an important consideration if you are retaking a course; an assignment submitted the previous year cannot be resubmitted the next, even for the same course.
When you upload your work to ELMA you will be asked to check a box to confirm the work is your own. All submissions will be run through ‘Turnitin’, our plagiarism detection software. TurnItIn compares every essay against a constantly-updated database, which highlights all plagiarised work. Students who are found to have included plagiarised (including self-plagiarised) material in their work will be reported to an Academic Misconduct Officer for further investigation, and grade penalties can be applied. In extreme cases, assignment grades can be reduced to zero.
For further details on plagiarism see our college website: http://www.ed.ac.uk/arts-humanities-soc-sci/taught-students/student-conduct/academic-misconduct
Data Protection Guidance for Students
In most circumstances, students are responsible for ensuring that their work with information about living, identifiable individuals complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act. The document, Personal Data Processed by Students, provides an explanation of why this is the case. It can be found, with advice on data protection compliance and ethical best practice in the handling of information about living, identifiable individuals, on the Records Management section of the University website at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/records-management/guidance/data-protection/dpforstudents