Conference Call for Papers« Living Food: Foodways, Heritage, Health, and the Environment »February 23rd
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France
Conference organized by the Fondation France-Japon (FFJ) at EHESSWith the support of PSL Research University
Not only is it through food—made from organisms that were once and perhaps are still
alive—that we obtain the energy and nutrition essential for life, but food is also caught up
in our social, economic, and political lives. Yet whether in statistics, menus, social media,or academic accounts food is often treated as static, dead, one-dimensional and longdestined for (or missing from) our stomachs. This workshop—primarily focused on
Africa, Asia, and Europe—will probe the lived dimensions of food and foodways fromdiverse perspectives.
This international workshop, to be held at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales in Paris (EHESS), France, draws inspiration from the European designation of2018 as the Year of Cultural Heritage and the recognition of intangible cultural heritage.
Food, at once material culture and an expression of those lived traditions known asintangible cultural heritage, has served as a topic for much scholarship on larger themes
such as heritage, cultural politics, and the role of the state (Appadurai 1981, Brulotte andDiGiovine 2014, Grasseni 2014, Cwiertka 2016). This theme connects to issues of foodsovereignty (Patel 2009, Carney 2011) and the right to food (Van Esterik 1999, De
Schutter 2014), as well as developments in global health, from the renewed attention
traditional diets have received in the face of diseases and health problems like diabetesand obesity (Ravussin et al. 1994, Schroder 2007, Roswall et al. 2014) to the recognition
that societies can suffer from a “double burden” of overnutrition and undernutrition(Popkin 2001, Misra and Khusana 2008, WHO 2012). This workshop will also engage
recent methodological and theoretical approaches such as multi-species ethnography andthe Anthropocene, which have drawn our attention to the fraught interdependence ofplant, human and non-human animal, and microbial lives and the food that sustains them
(Crutzen 2002, Tsing 2010, Barthel et al. 2013, Moor and Kosut 2013, Hill 2015, YatesDoerr 2015).

This full-day workshop seeks to bring cutting edge research about everyday lives, living,and food and foodways together from disciplines including but not limited toanthropology, ethnobotany, food studies, natural sciences, history, and science andtechnology studies. We welcome case studies that examine underresearched phenomena
or social groups, particularly those related to Africa, Asia, and Europe. Given theintimate workshop format, we are especially interested in research that istransdisciplinary, transnational, comparative, and engages with the key themes fromunique perspectives.
Please send paper proposals (approximately 250 words in English) together with a short
bio to gregdestmaurice@gmail.com and ffj@ehess.fr by 10 December 2017.
Notifications will be sent out by late December. Some travel grants will be available on acompetitive basis.
Information about related research programs at EHESS:
Scales of Alimentation:
http://ffj.ehess.fr/echellesalimentation.html
Asia-Africa:
http://ffj.ehess.fr/afriqueasie.html