Serving up food studies online: teaching about “food from somewhere” from nowhere

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, the popularity of food scholarship has led to an expansion of online food studies courses and programs. This push for online course offerings has been escalated due to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. To date, much of the field has focused on examining the global concentration and integration of corporate food systems, often described as a “food from nowhere” regime. In contrast, the study of civil society organizations and social movements working toward more equitable and sustainable food systems points to the desire to (re)build a “food from somewhere” regime. How do these ideas of de-spatialization and re-spatialization apply to teaching online food studies courses? In this reflective essay, five scholars and postsecondary instructors share experiences with online teaching about food systems. Our collective reflection reveals a number of benefits for postsecondary institutions, instructors, students, and pedagogical approaches. We also share key concerns, such as engaging students and encouraging participation, constraints for developing personal connections and the additional time and energy required to prepare and deliver courses. Beyond these opportunities and tensions, we point to the need for instructors to consider the implications of teaching about “food from somewhere” from nowhere. We offer these reflections to begin a much-needed conversation about the current state and the future of online food studies education.

KEYWORDS:

• Food studies
• food systems
• online education
• pedagogy
• place
• postsecondary
• technology

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Wanda Martin and the many students, instructors, and scholars who contributed their ideas and perspectives to this paper as part of the special sessions held at the 2018 and 2019 Canadian Association for Food Studies Assemblies. We also appreciate the feedback from the two reviewers who contributed insights to improving this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Z. Levkoe

Charles Z. Levkoe is the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Food Systems, the Director of the Sustainable Food Systems Lab and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Lakehead University. His community-engaged research uses a food systems lens to better understand the importance of, and connections between social justice, ecological regeneration, regional economies and active democratic engagement. Working directly with a range of scholars and community-based practitioners across North America and Europe, Dr. Levkoe studies the evolution of the broader collective of social movement networks that views the right to food as a component of more sustainable futures. Mobilizing his existing partnerships, Dr. Levkoe integrates his research and teaching through community engaged learning pedagogies and supports students, community-partners and scholars to be actively involved in knowledge co-generation. Through community-based, action-oriented inquiry and teaching and the development of placed-based action projects, his research contributes to critical discussions that inform theory, civil society action and public policy.

Irena Knezevic

Irena Knezevic is an associate professor in the Communication and Media Studies program at Carleton University in Ottawa. She studies food systems, health, communication and culture, and has been teaching online and “blended” courses for over a decade. She is the director of the newly launched Food and Media Hub at Carleton University, a co-lead of the Food Studies @Carleton research collective, and a founding member of the Canadian Association for Food Studies. Her work is interdisciplinary and community-engaged, and she has published on topic ranging from social and informal economies of food, to food labeling, to digital technologies in food agriculture.

Donna Appavoo

Donna Appavoo is an instructor in the Department of Sociology and Chang School at Ryerson University in Toronto. Dr. Appavoo has a background in nutrition and public health. The focus of her academic work is Indigenous foodways, and food and health environments in rural and remote settings in Canada. She has been involved in postsecondary education that prioritizes facilitating access to education for students from a range of settings and backgrounds. These initiatives include in-person course delivery in remote fly-in communities in Canada, student practicums in rural and remote settings, and online distance education initiatives, the subject of this paper.

Andrea Moraes

Andrea Moraes is a research associate at the Center for Studies in Food Security and a Contract Lecturer at both the School of Nutrition and the Chang School of Continuing Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto. Her research interests are centered on gender, food and water security in the Global South, especially in Brazil. Her work also addresses issues of participatory democracy, food systems approaches and food pedagogies. Andrea has published widely in journals such as the Journal of Cleaner Production and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. She has also contributed chapters to edited volumes such as in: Women in Agriculture Worldwide: Key Issues and Practical Approaches, edited by Fletcher and Kubik; and A Feminist Political Ecology of Water and Global Environmental Change, edited by Buechler and Hanson. Recently, she was the co-principal investigator for the Food Security Quest Project. Andrea has been teaching food studies courses online since 2007. She holds a PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Columbia, Missouri, and an M.A. in Social Psychology from the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Steffanie Scott

Steffanie Scott is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. She is coauthor of the 2018 book, Organic Food and Farming in China: Top-down and Bottom Up Ecological Initiatives. Steffanie is engaged in research on sustainable food systems, ecological agriculture, and organic sector developments in China and Canada. She is past president of the Canadian Association for Food Studies (2012–14) and past cochair (2007–11) of the Food System Roundtable of Waterloo Region. Steffanie has published papers in Agriculture and Human Values, Food Policy, Ecology and Society, Canadian Food Studies, Local Environment, and the Journal of Agriculture Food Systems and Community Development.