Although this issue is not organized around a special topic, you will find that about half of the authors are focused on how to understand food as both a local and a global phenomenon simultaneously. We can read them in a kind of oblique conversation with each other, to consider when and why this dichotomy has power. Each of the authors in this set of papers offers a theoretical construct, in some cases completely original, to help us understand what we are looking at. Even more than most issues, this one presents new tools for thinking about food.
Renu Emile, Russell W. Belk, and John R. Clammer introduce the concept of the loctural to describe a relationship of eating a local food in its local setting as a regular event, not an aspect of tourism. They use Indian sweets, as an example. As a frequent gift between friends, these treats carry implications of sweetness for both the giver and receiver, functioning as edible metaphors. This concept could well be applied to the topic of Marialuisa Stazio’s article, Neapolitan pizza. When this local favorite was officially designated TSG – Traditional Specialty Guaranteed, the certification led to popularity which leads to replication across global markets, which potentially complicates its status as local. In this case, expanding the audience across cultures changes the material’s original meaning.
Heather Merle Benbow, Kate Darian Smith, and Véronique Duché take a historical approach to cross-cultural eating, uncovering the ways in which diverse soldiers in the First World War experienced food as a bridge across the boundaries between ally and enemy, occupier and occupied. Working with indigenous researchers in the Amazon, Giovanna Micarelli centers local indigenous ways of conceptualizing the commons to offer a global alternative to a capitalist framing of the world as resources.
Candan Turkkan, while not addressing connections between the global and local, does engage with a question that vexes food access projects at every level – who is deserving of aid. Turkkan’s research notes the ways in which being hungry can propel individuals into systems that categorize them against their will, typically reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
The two remaining research articles both engage with the ever-fascinating topic of home cooking using very different methodologies. Phil Lyon and Ethel Kautto explore the role of food in home health care in the 1920s and 1930s in Britain, a subject that resonates with the contemporary interest in using diet to treat many conditions and to de-medicalize our approach to wellness. Researching in contemporary Finland, Torkkeli, Kristiina Janhonen, and Johanna Mäkelä applied a practice theoretical perspective to identify the strategies people use as they cook at home. Participants in their study wore cameras that recorded their work preparing family dinners and then discussed their choices with the researchers afterward. You will think anew about your own household food work after reading this article, particularly “planning in action,” as you decide to double a recipe half-way through.
Those who have the good fortune to have an on-campus farm and those who just wish, they did will be interested in this issue’s pedagogy article. Amanda Green studies the capacity for experiential farm work to create transformational thinking and action in students.
Our book review section includes another book about tea and one about coffee, but alas this time none about cookies. Continuing the focus on international food commodities, we include a review of Global Meat, an edited collection of essays about the expanding market for many kinds of meat. Two books in this issue explore food and national politics, in Cuba and Spain. Hannah Garth’s framing of her study around the search for a “decent meal” in Cuba is especially noteworthy as a model for research.