Authors:Rachel Engler-Stringer, Laurence Godin, Charles Z. Levkoe, Alexia Moyer, David Szanto Pages: 1 - 15 Abstract: In this editorial, the Management Team of Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation (CFS/RCÉA) looks back across the history of the journal and towards its future. They collectively reflect on the journal’s ethos, its range of publications, and what the future might hold in an effort to promote rigorous scholarship done differently. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.702 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Flora Zhang, Amberley T. Ruetz, Eric Ng Pages: 16 - 24 Abstract: An overwhelming number of Canadians believe that a national school food program (SFP) would benefit children, but concerns around limited funding are frequently raised. SFPs across Canada are struggling to meet increasing demands due to rising food costs, meaning that food quality and quantity within existing SFPs are suffering. This paper discusses the urgency to implement a cost-shared and federally funded SFP amidst the current economic context and lack of clear direction from the federal government. The paper also explores ways in which federal funding for school meals can help to reduce the rate of chronic diseases and actualize many proven physical and mental health benefits for Canadians, all of which have positive and long-term downstream effects on the country’s economy. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.681 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Stephanie Chartrand, Laurence Hamel-Charest, Raihan Hassen, Anson Hunt, noura nasser, Kelsey Speakman, David Szanto Pages: 25 - 39 Abstract: This perspective is a continuation of a conversation started during “Reimagining Food, Food Systems, and Food Studies,” a plenary session in which we, the authors, participated at the eighteenth annual assembly of the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS). Assessing current opportunities and limitations for food studies in Canada from our perspectives as emerging scholars, the CAFS panel presented our individual and collective proposals for evolving the field. This article builds on the resonances and dissonances from our discussion to craft a provisional “recipe” for reimagining food studies. Recognizing the shortcomings of the format in terms of its prescriptive connotations, we position recipes not as rigid guidelines for achieving predefined outcomes, but as creative models for generating improvisations. We begin with an overview of the ingredients that have come together to create food studies in Canada. Next, we offer some revisions in the margins of this recipe based on the work in which we are engaged as food scholars and practitioners. Finally, we consider next steps for the work of evolving the field, and we invite readers to share in this exchange. Overall, we observe and participate in an unfinished trajectory that extends from previous questions on why food studies should exist and what food studies is, to consider more deeply how food studies could be done. PubDate: 2024-08-06 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Alissa Overend, Ronak Rai Pages: 40 - 57 Abstract: In this reflexive piece, the authors consider the unexpected lessons learned while undertaking a collaborative research project with their home institution’s Indigenous Learning Centre on urban berry foraging. The faculty member questions the ethics of settlers undertaking this work, even if in collaboration with an Indigenous community, alongside the promises of this work to critical food studies. The practice of urban foraging is understood as a wider metaphor for Indigenous worldview, and for different ways of being and relating. The student’s reflections weave together themes of learning outside the classroom, with family and community, and the holistic aspects of doing research. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.649 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Brian Pentz, Taylor Ehrlick, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Philip A Loring Pages: 58 - 77 Abstract: In Canada, the task of explaining food prices falls to a handful of grey literature reports that shape media coverage and public understanding and carry significant political and policy influence. We performed an in-depth analysis of fifty-one of these influential reports, including thirty-nine reports by Statistics Canada (including Consumer Price Index reports and other studies) and twelve reports from the Canada Food Price Report (CFPR) series. Our goal was twofold: 1) to identify and classify the various explanations given for food price changes, and 2) to evaluate the scientific rigor of these explanations. We identified 232 total explanations for food price changes, spread across seven thematic categories and thirty-two sub-categories. We find that most claims made in these reports are scientifically incomplete (only 28.6% of all claims meet established criteria for the completeness of scientific arguments). We also identify a lack of comprehensiveness in the areas of emphasis and the claims being presented and drivers being explored, particularly with respect to issues presently at the centre of food price discourse in Canada, such as the agency of grocers and other supply chain actors, corporate growth imperatives, and climate change. Considering the importance of food prices and food security to prosperity and well-being in Canada, we conclude with a series of recommendations for PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.690 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Keira A. Loukes Pages: 78 - 102 Abstract: “Food sovereignty,” a term conceived by peasant agriculturalists in South America, has become ubiquitous worldwide in academic and activist circles advocating for greater local control over local food. Its use has been adopted by various actors in North America, most notably by agriculturalists that tend to be small-scale, family-run, or permaculture focussed. While Indigenous food sovereignty has emerged as an adaptation of this concept, ecological, economic, social, and political opportunities and constraints in different locations across Turtle Island make its widespread application challenging, especially in contexts where communities do not want, or cannot (for a variety of reasons) eat exclusively from the land. In addition, “food sovereignty” can become a chimera in contexts where the “Crown” has absolute and final “sovereignty” over the land, which they have demonstrated through multiple enforcements across Turtle Island. Using a decolonial feminist lens within a political ecology community of practice, this paper describes and critiques current and historic framings of northern Ontario boreal forests as variously and simultaneously scarce and abundant. It also analyzes the ways that these framings have been discursively and materially constructed through colonial social, ecological, economic, and political impositions. It asks whether the concept of food sovereignty adequately challenges these constructions. Ultimately, this paper suggests that thinking about Indigenous food sovereignty as sovereignty of and through food may better describe the process, importance, and potential inherent in traditional and alternative Indigenous food harvesting and distribution practices in First Nations communities in northern Ontario, and indeed, beyond. PubDate: 2024-08-06 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Jennifer Braun, Ken Caine, Mary Anne Beckie Pages: 103 - 125 Abstract: A growing number of women in the Canadian Prairie region are advancing into leadership roles in agriculture, which remains a predominantly male domain. In this research we explore how professionally and managerially employed women in agriculture in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta navigate being a leader in an industry characterized by rural hegemonic masculinity. We explore and examine the personal experiences and observations of these women regarding gender, leadership, and the current state of prairie agriculture as it grapples with being more inclusive, diverse, and equitable. We found that to gain legitimacy as a leader in agriculture women are enacting a complex mix of traditional femininity, anti-affirmative action, and masculine-coded farm credibility. Women are required to be both like a man and like a woman to differentiate themselves—both from men and from one another—as they navigate both similarity and difference in their gender performance. Expanding on the work of Mavin and Grandy’s (2016) work on respectable business femininity, we have conceptualized this performance as “respectable farm femininity” to reflect the specific experiences, and previously unexplored domain of women in agricultural leadership (outside of the on-farm contexts that make up the scholarship in this area). These expectations are rooted in more traditional constructions of rural, hegemonic masculinity, but carry important weight in conferring legitimacy to women in agricultural leadership. This has important implications for how women are able to carve out their career path on the way to leadership. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.646 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Koby Song-Nichols Pages: 126 - 148 Abstract: While historians have used menus to tell part of the histories of restaurants, little guidance has been provided on how we should approach these unique culinary documents. This lack of instruction becomes more apparent in light of the impressive amount of archival work and digitization of historical menus done in recent years. As a response, this article presents a method that I have developed for analyzing menus. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives as well as experience teaching and researching with menus, this method recognizes menus as documents that can reveal the many relationships and connections intersecting in, flowing through, and making up restaurants. This method is divided into four steps: 1) (Un)Identifiable details; 2) Logics/story; 3) Mess or Marginalia; and 4) Cross-Menu comparison. By moving the reader through the method and offering an example of historical menu analysis, this article demonstrates some of the many historical insights that emerge through careful consideration of these sources. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.682 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Belinda Li, Tammara Soma, Raghava Payment, Srishti Kumar, Nicole Anderson, Flora Xu, Phonpoom Piensatienkul Pages: 149 - 170 Abstract: Food asset mapping is gaining prominence in Canada as an important planning tool for the evaluation of local food systems. In addition to being used by planners to identify opportunities for improved food security, food asset maps are also valuable references for sourcing food locally, particularly by people experiencing food insecurity. Seventy-three food asset maps were reviewed and categorized based on the types of food assets included as well as design characteristics. Built environment assets such as grocery stores and food banks were included in most maps, as were agriculture-based natural food assets like farms, community gardens, and orchards. However, representations of Indigenous-focussed food assets and natural food assets that are not agriculture-based, such as forests, water bodies, and foraging areas, were generally lacking. The lack of representation of Indigenous perspectives on what is considered a food asset reinforces the values of a settler-colonial food system in food asset maps. The methods for food asset mapping therefore need to be changed from current quantitative practices that largely rely on secondary data sources led by governments and non-profit organizations to collaborative approaches that centre the perspectives of Indigenous peoples and other equity deserving groups. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.655 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Seri Niimi-Burch, Jennifer Black Pages: 171 - 193 Abstract: While Canadian policy makers are considering expanding school food programs in Canada, parents remain primarily responsible for packing lunches. Although women perform disproportionate amounts of foodwork, including feeding their children on school days, little research has investigated mothers’ experiences of packing school lunches in Canada. Drawing on 14 interviews with mothers of elementary-aged children in British Columbia, this study explored how mothers experience and make meaning of packing school lunches. Mothers described lunch packing largely as an individualized responsibility for children’s nutritional health and general wellbeing. Mothers strived to enact largely unattainable ideals about packing a “good” school lunch and engaged in diverse forms of physical, mental, and emotional labour to do so. When mothers were perceived to fall short of elusive lunch packing ideals, mothers judged themselves and other mothers, and also reported feeling scrutinized by other parents, teachers, and their children. While assuming the bulk of labour related to school lunch work, mothers also forged connections with their children through lunch packing, which they viewed as emotionally meaningful and a symbol of their care, love, and parental responsibility. These findings show that mothers’ experiences with lunch packing are complex and wrapped up in notions of “good” mothering and feeding ideals. For mothers, a “balanced” lunch requires not only a nutritionally adequate meal, but also involves balancing various forms of labour and contradictory emotions about food work. Understanding mothers’ experiences of lunch packing is pivotal for successfully developing school food programs that meet the complex expectations of Canadian families. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.651 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Richard Bloomfield Pages: 194 - 196 Abstract: Dana James and Evan Bowness’ book, Growing and eating sustainably: Agroecology in action, provides a portrayal of existing sites of a radically different food system than our present industrial one. The authors explore the origin of agroecology as a social movement, before expanding on the ways in which grower-eater relations can and are being strengthened in southern Brazil. Finally, they envision a future of global food systems that centre the justice and intersectionality explicit within the agroecological movement. The authors’ presentation of both photography and text draws individual stories out from abstract notions of ideal futures and brings them to life with their particularities. PubDate: 2024-08-06 DOI: 10.15353/cjds.v11i2.692 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
Authors:Greg de St. Maurice Pages: 197 - 201 Abstract: A riff on the well-riffed Proust Questionnaire, the CFS Choux Questionnaire is meant to elicit a tasty and perhaps surprising experience, framed within a seemingly humble exterior. (And yes, some questions have a bit more craquelin than others.) Straightforward on their own, the queries combined start to form a celebratory pyramid of extravagance. How that composite croquembouche is assembled and taken apart, however, is up to the respondents and readers to determine. Respondents are invited to answer as many questions as they choose. The final question posed—What question would you add to this questionnaire'—prompts each respondent to incorporate their own inquisitive biome into the mix, feeding a forever renewed starter culture for future participants. For this edition, our respondent has replied to a question from Lisa Heldke (CFS Vol. 10 #2). Our Choux Questionnaire respondent for this issue is Greg de St. Maurice, an Associate Professor in Keio University’s Faculty of Business and Commerce. He holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology (University of Pittsburgh) and Master’s degrees from Oxford University, Ritsumeikan University, and American University. He served as the Vice President of ASFS from 2017 to 2022. PubDate: 2024-08-06 Issue No:Vol. 11, No. 2 (2024)
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