COMIDA, CULTURA Y MODERNIDAD EN MÉXICO

 La alfombra roja de los libros gastronómicos

Por Marisa Ramos Abascal

Son muchos los Homo gastronomus que dedican parte importante de su tiempo a buscar y encontrar buena literatura culinaria y gastronómica. El acervo bibliográfico de todo cocinero que se respete debe tener algunos clásicos, como el Larousse gastronomique, el Escoffier, libros con recetas clásicas de su cocina de especialización, algunas referencias de ingredientes, algo de técnicas básicas y por supuesto libros que den sentido y referencia a las creaciones culinarias.

Es una constante entre los chefs que se destacan por sus aportaciones culinarias, que las mismas están soportadas por un consistente marco de referencia y coherencia, es decir platillos que cuentan una historia por sí mismos o que expresan una cultura, una filosofía o una escuela.

Pero como en esto de la literatura culinaria hay de libros a libros, siempre es un referente observar lo que pasa en las grandes ligas, las ceremonias de alfombra roja de los libros culinarios, en mi opinión son dos, la que organiza la James Beard Foundation quienes además manejan –ojo estudiantes- un magnifico programa de becas, y quienes se encargan de reconocer a lo más destacado de la edición gastronómica, pero que desafortunadamente se limita a los Estados Unidos de Norte América, y aunque es loable la gran cantidad de libros de calidad que en este género publican nuestros vecinos del norte, este importante reconocimiento no tiene un alcance internacional.

La otra alfombra roja, la que todos monitoreamos año con año, es la del Premio Gourmand Internacional, el cual por su impecable trayectoria en la selección genuina de lo más destacado en este género y la cobertura internacional, así como su amplio abanico de categorías. A lo largo de su historia ha construido un referente de prestigio indiscutible.

En lo personal una de las cosas que más admiro de esta organización es que ha sabido evolucionar con la época, y reconocer las particularidad y valía de cada cuisine por separado, haciendo del mundo un gran mantel sobre el cual se han expuesto los mejores libros, las ceremonias suelen ser siempre innovadoras y diversas y se han realizado a lo largo de 15 años en distintas ciudades de países como Suecia, Malasia, China, España, Francia entre otras –aunque ninguna edición se ha celebrado en América todavía-.

Se reciben en promedio poco más de 8,000 libros anuales para su evaluación, el comité precedido por Mon. Edouard Cointreau permanece constante en la cuidadosa evaluación y selección de los libros que por su calidad de contenido y belleza editorial serán considerados clásicos en los próximos años. 

Ganar un Premio Gourmand puede ser el sueño de una vida, y aunque son muchas las categorías es frecuente observar que los jueces declaran desierta ocasionalmente algunas, ya que a su criterio no se ha logrado cumplir con los estándares establecidos, es decir, este reconocimiento se reserva solo a los mejores, son pocas las referencias a México que han logrado este codiciadísimo galardón, destacando la Chef Lula Martín del Campo y Rodolfo Gershman que aunque no es mexicano sus aportaciones a la cultura gastronómica de nuestro país nos hace sentirnos sentirlo como paisano.

Sabiendo esto, no les puedo expresar la alegría que me dio cuando de boca de Catherine Good y Laura Corona me enteré que el libro que ellas coordinaron: Comida, cultura y modernidad en México. Perspectivas antropológicas e históricas; ganó el Premio Gourmand, como mejor libro de historia culinaria de México 2012. 

Un libro de 18 capítulos y más de 15 autores, en donde bajo una rigurosa metodología, dan un vistazo fresco a la gastronomía a través de los desprejuiciados ojos del antropólogo, del etnógrafo y del historiador. 

Relatos amenos que nos hacen lo mismo visitar Iztapalapa en día de muertos, que analizar los significados de las ofrendas de un pueblo purépecha o recapacitar sobre el protagonismo entre la torta y la hamburguesa en el escenario de la fast food en México.

Un vistazo a la comida cotidiana y ritual del México real, sin ficción, sin maquillaje, con su propia magia y encanto que hace al lector desear recorrer esta tierra tenedor en mano.

El libro tiene otra virtud que enaltece sus meritos y es que a comparación de otros ejemplares ganadores, su edición es sencilla, profesional pero simple, pasta blanda e ilustraciones pequeñas y en blanco y negro, impresas en papel bond de 90 g y un formato pequeño, en mucho diferente a las elegantes ediciones de papel lustroso, pasta dura y espectaculares fotografías que parecen ser una constante de justificación para que un libro sea siquiera considerado como “bueno”. 

En hora buena a los autores porque este libro brilla por su fondo y no por su forma, y así fue reconocido de inmediato por la comunidad gastronómica, prueba de ello es que está agotado, pero no se desanimen que se espera pronto se logré una reedición, para que muchos más se enteren de lo que pasa en las mesas de México.

Alimento:Direito Sagrado

Acesse a publicação que apresenta os resultados da Pesquisa Socioeconômico e Cultural de Povos e Comunidades Tradicionais de Terreiros, realizada em Recife, Belém, Belo Horizonte e Porto Alegre. A pesquisa reforça o compromisso com o direito humano à alimentação adequada, garantindo a esses povos e comunidades o respeito às práticas ritualísticas tradicionais.

Novos Receitas, Novos olhares sobre o patrimônio alimentar

Ya está editada la versión en castellano del CORPUS DEL PATRIMONIO CULINARIO CATALÁN- EL RECETARIO IMPRESCINDIBLE. 2012 - Autor(es), AA.VV. ISBN, 978-84-15541-40-0. Editorial RBA. Barcelona. 

 Es un proyecto vivo ya que los recetarios nunca son una obra cerrada, es una obra colectiva. Desde el Comité Científico tratamos de ir incorporando las propuestas que nos llegan...

Já esta editada a versão em castelhano do CORPUS DEL PATRIMONIO CULINARIO CATALÁN- EL RECETARIO IMPRESCINDIBLE. 2012 - Autor(es), AA.VV. ISBN, 978-84-15541-40-0. Editorial RBA. Barcelona. 

É um projeto vivo no qual as receitas nunca são uma obra finalizada, é uma obra coletiva. Assim, desde o Comitê Científico trataremos de incorporar as sugestões que nos chegarem...  

Edição especial: alimentos e manifestações culturais

‘Good to Eat, Good to Think: India’s Changing Food Cultures’

 

Amita Baviskar

1230 hrs

20 November 2012 

Old Committee Room, King’s College London, Strand campus, Second floor

 

In the last three decades, although India has witnessed radical shifts in the modes of producing and consuming food, this has stimulated surprisingly little analytical attention.  The changing political economy of food production and consumption and its role in reshaping social identities and agrarian environments remains remarkably understudied.  This lecture outlines the preliminary contours of a project that attempts to analyse some of these shifts through a selective discussion of changing food practices in post-Independence western India.  It delineates the widening circuits of food as a commodity form within the home and outside, spanned by the growth of processed foods and practices of 'eating out'.  It outlines the changing signification of food practices for different social groups, and considers some potential health and ecological implications arising from the transformation.  It makes the case for focused attention on food as a way of understanding social change in India.

Amita Baviskar is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.  Her research focuses on the cultural politics of environment and development.  Her first book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley (2004) discussed the struggle for survival by adivasis in central India against a large dam.  Her subsequent work further explores the themes of resource rights, subaltern resistance and cultural identity.  More recently, she has focused on urban environmental politics, especially bourgeois environmentalism and spatial restructuring in the context of economic liberalisation in Delhi.  Her latest research examines changing food practices in western India in relation to the transformation of agrarian environments. She has edited Waterlines: The Penguin Book of River Writings (2004);Waterscapes: The Cultural Politics of a Natural Resource (2007);Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture and Power (2008); and Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (with Raka Ray, 2011).  She has taught at the University of Delhi, and has been a visiting scholar at Stanford, Cornell, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley.  She was awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research, and the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences.

 

RSVP: india-institute@kcl.ac.uk

 

 

King’s India Institute

King’s College London

Strand

London WC2R 2LS

Tel.: 020 7848 1432

www.kcl.ac.uk/indiainstitute

Call for proposals: Nutritional guidelines and standards: past and present perspectives

According to the WHO, 925 million people in the world are undernourished and 1.5 billion adults over 20 are overweight. From the 19th century onwards, nutritional guidelines and standards have been devised to both counteract and measure these dual problems. In 1894 W. O. Atwater of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), for instance, drew up the first dietary standards for protein, total calories, fat and carbohydrates for the American population. Seebohm Rowntree used Atwater’s and the work of other early nutritional scientists in his famous study of poverty in York in 1901 to discover the minimum calories and nutritional balance needed before people got ill or lost weight,

Yet nutritional guidelines and standards have not only a long but also an evolving history. The USDA, for example, issued a food wheel in the 1940s that was gradually replaced by a food pyramid and more recently by a food plate, while major supermarkets in the UK have recently replaced the Guidelines Daily Amount (GDA) with traffic-light labels on their food products. And the history of nutritional guidelines and standards is contested, especially when norms created for particular populations are imposed upon others. The tendency for proxies for good and poor nutrition to universalise the human condition has, however, been challenged. For example, with the rise in obesity levels, the Body Mass Index (BMI), which was first devised in the early 19th century, has increasingly come under attack as a useful means to measure obesity. And many scholars fiercely criticised Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s use Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and other nutritional standards to assess the health of the American slave population and make inferences about the profitability of American slavery.

By bringing together scholars from various fields, this one-day conference will explore the politics behind and the usefulness of past and present nutritional guidelines and standards.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers from any discipline and on any geographical setting that engage with one or more of the following questions:

• What role does nutritional science play in dietary guidance?

• How useful are nutrition surveys in the construction of nutritional guidelines?

• What factors other than developments in nutritional science give rise to and lead to changes in nutritional guidelines and standards issued by national governments, supranational bodies such as the WHO, and national and international NGOs?

• How do producers and distributors of food affect nutritional norms?

• What effects do nutritional guidelines, including food labelling, have on population behaviour?

• How useful are BMR, BMI and other nutritional diagnostic tools to assess the health and wealth of past and present societies?

We may offer a limited number of Postgraduate Bursaries to assist postgraduate presenters with registration and travel costs. Those seeking a bursary should state so on their submission.

Proposals for papers must include the following: - Title - Summary of proposal of maximum 250 words - 1 page c.v. including author’s name, address, email , institutional affiliation

All proposals must be sent to Dr. Henrice Altink (henrice.altink@york.ac.uk) or Dr. David Clayton (david.clayton@york.ac.uk) no later than Friday 15 March 2013. Notifications will be sent by 15 April 2013.

This message has been forwarded by the SOAS Food Studies Centre, located in the Department of Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The Centre is chaired by Harry G. West, Professor of Anthropology. Enquiries concerning the SOAS Food Studies Centre or the SOAS Food Forum, or content for distribution to Centre members, may be directed to this email address.

Dynamics in Food and Agriculture based Supply Chains

2013 Berlin Mini-conference “Dynamics in Food and Agriculture based Supply Chains”

International Geography Union (IGU) - Commission on the Dynamics of Economic Spaces

Thursday 11, July – Saturday 13, July, 2013

Call for Papers

The IGU Commission on the Dynamics of Economic Spaces aims to extend international research and scholarship in geography, to promote international collaboration in research activity and the dissemination of research findings, and to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, experience and expertise between countries and institutions (http://uac.utoledo.edu/igu_commission/).

The 2013 Berlin Mini-conference: During recent decades fundamental changes in the way food is produced (e.g. industrialization of agriculture), distributed (e.g. globalization of food trade), marketed (e.g. supermarketisation globalization and structural change of the retail sector) and consumed (e.g. growing market share of processed food, globalization of culinary culture, new rise of ecological food) have occurred in many countries of the world. The changes include fundamental shifts in the structure, organization and governance in food production and supply chains. These developments influence their regional and international settings and vice versa. The conference invites geographers and experts from related fields to contribute on these topics. Presentations may include theoretical works (e.g. on Global Production Networks, Global Commodity Chains, regional food clusters, new institutional economics) case studies (e.g. regional examples, commodities, supply chains, retail and trade developments, institutional changes ) and further scientific and applied works.

We invite contributions to the conference including the following topics:

Global Production Networks

Globalization and rural change discourses

Global commodity chains, value chains, supply chains and rural development

Informal production

Conventions in international value chains

Rural livelihoods and households

Innovative agri_food clusters

Renewable resources

Rural innovation systems

Resilient rural regions

Dynamics in food retail

Ecosystem services

Alternative food geographies

Globalization and sustainable rural development

In addition we are also organising an open session on all topics related to Dynamics of Economic Spaces.

While this conference is sponsored by the International Geographical Union Commission on the Dynamics of Economic Spaces we are particularly interested in participants from

a variety of disciplines (e.g., sociology, agricultural economics, gender studies, planning, international business, and economics).

Local Organizers:

Peter Dannenberg and Elmar Kulke

Economic Geography, Department of Geography, Humboldt-University at Berlin

Important Dates:

300_word abstract or full paper by 31 January 2013

Deadline for registration is 1 April 2013

Conference publications:

Papers presented for this meeting will be considered for the Commission’s publication

initiatives. It is aimed to launch a special issue in a peer reviewed journal soon after the conference. Presenters who are interested to participate in such an issue are invited to submit a full paper by 31 January. 2013

Registration:

Conference Package:

Includes all meals, and conference materials, excludes accommodation: 90 EUR

Conference field trip (optional):

"Organic Farming and Regional Marketing in Berlin Brandenburg" (13.07.2011): 65 EUR

"The technology park Adlershof - An innovative milieu?" (13.07.2011) FREE

Here's the list of links to the series "Street Food" suggested by a food studies colleague, Chelsie,  a while ago...

Street Food Zanzibar (Tanzania), part 1: 

Street Food Zanzibar, part 2: 

Street Food Cairo (Egypt), part 1:

Street Food Cairo, part 2: 

Street Food Nairobi (Kenya) part 1: 

Street Food Nairobi, part 2: 

Street Food Mumbai (India), part 1: 

Street Food Mumbai, part 2: 

Street Food Jerusalem, part 1: 

Street Food Jerusalem, part 2:

Street Food Fez (Morocco), part 1: 

Street  Food Fez, part 2: 

Street Food Palermo (Sicily), part 1: 

Street Food Palermo, part 2: 

Street Food San Sebastian (Basque Spain), part 1:

Street Food San Sebastian, part 2: 

Street Food, London’s Multicultural Brick Lane, part 1

Street Food, London’s Brick Lane, part 2: 

Street Food Beijing part 1: 

Street Food Beijing part 2: 

Street Food Osaka (Japan), part 1:

Street Food Osaka, part 2: 

Street Food Penang (Malaysia), part 1: 

Street Food Penang, part 2: 

Street Food Lima (Peru), part 1: 

Street Food Lima, part 2: 

Street Food Kingston (Jamaica) part  1: 

Street Food Kingston, part 2: 

Street Food New York City, part 1: 

Street Food New York City, part 2:

Street Food Montreal (‘French’ Canada), part 1:

Street Food Montreal, part 2:

And from a different source, street food in Tehran (Iran):

"guerrilla cartography" project: Food: An Atlas on Kickstarter

 An Atlas is a collection of over 60 maps (and growing!) co-created by  the guerilla cartographer community, a loose band of people who are  passionate about food and geography. 
The Atlas endeavours to map food in its myriad contexts and conditions at all scales of research and geography. It fuses traditional cartography, poster art, info graphic, and map as narrative in its exploration of the  geography of food. 

The atlas has chapters on food production, food distribution, food security and cuisine. And there are smaller chapters of conceptual food maps and even a kids’ chapter for the youngest kick starters to begin their  exploration and relationship with the world of food. The calibre of scholarship and artistry invested in these maps is impressive – they are informative and thought provoking, they are beautiful and they give 
shape to the world of food. 

Contributors to this project include more than 100 volunteer researchers and cartographers collaborating in teams across 10 US states and several countries spanning North and South America and Europe, a volunteer  editorial panel, a volunteer kick starter team, and you. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1276177353/food-an-atlas-0?ref=home_location

CONFERENCE: Molecular Cuisine: The Politics of Taste (New York, 19-21 Oct 12)

New York, October 19 - 21, 2012 School of Visual Arts, 335 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011 USA 

 "Molecular Cuisine: The Politics of Taste" is an interdisciplinary 
conference focusing on desire´s palette. Investigating the importance 

of taste from the perspectives of the culinary arts, sociology, art 
history and theory, anthropology, as well as the cognitive, material 
and biological sciences, the symposium targets intersections between 
taste and value.

 While taste is the key concept in new cooking 
technologies, it also connects to our passions, predilections and 
taboos. 
Researchers from the scientific and cultural spheres ask the 
questions, 
why we enjoy certain foods and not others, why we prefer certain 
styles 
and not others. 

Involving multiple discourses which emphasize the 
senses, emotions and sensory assets, the concept of taste, which is 
traditionally one pertaining to the fine arts or humanities, develops 
a 
renewed relevance in current cultural debates.

 PROGRAM 

Friday October 19, 2012 

4:00-6:00 pm Registration

6:15 - 6:30 pm Introduction
Suzanne Anker 

6:30 - 7:30 pm Keynote Address
Ciaran Bennett : "Humpty Dumpty and the Metamorphosis of Scrambled 
Eggs"
Sabine Flach, Moderator

7:30 - 8:30 pm Keynote Address
Lisa Ma: "Farmification & Speculative Design"
Suzanne Anker, Moderator 

8:30 - 9:00 pm Refreshments

Saturday October 20, 2012
9:00-10:00 am Registration & Continental Breakfast 

10:00-12:30 pm Panel I - Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
Suzanne Anker: "Sugar and The Crystalline Body"
June de Schino: "The Significance & Symbolism of Sugar Sculpture in 
Italian Banquets (1570 - 1670)"
Heather Hess: "Fickle and Deceitful Desires: Visual Pleasure and the 
Inedible on the Early Modern Banquet Table"
Mathias Viegener: "The Sweetness of Meaning"
Suzanne Joelson, Moderator 

12:30-1:30 pm Lunch 

1:30-3:00 pm Panel 2 - Flavour Foragers
Flavour SenseNation. Kianna Bahrami & Lulie Biggs: "Flavour Sense 
Nation, a symphony of the senses: Our sensory experience of food and 
flavour."
Beth B, Moderator 

3:00-4:00 pm Demonstrations and Coffee Break 

4:00-6:30 pm Panel 3 - Taste Makers
Tom Huhn: "The Taste of Eighteenth Century"
Christian Sauer: "Culinary Aesthetics: Facets and Problems"
Sabine Flach: "There's No Accounting for Taste: Eating, Thinking and 
Arguing in Contemporary Art"
Viktoria von Hofmann: "Art of Taste and Aesthetics of Cooking: A 
History Frank Gillette, Moderator" 

6:30-7:15 pm Cocktails and Conversation
7:30- 9:00pm Open Dinner; pay on your own

Sunday, October 21, 2012 

9:00-10:00 am Registration & Continental Breakfast 

10:00-12:30 pm Panel 4 - Food Chain
Anne McBride & César de Vega: "What is Culinary Innovation? 
Perspectives at the Crossroad of the Kitchen and the Laboratory"
Catherine Chalmers: "Art with an Appetite"
Mark Clintberg: "Gaystronomy [sic]"
Moderator TBD 

12:30-1:30 pm Lunch 

1:30-3:30 pm Panel 5 - Skeleton Feast
Sharon Hecker: "Bitter Sweets by Luciano Fabro for Nadezda 
Mandel´stam"
Fabio Parasecoli: "Savoring Semiotics: Food in Intercultural 
Communication"
Ana Maria Ulloa: "Naming the Ephemeral: Sensory Science and the 
Language of Taste"
Luca Buvoli, Moderator 

3:30-4:00 pm Coffee Break 

4:00-6:30 pm Panel 6 - Don´t play with your food
Elaine Tin Nyo: "On Meat and Mortality"
Ann-Sargent Wooster: "Futurism and Food"
Grahame Weinbren: "Still-life with Banquet"
Caroline Hobkinson: "Dial 1 for Bitter, 2 for Sweet"
Robin Winters, Moderator 

6:30-6:45 pm Conference closure

Agrarian Change Seminars

  Term 1 2012-13

Journal of Agrarian Change and

Department of Development Studies, SOAS

Room 4418 (fourth floor, main building), SOAS

11 October, 5.15 pm

Documentary Film: 'Best Before: the London Food Revolution is a short documentary about the food system in the UK and the growing food movement in London'. Followed by discussion

Ben Mann, Director and SOAS alumni

18 October, 5.15 pm

Film: ‘Seeds of Freedom’, followed by discussion

African Biodiversity Network and the Gaia Foundation

25 October, 5.15 pm

Migration and rural differentiation in two selected villages in Bangladesh

Mausumi Mahapatro (SOAS)

9 -11 November: Agrarian Change panel at Historical Materialism Conference (SOAS, room and time to be announced):

Crises of labour in South Africa: what is the contribution of the agrarian question?

·      Land, Labour And The Production Of Affliction In Rural Southern Africa – Bridget O’Laughlin (ISS, the Hague)

·      Smallholder irrigation, agrarian reform and ‘accumulation from below’ in post-apartheid South Africa – Ben Cousins (PLAAS, Western Cape)

·      Commercial agriculture in South Africa since 1994: ‘natural, simply capitalism’ – Henry Bernstein (SOAS)

29 November, 5.15 pm

The agrarian question and 150 years of class conflicts over property rights in rural Brazil and Mexico

Leandro Vergara-Camus (SOAS)

6 December, 5.15 pm

Monthly income... What is that? Comparing notes on implementing household surveys in rural Mozambique

Helena Perez-Nino and Sara Stevano (SOAS)

London Experimental Oenology Seminar

Our friends at the Center for the Study of the Senses are holding their second London Experimental Oenology Seminar (LEOS) ( http://experimentaloenology.wordpress.com)

 

The Seminar series aim at bringing together oenologists, wine-professionals and academics to focus on specific aspects of wine-tasting and flavour experience. The monthly seminar will be organised around a tutored wine-tasting. In recent years, many innovative ways of measuring and understanding the perception of wine have been developed and the seminar and tasting will draw on them to address specific puzzles or controversies in oenology - like the role of expertise, language, olfaction, analytic tasting, preferences, texture-perception, temperature, grape maturity, oak, etc. in determining our complex flavour experience of wine.

The next seminar will take place on October 8th, in Senate House (University of London, Malet Street, room to be confirmed) from 6.30pm to 8pm and be led by psychologist Charles Spence (Oxford) who is famous for his work on flavour perception, as well as for winning the Ig-nobel prize for his experiment on the sonic crisps and doing some experiments with Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck. He recently contributed a series of papers to the World of Fine Wine, and will be talking : What is wine expertise?

Please register in advance by emailing us at contact@thecenses.org ; registration costs 20 pounds (cash on the day or bank transfer in advance) and there is limited availability. 

Jewish Food Through Song and Film

Register now for the five-week online course: Jewish Food Through Song and Film! Details about the course and how to register are below: 

Jewish Food Through Song and Film (NFDS2952)Five-week ONLINE course, beginning on Saturday Nov 10th
Instructor: Laura Silver

Description: This course offers a taste of eastern European and American Jewish culture through songs, films, and personal narratives about food. We explore the Jewish experience and cultural and religious identities through foods that came to the United States by way of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland, and Romania. Traditional foods and their modern-day incarnations guide our exploration of Ashkenazi Jewish identity, culture, and peoplehood. We use Yiddish and Hebrew expressions to decode words and phrases we encounter in our explorations from the Old World to the New, from the Pale of Settlement to the sidewalks of the Lower East Side and the suburbs of middle America.

Click here to register!*

*This link will direct you to the online continuing education registration website. Select "New School for Public Engagement" and "Fall 2012" and click "view courses". Click on "Food Studies" and you will be directed to a list of food studies courses. Select "NFDS2952 Jewish Food Through Song and Film" and then select the "non-credit" payment option. You will then be directed to online payment instructions. 


-- 
Department of Food Studies
66 W. 12th Street
Room 901
New York, NY 10011
            212.229.5124      
foodstudies@newschool.edu