How do people in Graz feed themselves? Where does this food come from? How is it prepared, cooked, shared, preserved, discarded? What do food practices say about the different social groups in Graz? What do the different food practices mean to the people who carry them out? What are their histories? What are the power relations that structure food procurement, cooking and consumption in Graz? How are humans and non-humans entangled in nutritional processes? Are there points of antagonism, cooperation or indifference? How do social and environmental power dynamics relate? What is food sovereignty? How do all these questions relate to current social and environmental crises?
The course will focus on the relationship between food stories/practices, how these are embedded in ecological systems and the flows of people in and through Graz. We will attend to food in relation to local traditions and the broad flows of commodities, financial and symbolic capital and people. It has been shown how the flows of financial capital from the ‘Global South’ to the ‘Global North’ directly cause the impoverishment of the former. Such impoverishment often leads to human migration, and with this comes the movement of food traditions. European migrants have also migrated in times of economic hardship and taken their food traditions with them. In turn, they also introduced for instance South American food traditions to relatives back home in Europe. Different food traditions are sometimes welcomed by migrant host countries, and at other times are considered a threat. Finally, such local/global flows of food are amongst the biggest causes of increased greenhouse gasses in the environment. The course therefore will consider the local/global flows of people, materials, commodities, practices, and memory/heritage related to food and the political implications of these flows.
Students will do research with a group of people in Graz of their choice in collaboration with each other, to study the relationship between food cultures and local/global flows. Methods we will work with include co-creative / collaborative, socially engaged and creative methods. The accompanying course will be given by Cristina Grasseni on the topic of food activism and citizenship in Europe. The practical course will be given by Daniela Brasil on organising participatory public events as research.
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Accompanying Lecture course: by Professor Cristina Grasseni, University of Leiden
"Beyond alternative food networks: food values, food heritage, food activism and collective food procurement"