Monday, April 15, 2019

UGAT 41st Annual Conference Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

UGNAYANG PANG-AGHAMTAO, INC. (UGAT)
Anthropological Association of the Philippines
and
Visayas State University, Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines


41st Annual Conference
FOOD (IN)SECURITY:
An International Conference on Anthropology of Food and Eating
07-09 November 2019
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines

Food is an essential means of sustaining human life. Yet despite massive efforts on technological and scientific innovations in intensifying and improving food production and distribution on a global scale, food-related issues such as hunger and famine still beset ‘local’ communities. This precarity is further exacerbated by interlocking issues such as environmental degradation (e.g., massive biodiversity loss), disasters caused by climate change (e.g., prolonged droughts and strong typhoons), weak political institutions (e.g., food aid failures), unsound economic policies (e.g., food prices impact on family hunger), and social inequality, among others. As a consequence, the emergence of counterculture mass movements due to food (in)security, such as slow food movement, locavorism, vegetarianism and veganism, among others, is becoming popular and powerful, irrespective of national boundaries and identities. 

There is thus a need to reexamine and rethink how food is produced, circulated, and consumed. Food and eating has to be interrogated and unpacked in the context of local understandings vis-à-vis global processes in various human conditions and temporalities. While global processes shape and inform foodways and eating habits, anthropology pays attention to myriad and contested ways on how specific contexts understand, interpret and articulate the meanings of food and the practices of eating.

This year’s UGAT Annual Conference organizers are accepting papers, panels, and short film/video proposals that consider ‘security’, or lack thereof, as the key frame in understanding themes and issues concerning food and eating. The UGAT conference aims to provide an arena for reflexive and critical discussions on food-related issues, and to foster meaningful and engaged discussions among practitioners of anthropology – whether in academe, development and cultural work, media, art, advocacy, policy and governance, community work, or other forms of social action.

Proposals are welcome to address any of the following topics:
  • Global Issues -- authenticity (food identities, heritage, heirloom veggies, agricultural tourism, tourism and gastronomy; security and hunger (insecurity and internal displacement, food sovereignty, impact of climate on food and nutrition, sustainability)
  • Ethnographies -- Production (bayanihan farming, innabuyog, fishing, hunting, farming, subsistence vs surplus, seasonality, material culture in preparation, distribution and consumption); Processing (boiling, gata, sugab, kilaw, seasoning (Japanese dashi), kakanin); Distribution (tabu, tiangge, palengke, supermarket, hypermarket, food sharing, gift-giving); Consumption (sociality, manners, food etiquette, structure of the meal, feasting, fasting and famine)
  • Economy and Environment -- food trade, trade wars, multinational corporations, plantation economy and agribusiness, food and agriculture, farming systems, livestock, food and the sea; environmental decline, biodiversity loss; more-than-human anthropology (human-animal, human-plant relationships), producing non-food cash crops, over-harvesting, genetically-engineered food and transgenics
  • Indigenous and Local Knowledge Systems and Practices -- ethnobiology, ethnoscience, endemic food; recipe studies (historical, contemporary, cross-cultural, regional, importance of place)
  • Health, Medicine, Nutrition, Food Safety -- diets and fads, child overweight and adult obesity, food as medicine, hidden hunger and malnutrition; hygiene, food science, food education, fake food
  • Eating Ideologies and Practices -- organics, vegetarianism, veganism, locavorism, culinary triangle (raw, cooked, rotten), fast food vs slow food, food fallacies, food rituals, food taboos; food and gender: body image, gender roles, gender stratification through food and eating
  • Archaeology of Food - ancient diet, reconstructing diet from human remains, material culture, hunger and famine in archaeological contexts, food cultures in prehistoric societies
  • Aesthetics and Sensibilities -- food as art, culinary art; food tourism and gastronomy; prestige food and pride of place, food memories
  • Food Rights -- geopolitics, governance and regulation, development goals, land grabbing, displacement, land conversion, dispossession, access to food, household intake and urban poor, food policies
  • Communication, Media, Folklore, History -- the language of food; food metaphors; navigating the internet: food porn, emojis, and social media; literature on food, food documentaries and histories
  • Non-food Food -- food for the soul, forgetting hunger, pantawid gutom, metaphorical food 
Proposals that do not fall under any of the identified topics above will be given consideration.

CONFERENCE CONVENORS

Cynthia N. Zayas (University of the Philippines, Diliman)
Jessie G. Varquez, Jr. (De La Salle University - Manila)
Guiraldo C. Fernandez, Jr. (Visayas State University)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
  • Submissions must use the prescribed Submission Form (http://bit.ly/2Go1AZ7) which includes an abstract (250 words) written in a style that is accessible to non-academic audiences.
  • Proposals for panels must include a panel abstract as well as paper abstracts (see second page of the Submission Form).
  • Proposals written in Waray, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Filipino are accepted. 
  • Kindly email the completely filled-out Submission Form (in pdf) to ugat.conference@gmail.com
Deadline:  01 July 2019

Notice of acceptance of proposals will be issued by email by August 2019.

For further information, please contact the head of the conference secretariat Ms Annabelle Bonje (+63 915 547 7877) or at ugat.conference@gmail.com

To learn more about our conference venue, you can check the webpage of Visayas State University at https://www.vsu.edu.ph

Please like our UGAT page on FB for updates: https://www.facebook.com/ugat1978/