10th SAAS CONFERENCE

“The Backyard of the U.S. Mansion: Critical readings of poverty and wealth in the United States”

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid).  April 14-16, 2011

 

11) ‘Garbage in the Backyard of the US Mansion’: Chicano/a Food Traces and the Identification of Cultural Consumerism

Panel Chair: Juan Ignacio Oliva
Institution: Universidad de La Laguna
E-mail: jioliva@ull.es; npascual@ujaen.es

When in 1984, Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell co-edited Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the US: the Performance of Group Identity (U Tennessee P), they wanted to analyze how much cooking idiosyncrasies affect, in an anthropological way, the pride of a given group and to what  extent cultural identity is represented by the ingestion of specific foods. It is definitely true that the way in which nations cook their meals provide enriching information about their behaviour, especially when food, spices and other products form part of a definite ethnic culture that has evolved throughout long periods of history. This is the case of the Mexican-American cuisine, which has developed a specific, interracial and “exotic” way of mixing up ingredients from Aztec, Mayan, European, Spanish, English, and American flavour. Like any other syncretism, Chicano/a food has been hybridized and bastardized by fast-food philosophy and large scale consumerism in the US and everywhere else, to the point that it can also be considered as a trademark of the American capitalist global market. Consequently, it is the aim of this panel to consider whether the uses and abuses of Mexican-American food have to do with power-based and hegemonic issues, and to what point eating it implies a socio-cultural and cheap choice of junk-food. It will also be valuable to find out, in terms of ecological crisis and environmental justice, whether the misuse of the Chicano/a culinary wisdom is related to that of other minorities and, lastly, whether the specific way in which this food is served to the client, and the waste materials employed, equal in toxicity other US cooking proposals.

Suggested topics include (but are not restricted to) the following:

- Food as fake, food as a political construct.

- Food as a mark of cultural identity leading to integration or exclusion from the mainstream.

- Appropriations and misappropriations of culinary exoticism.

- Feminizations and male-chauvinisms regarding the act of cooking.

-Eco-centric and anthropological images of food and other culinary activities.

 

10th INTERNATIONAL SAAS CONFERENCE
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 14-16 April 2011

THE BACKYARD OF THE U.S.A. MANSION: Critical Readings of Poverty and Wealth in the United States

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Please, complete this form and send it, in electronic format (via e-mail), to the Chair of your selected panel. Deadline for sending proposals is October 29, 2010.