Southern Food Culture & Politics

Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Matthew P. Rabbitt, Christian Gregory & Anita Singh

Abstract: An estimated 12.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2016, meaning they lacked access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. That is essentially unchanged from 12.7 percent in 2015. The prevalence of very low food security also essentially unchanged, at 4.9 percent in 2016 and 5.0 percent in 2015.

Atkins-Sayre, W., & Stokes, A. Q. (2014). Crafting the cornbread nation: The Southern foodways alliance and Southern identity. Southern Communication Journal, 79(2), 77-93. doi:10.1080/1041794x.2013.861010

Abstract: The Southern food movement does far more than just celebrate a delectable cuisine; it also may provide the ingredients for gradual social change. We argue that the Southern food movement, led by the Southern Foodways Alliance, helps to craft a Southern identity based on diverse, humble, and hospitable food. This rhetorically constitutive work— the food and discussions about Southern foodways (food habits)—has the potential to open up spaces for dialogue about Southern identity and to move individuals closer to a shared experience.

John M. BurdickBurdick, J. M. (2014). "Good for you and good to you": The importance of emphasizing race when radicalizing students around the food movement. Radical Teacher, 98, 22-30. doi:10.5195/rt.2014.72

Abstract: While there is great radical and anti-capitalist potential within the “Food Movement,” it can often be undermined by foodie culture’s attachment to a problematic racial politics in which white, urban and middle/upper classed subject positions are articulated through romanticized attachments to local and organic foodways, attachments that at times unconsciously echo nativist and settle colonial sentiments. These problematic racial logics limit the food movement’s ability to fully address the ways by which the corporate domination of the food system disproportionally impacts low-income communities and communities of color.

Calabrese, Andrew (2017) Caveat Emptor! The rhetoric of choice in food politics," Communication +1, 6(2).

Abstract: This project is about a form of corporate predation that entails both policy influence and cultural legitimation. Neoliberal explanations of the inability of citizens to thrive in the current socio- economic condition typically rest on a combination of victim-blaming and appeals to the individualistic rhetoric that assumes we all enjoy equality of opportunity and freedom of choice. It is common for corporate lobbyists, and politicians under their influence, to argue against consumer protection on the grounds that such efforts are paternalistic, and that they therefore undermine consumer sovereignty. By this logic, illnesses that are highly correlated to diet are problems that consumers can avoid, and it is not the duty of food companies or government to prevent consumers from making “bad choices.” Implicit in this moralistic narrative is that consumers have sufficient knowledge about the alternatives to enable them to make “good choices.” Major food lobbies use their political influence to oppose government regulations of food, based on the reasoning that consumers deserve the right to choose. Food industry groups also will sometimes invest heavily to prevent legal requirements to disclose information that might enable consumers to make informed choices, creating a predatory double-bind. In this essay, I discuss how the rhetoric of choice is employed by the food industry, how it is formulated within the political context of the United States, and how that rhetoric poses threats to food systems globally.

Leib, E. M. (2013). All (food) politics is local: Increasing food access through local government action. Harvard Law and Policy Review, 321. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2339261

Abstract: Our national and international food system has implications for a wide range of issues that are important across the political spectrum and include improving health outcomes, reducing environmental impacts, increasing social justice, fostering economic development, and even improving homeland security. This article focuses on healthy-food access, one of the most urgent food policy issues because of its social and economic effects, as well as its public health impacts. In 2010, thirty-six percent of Americans were obese and another thirty-three percent were overweight, while eight percent of Americans were diabetic and thirty-five percent suffered from pre-diabetes. Though food access is not perfectly correlated with public health outcomes, those with limited access to healthy foods often suffer most acutely, as people living in areas with access to a supermarket exhibit a twenty-four percent lower prevalence of obesity than those living in areas without supermarkets. Increased food access has been linked to results as diverse as improved educational outcomes and crime reduction.

Norwood, N. F. (2015). Understanding the food democracy movement. Magazine of Food, Farm, and Research Issues, 30(4).

Introduction: It is a paradox of the modern world that while humans have unprecedented access to food—a fact
to which our waistlines will testify—much of society simmers with discontents. Jimmy Kimmel recently
quipped that some are more scared of gluten than disease. An organic food advocate has likened our
use of pesticides to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons (Rodale, 2013), and France feels the
declining carbon content of soils are threatening our climate (Climate Action, 2015). There is something
of a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in terms of food. Now that obtaining calories is possible for most we
are holding food to higher standards. It should not only meet our physical needs, but also our nobler
goals of environmental protection, sustainability, kindness to animals, and social justice. There is no one
term encompassing these higher goals, but the term that comes closest is ‘Food Democracy’. To
understand food in the modern world we must understand Food Democracy. The movement may seem
to lack a unifying theme, but that is mistaken. At the core of its criticisms is a resentment of the role that
large corporations play in food.

Novak, Margaux E. (2017). Three generations of southern food and culture. CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal, 1(3).

NPR. A interview with the author of The Potlikker Papers, a Food History of the Modern South.

Deep South Magazine

Southern Living Magazine

Smithsonian Magazine. Interview with the author of The Cooking Gene, A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South.

Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt

Edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik

By Alison Hope Alkon, Julian Agyeman

Edited by Edward Maclin and James Veteto

Chris Chamberlain

John Egerton

Ferris Marcie Cohen