The 44th Meeting of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (ICAF)

Together with the International Comission on Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (ICAF) and the Unesco Chair on Food, Culture and Development, UOC, APA's congress will host the International Meeting of both associations:

Popular cuisines and today’s gastronomies. Common popular products and preparations go to gastronomic tables.
The performative capacity of food and food practices to create spaces of class distinction has been profusely addressed from sociology, anthropology and other social sciences, and through food practices, social groups maintain continuous relations or dialogical processes, open to diachrony and social change.

In this sense, some questions are relevant: Is there a tendency for the lower classes to mimic the practices of hegemonic positions, which tend to distinguish themselves? Is the “popular” an idealised context from which the upper classes and the tables draw inspiration? What are the connections between popular foods and the tables of the upper classes? In recent years we have witnessed various processes linking “traditional food” and “gastronomy” (with a capital G). Restaurant menus are opening up to products, preparations and dishes considered “popular” or to elaborations linked to spaces previously considered “subaltern”. The distinction (following Bourdieu) operates here through refined culinary procedures that rework the symbolism of these food products.

This international meeting aims to address all these and related issues. In this sense, this is a call for ethnographic works or theoretical reflections on these processes of appropriation in contemporary gastronomic spaces.
Este encuentro internacional quiere abarcar todas estas cuestiones, y otras relacionadas. En este sentido, esta es una convocatoria para recoger trabajos etnográficos o reflexiones teóricas sobre estos procesos de apropiación en los espacios gastronómicos contemporáneos.

The reflection we encourage, always from an interdisciplinary point of view, includes, but is not limited to, the following topics

– Binomial gastronomy/popular cuisines at local, regional and global level.
– Gastronomic experiences articulated on the notion of popular cuisines, and their extension to gastronomic or “gastronomic” spaces.
– Food production, kitchens and gastronomy.
– Cuisines, gastronomy and tourism.
– Food and glocality. Proposals for re-geolocation.
– Cuisines, gastronomy and local-regional-national identities.
– Restaurants, cuisines and gastronomies.
– Food heritage.
– Food and travel.
– Ideologies and social movements.
–Food and public development policies.
– Rural-urban discourses on food, gastronomy and cuisines.

CAF members in good standing will be able to attend the event free of charge. The same applies to those who, not being members of ICAF, are registered in the VIII CONGRESO DE ASSOCIAÇÃO PORTUGUESA DE ANTROPOLOGIA (APA)

For the rest, the registration fee will be 25 euros. These people will be contacted by ICAF management.

The event will be held at the Luis Verney College of the University of Évora. Address: R. Romão Ramalho 59, 7000-671 Évora, Portugal