Virtual Seminars
By focusing primarily on food cultures and politics in South Africa, this project seeks to strengthen analysis of food, society and culture in the global South and the global North. Recognizing that current globalization requires this transnational attention, the Project is committed to creating and strengthening a research community across disciplinary and geographical boundaries
Virtual Seminar 4:
Embracing Contemporarity
29 September 2021
- Patricia McFadden
Women’s and Gender Studies Department and South African Association of Gender Studies presents a discussion on the context of the so-called “decolonial turn” and the frequently mechanical embrace of “political correctness”, what are the legacies and possibilities for radical feminist imagining. Themes explored include:
- Herstories, Legacies and Political shifts in feminism
- Crafting new language and feminist imaginaries to respond to contemporary challenges
- Resisting ecocide – living an ecofeminist vegan life
Virtual Seminar 3:
Centering African Feminism in Food Cultures and Politics
27 July 2021
- Patricia Mcfadden
- Yvette Abrahams
- Ruth Nyambura
- Mercia Andrews
Although African women are centrally involved in the preparation, production and struggles around food, activist and academic domains rarely acknowledge their centrality as knowledge producers in food struggles, agroecology and critical food literacy. In this panel discussion, four feminists who are pivotally involved in food struggles address key social, cultural, environmental and nutritional concerns from the perspective of radical African-centred feminist perspectives. The themes discussed are: 1. Current food systems, neo-imperialism and African women and feminism 2. Who are the experts? Omissions in “alternative” and “radical” politics and knowledges 3. Connecting “theory”/”knowledge-making” and practice in food work 4. Food “crises” in relation to gender, race, neo-imperialism and the Anthropocene 5. Re-imaging human encounters with food from African feminist perspectives.
Virtual Seminar 2:
In Search of the Perfect Curry in Two Contemporary South African Cook Books
25 May 2021
- Vasu Reddy
- Relebohile Moletsane
This seminar raises the way that a transnational corporate advertising industry, working in conjunction with the global food system, ruthlessly exploits children’s imaginative needs. By analysing advertising texts, it focuses on how persuasively global food marketing works. It also explores the abuse of the democratic principle of the “rights of the child” when advertisers manipulate children’s capacity to “choose” unhealthy fastfood.
Virtual Seminar 1:
Corporate fast food advertising targeting children
29 June 2021
- Desiree Lewis
Lynn Mafofo - Sheetal Bhoola
This seminar raises the way that a transnational corporate advertising industry, working in conjunction with the global food system, ruthlessly exploits children’s imaginative needs. By analysing advertising texts, it focuses on how persuasively global food marketing works. It also explores the abuse of the democratic principle of the “rights of the child” when advertisers manipulate children’s capacity to “choose” unhealthy fastfood.