“Ways of knowing” in food studies

Authors

  • Ellen Desjardins Editor Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.76

Keywords:

food studies

Abstract

What do we mean by food studies? Is it a distinct field or not, and what might it encompass? This issue starts, poignantly, with a commentary that summarizes some intense deliberations on these questions at CAFS 2014, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Food Studies. The authors conclude by suggesting that “food studies scholars and practitioners...traverse not just disciplinary boundaries, but epistemological boundaries.” This entails more than different methodologies, as they point out, but may open up a broader typological range of research questions, examine how food can serve as a catalyst for exploring new issues, and expand the possibilities of where, or to whom, researchers can turn as a source of learning. Moreover, when disciplines are projected as “ways of knowing, doing and writing” rather than “static territories of knowledge,” such an approach can reveal potential “relationships among the disciplines that are often otherwise obscured.”

Author Biography

Ellen Desjardins, Editor Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation

Ellen has had a long career in public health nutrition and healthy food systems in Toronto and Waterloo. With a recent PhD in human geography, she is now a research associate at the University of Waterloo. Her past work included food-related policy and program development at the federal and provincial (Ontario) levels. Co-chairing the Waterloo Food Systems Roundtable, Ellen helped develop a food systems strategy, municipal food policies and a food charter for the Region. She was a founding member of Food Secure Canada and the Canadian Association for Food Studies. Ellen’s research centres on food and place, or how people experience and interact with their food environment.
photo of a red poppy in the foreground and a pig shed, blurry, in the background

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Published

2015-05-28

How to Cite

Desjardins, E. (2015). “Ways of knowing” in food studies. Canadian Food Studies La Revue Canadienne Des études Sur l’alimentation, 2(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v2i1.76

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2015): Knowing and Growing

Section

Editorial

License

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