While Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” promises to expose us to the exotic and entertain us with that eww…disgusting…how can they…I dare you factor, the consumption of super ancient grains purports to bring us back to our non-industrial roots and reconnect us to the wisdom of our ancient ancestors. Meanwhile the 2008 Burger Kind’s “Burger Virgins” docummercial’s seemingly benign cross cultural exchange of food presents a not so subtle narrative and visual text of “West is best”. This paper explores an often unproblematized foodie culture where food differences can become exoticized while the political economy of food production and food producers is decontextualized as alternative and provocative narratives of particular foods are produced for marketing purposes. Nevertheless, how these narratives about “bizarre” and “ancient” foods (and the “bizarre” and “ancient” food producers) are told through popular media, and the ways in which we (re)produce and consume such foods matters. I argue that they serve to discursively and materially reproduce coloniality and imperial political economic relations. Food differences as expressions of both material and symbolic culture and how these differences are represented shape the overall political ecology of food and shape the socioeconomic outcomes of food producers and consumers.
About the presenterTanya K. Casas
Tanya Casas is Associate Professor of Sociology and the Academic Director of Graduate Policies Studies at Delaware Valley University where she specializes in political economy and development policy. Her research interests include the intersection of development policy, extractive economies, coloniality and social justice particularly within indigenous communities. She is also interested in food security and food sovereignty, environmental justice, and global social change. Tanya is an active member of the DelVal Food Systems Institute.