Food Stories

Peter Jackson and Daniel Mace

Geographical Association annual conference, Surrey University, March 2008

Outline

• Background and context

• Introduction to the Food Stories website (and CD)

• Demonstration (food, migration and identity)

• Feedback from students

• Questions and discussion.

• Scan from Daily Mail: “So what is safe to eat?”

Food Stories: context

• Food safety in Britain is highly politicised as a result of recent ‘food scares’ (salmonella, BSE etc)

• Declining consumer trust, increasing anxieties about food

• Government policy urging a greater re-connection between food producers and consumers

• “Food is sold with a story” (Freidberg 2003).

Food stories: project background• Recently completed project from the AHRC-

ESRC Cultures of Consumption programme

• Collaboration with Neil Ward (CRE, Newcastle) and Rob Perks (National Life Stories, Sound Archive at British Library), RA Polly Russell

• Life history interviews with people involved in the British food industry ‘from farm to fork’.

The Food Stories website:• Developed in collaboration with The British

Library’s learning team:

www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/foodstories• Interview extracts, transcripts, biographical info,

‘go deeper’ sections, teachers’ notes • 32,000 hits in first month; press coverage in

Independent, Guardian, Times and Yorkshire Post• Students can navigate through the material in

different ways, a non-didactic approach to food and farming issues.

Food, migration and identity (three extracts):• Claudia Roden on Middle Eastern

cooking and notions of ‘ethnic heritage’• Wing Yip on the first Chinese

restaurants in Britain and the idea of ‘niche’ markets

• Rosamund Grant on Caribbean food, stereotyping and constructions of the ‘exotic’.

Resources

• Teaching Geography (Spring 2008)

• Web: www/bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/foodstories

• CD: Food Stories