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Crisis Caring: Re-making New Orleans’ Foodscapes
Topics: Urban Geography
, American South
, Food Systems
Keywords: foodscapes, New Orleans, disaster, racism, philanthropy, chef, culinary capital Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Monday Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 16
Authors:
Jeanne K Firth, London School of Economics and Political Science
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Abstract
The increasing presence of chef philanthropy in foodscapes has been a hallmark of New Orleans post-Katrina. Locally-based chef foundations have proliferated, including the John Besh Foundation, Shaya Barnett Foundation, Link-Stryjewski Foundation, Arón Sánchez's Scholarship Fund, and Kelly Fields’ Yes Ma’am Foundation. In rebuilding the city since 2005, government and private investments attempted to capitalize on the city’s “cultural economy” and market the city as a “foodie” travel destination. These investments that targeted the Central Business District (CBD), combined with the socio-historical importance of the city’s cuisine, imbued chefs in the CBD with a compelling form of culinary capital and positioned them as elite humanitarian leaders in the “new” New Orleans. I argue that the “restaurant renaissance”— accolades for the rapid growth of “diverse” restaurants in the city—risks eliding inequalities in the built environment, foodscapes, and the geographies of who survived and returned to the city.
