Weaving in two food research journeys into a duo-ethnography

Keywords: food justice, autoethnography, feminist care theory, immigration
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 25

Abstract

“Coffee and a light lunch will be served.” In food justice research and activism, the tip of the iceberg traditionally takes the form of publications, conferences, meetings, policy memos, readings, and demonstrations. A more submerged - yet essential - part of the process occurs in cooking, eating and feeding ourselves and one another. Food is deeply embodied in our day-to-day interactions, and in the very matter of our beings. Emotional, relational and physical experiences of food connect us and serve as measures of food justice. Yet, these experiences are rarely included in food research spaces. Although we often eat while we write, meet and work, the eating and feeding selves are excluded as research objects. In this paper, the authors write a two-person autoethnography to convey their embodied experiences around food. The journey starts in 2015, as they first met around a cup of coffee in Cairo to discuss their food justice work. After two years without exchanging a word, they emigrated to the United States and serendipitously started the same doctoral program at Arizona State University, to train as food systems researchers. Rooted in the care feminist literature, the authors weave their personal and joint experiences of eating, cooking, and feeding, and treat these as valid objects of analysis through a past, present and future framework following an indigenous spiral temporality. In their journey, they navigate the American food space as two low-income legal aliens, and explore themes ranging from microbiopolitics, decoloniality, power dynamics, gardening, parenting, and pregnancy.