[BCFSN] Food as a daily art: ideas for its use as a method in development practice

[Pamela Zevit]

ABSTRACT

Food is the only art form that is also a basic need. It requires knowledge and labor for cultivation
and cooking and offers a space where tastes, hospitality, and other cultural values are expressed
and created. As a daily practice in agricultural societies, food is a holistic concept that
incorporates ideas of health, spirituality, community, technology, and trade, and connects the most
marginalized with the most powerful. Conventional international development aid is dominated by a
limited number of relatively narrow ideas informed by scientific processes: progress, economic
growth, market development, and agricultural production. Such ideas are often at odds with
endogenous ideas about development and often work against biological and cultural diversity. Here,
we reflect on our experiences documenting the food culture of the Pamiri people of Afghanistan and
Tajikistan. We trace the trajectory of ideas about development, local and foreign, and explore how
at different stages in those trajectories, the qualities of food can help promote local
perspectives, challenge dominant power relationships, and challenge scientific practices to
incorporate these perspectives better. We show how, as a method and a daily art form, food helps
nurture an "ecology of ideas" in which traditional knowledge and science can come together to create
locally meaningful solutions toward development and sustainability.

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art14/

 

Pamela Zevit, RPBio 
Adamah Consultants 

Coquitlam BC Canada
604-939-0523 

 <mailto:adamah at telus.net> adamah at telus.net 

Science World - Scientists & Innovators in Science Ambassador

 

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The word Adamah is rooted in the Hebrew language (Adam - man, Adamah - earth) and is interpreted as
the "land from which man was made".  At its roots lies the recognition of our species intrinsic
connection to the earth and the inherent responsibility to protect and sustain it. 

 

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