"Food and..." Speakers Series

Alice Julier

 

Food and Place: Marketing the Local, Gentrifying the Neighborhood
Thursday, September 28, 2017
South Croslin Room, TTU Library, 5:30 p.m.
Co-sponsored by the TTU Libraries and TTU Friends of the Library

Restaurants are a barometer of change and continuity in urban areas. Utilizing media promotion of "the food scene" as well as participant observation of restaurants and chefs, this talk examines cities as consumption theme parks based on geographic and culinary traditions that are both real and re-imagined for new urban residents and tourists. The "moral entrepreneurship" of journalists, food critics, media commentators, chefs, and restaurant owners is essential to the creation of urban spaces as food destinations. The "food scene" is a facet of gentrification, and gentrification centers on a racial project of simultaneously celebrating and homogenizing racial and ethnic differences. While gentrification is always a mixed process, this talk explores the narratives that tie uniquely local or regional food to places as sites of tourism, commerce, and politics.

BIO:
Alice Julier is a sociologist who focuses on food, material life, and inequality. She is the founding director of the Food Studies program at Chatham University and the Director of CRAFT, the Center for Regional Agriculture, Food, and Transformation. She writes about food systems, domesticity and family meals, and labor in food systems. She is the former president of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and a council member for the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society. Her most recent book is Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality. She is also the co-editor of the upcoming edition of Food and Culture: A Reader.