Introduction: Food and Sovereignty

This special issue had its origins in the spring and summer of 2020, a moment which stakes food, gender sovereignty were particularly visible. Pandemic-related shortages, shutdowns restaurants, marketplaces stores sudden food insecurity for millions people – all inescapably changed daily experience eating provisioning. To get by, created new networks to bypass systems they counted on past, sometimes retreating into their own DIY producing (e.g., home baking) rediscovering local systems. Food work was one significant source increased inequities care carework as lockdown made tasks cooking, provisioning feeding that are traditionally considered ‘women's work’ more important, visible people's homes difficult. For many, these inequities, including barriers precarity supplies, not new; been facts life long time. In other, often wealthier, communities, pandemic revealed accelerated impossibility status quo. It demanded ways thinking about who has right exert authority over them. USA, where three four editors located, resonated with force wake wave uprisings global protests racial justice following incendiary unjust murder George Floyd Minneapolis, Minnesota, killed when police called after an altercation at corner grocery store. Renewed attention Elijah McClain's death Aurora, Colorado previous year, by paramedics while he trip convenience store, also reinforced danger incurred colour everyday sustaining themselves. The mobilised mutual aid accessible neighbourhoods lost, or perhaps never had, safe access. Canada, our located where, June 2021, symposium preceded this held, discovery unmarked graves Indigenous children murdered residential schools state-funded run Catholic church various Protestant churches caused us rethink themes entirely. Acknowledgement centuries child abuse, diet, forced labour, hunger denial nourishing soul body used tools cultural genocide, compels recognise routinely, structurally denied peoples. Moreover, scholars we must think colonialism operates only past but midst. Our relationship history involve ethical relationships whose stories claim write represent. As recent cases have revealed, ethnic fraud, primarily perpetrated white purporting be Black, misappropriates resources, dismisses real struggle, undermines Native communities color. When break trust falsely representing ourselves members aggrieved group, whether intentionally unintentionally, perpetrate harms reminiscent colonial violence. Continuing read engage Black scholarship is urgent it ever been; fields leading way developing frameworks relationality honest self-representation. Even develop robust standards ethics research, recognize labour unequal, diverting BIPOC away from other kinds possible broader struggle justice.1 [Correction added 16 December 2022, first online publication: paragraph revised version.] immediacy contexts cannot overlooked. We wrote call submissions during Zoom chats sound helicopters background. worked out eighteen months authors navigated hopes, incredible losses, fascist tendencies liberatory imaginings moments. No doubt you will hear reverberations circumstances through issue, analyses for, words call, ‘control bodies, spaces, states, institutions, identities self’. Using broad definition incorporates states formal political entities ‘the politics survival self-determination’, article establish particular importance autonomy authority. spans Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Caribbean North runs eighteenth century twenty-first, instrument institutional, communal bodily power consistent theme. crafted within scholarly community concepts steadily gaining critical attention. Framing two together concept, ‘food sovereignty’ central many key environmental, social movements.2 And theoretical term prominent studies foodways.3 Definitions understandings multi-dimensional wide-ranging, hold different featuring like culinary self-determination, commonly-held rights, mobilisation, ecological sustainability, economic independence interdependence heirloom ancestral seedkeeping depending groups using grown both movement most use phrase agree changing changeable process, rather than fixed specific term, rooted processes empowerment challenges inequality. Thinking ‘food’ ‘sovereignty’ connected independent concepts, drawn upon works exploring how what eat. Foundational regard Sidney Mintz's 1985 Sweetness Power, inspired generations demonstrated foodstuff case, sucrose derived sugarcane could become inextricable violent enslavement, extraction empire.4 Attention social, things put plate investigated number crucial studies. potential, shown, shape national identity.5 can reflect religious spiritual practice.6 tell behave alongside telling them eat.7 fuel empire.8 tandem capitalism, enriching few holding state want, impotence defencelessness.9 But tool resistance, helping remember histories, reaffirm values, experiment innovate push back against colonisers, enslavers, bosses oppressors.10 While bound up marked structures power, capacity challenge dismantle We, authors, insisted those doing so, drew growing feminist scholars, take questions race inequality.11 Indeed, attending mean embedded race, sex class reveals site policy butts nationalist anti-colonial struggles, economies enacted resisted shaped via households.12 Attending presence spaces gendered lens women's domain kitchens households sovereignty's precarity, sense itself quickly suddenly withheld offered generously, question controls much less settled might assume.13 Spaces apparent highlight visions survival, freedoms autonomy. resulting supports idea inextricably entwined. organised thematically, close historical actors’ sovereignty. begins narratives efforts consolidate ends uses reclaim between, find articles non-elite survive exercise space, workings feelings individuals’ control others. Each thematic cluster bracketed ‘short piece’: brief, thought-provoking essay source, fascinating person momentous time period. These shorter explorations each offer exciting directions opens reconsideration ‘sweetness power’: Marta Manzanares Mileo offers exploration tropes sweetness femininity urban confectionery businesses early modern Spain. history, details rise women confectioner–entrepreneurs who, making sweets widely available, consumer tastes practices redefining appropriate feminine comportment. reading encourages transnationally sugar economies, situate commercial agency context capitalism empire. then shift limits. Articles Leslie Wolff Rachel Hope Cleves address role presentations constructing (and challenging) narratives. presents nuanced discussion chefs’ contrasting strategies navigating Mexico's financial investment foodways. She emphasises even visual aesthetics especially contemporary Mexican cuisine need understood part enacts world. retelling, conflicting indigeneity, associated knowledge consumers access each. nationalism identity, addresses queer chefs USA distinctively American, masculinist encompassed ‘queer’ foods such quiche. whole, centrality preparation, presentation nation–state's governance. Histories reifying countering heteropatriarchal, supremacist modes presenting histories ongoing claim, expand, modify deflect nationalism. Two carcerality reinforce disciplining food. Alice Mulhearn-Williams Nadja Durbach investigate punish, produce, young men. privilege differing perspectives imprisonment. Whereas lifts sensory oral stay Magdalene Laundries, examines nutrition guidelines British authorities men's prisons. imprisoned laundries, reinscribed abject status. Monotonous diets strictly surveilled disciplined mealtimes served occasions isolation lack rights. Prison metropolitan Britain, hand, punish men help grow ‘productive’ masculine citizens imperial so desired. cases, produced citizen (abject, obedient women, ‘healthy’ men) punishment. additionally suggest object resistance (for instance, strikes laundries). Through process combined intimate went one's mouth) largest scales governing authorities’ top-down create subjects. change chastise explored Jessica Kenyatta Walker's meaningful short piece domestic citizenship USDA's propaganda films 1920s−1930s. films, US government agencies attempted impose vision ‘civilisation’ ‘productivity’ But, Walker shows powerfully, homemakers held fast ideas health, community. studies, field, centre struggles next section takes raised necessity liberation, studying highly dispersed networks. Focusing very Dutch South civil rights 1960s South, leftist movements twentieth twenty-first-century Chile contested late twentieth-century Haiti, expansive transportation survival. Kathleen Burke describes complex nationhood, enslavement identity homes, grown, provisioned, cooked enslaved women. Laura Dudley Jenkins documents colonisation form neoliberal development policies Haiti. sent did needs populations, enforce bonds empire repurposed work. treat non-domestic example, kitchens, post offices mailboxes. emerged non-familial sustained times places poor precarious. Pamela N. co-authored Hillary Hiner, Anita Peña Saavedra Alondra Castillo Delgado show families going outside typical sites distribution, stores, programmes household kitchens. Racial hierarchy still inform movements, ‘othering’ immigrants’ pobladores limitations needs. Nonetheless, Hiner et al's focus memory intergenerational transfer, transfer resources sympathisers north working shipments transnational around been, inevitably directs local, intimate, specific. Nowhere clearer ‘housewives’ struggled Marie Pellissier's Mary Randolph's cookbook moves series discuss Pellissier untangles Randolph erased workers her kitchen cook hostess. Today, institutions Colonial Williamsburg continue circulate example ‘American’ linking erasure supremacy American identity. Then, wrest recognition based confronts measured cooking. economics century, housework target reformers authorities. Carolyn Taratko's Mire Koikari's make clear, international internationalist) world economists allowed and, build professional privileges came exerting Both point limits efforts, establishing wives’ mothers’ exertion identities. taken clearly Anny Gaul Arianna King, delineate possibilities procuring preparing articles, cooking market selling opportunities speak structural adjustment rejection homogeneous identities, bend rules suit individual purposes. finish cluster, Douthwaite's single letter voicing concern radioactive milk speaks granularity simultaneously, range objects it. charged nature Shayne Figueroa Lillian Tsay space asserted waged By comparing Japanese factories mid-twentieth-century school lunchrooms, see paid opened doors claims Importantly, relevance working-class projects girl, profits schools. Like workplaces contain contests Tsay's faced extraordinary image, ambitions. Similarly, Figueroa's cafeteria workers’ demands treated respect assignments ran employer's union's expectations would willing accept intermittent employment, intrusive supervision that, shifts workplace, allegiance family constrain public spaces. further extend became shared milk. Milk western culture, invested enormous importance, thought essential nutritional elements assertion science, nursing parents. Andrea Ringer's investigation zoos’ effective substitutes milk, Conor Heffernan's surge interest non-pasteurised among bodybuilders, milk's significance. Animal exploitation alienation destruction families. Zookeepers humans animals female reputations stocks. bodybuilders linked raw consumption ability reshape bodies. insights operated authority, animals, mothers, scientists forces capital true, Becca Dower final article, bison. move disassembled thus Dower's powerful narration reintroduction bison Fort Peck Reservation. directly language sovereignty, pointing collective well diets, foodways tried strip away. femaleness done ‘Buffalo Nation’ sustains redefinition property collectives, individuals. Taken together, thorough, wide-ranging translocal trade, governments, stability norms, families, did, exercised bodies imagine enact futures. food's meant racialisation equally damaging because, suggest, index ate indicated, determine, ‘counted’ ‘real’ citizen. words, determine do vigorous comprehensive big size scope, comprises twenty-one interdisciplinary periods era present day features actors corners globe. Such rich collection without extensive creativity, intellectual generosity enthusiasm led ninety applications ‘Food Sovereignty’ sponsored Gender History, forty papers presented virtual event brilliant keynote lecture Nigerian explorer, anthropologist historian Ozoz Sokoh. topic people! be, there periods, peoples absent -- underrepresented follow. medieval period, wide stretches Middle East sub-Saharan Africa lacunae stubbornly old frustratingly marginalised groups. Several contributors withdraw publication because sheer difficulty pandemic, research disconnected locations urgency familial commitments. feel loss wholeheartedly supporting focus. come fruition convey energy sharpness thinking, writing being totality done. Although met person, although editing conducted entirely online, heartened efforts. want thank editorial office steadfast skillful support, brought journal. Without collective, Special Issue happened. fully respond movingly, conversations engendered interactions. At symposium, throughout learned other. hope some synergy articles. reliance resist reconfigure both. Tracey Deutsch Associate Professor History University Minnesota (USA) Faculty Coordinator Transform, $5 million Mellon Foundation ‘Just Futures’ initiative. author Building Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government Grocery Stores Twentieth Century several essays gender, Heidi Gengenbach Massachusetts Boston (USA). Binding Memories: Women Tellers Makers Magude, Mozambique (Columbia Press, 2005). Her rural foodways, agrarian southeastern appeared journals edited volumes. Amanda Herbert Assistant Professor, Early Modern Americas Department Durham (UK). She’s Female Alliances: Identity, Friendship Britain (Yale, 2014), editor Recipes Project, co-director Mellon-funded project Before Farm Table: Foodways Cultures. Shauna Sweeney Toronto (Canada). currently A Free Enterprise: Market Women, Insurgent Economies Making Freedom. William & Quarterly Social Text.