The University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) hosts the Joint 2016 Annual Meetings and Conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS); the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS); and the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS). The conference theme, “Scarborough Fare: Global Foodways and Local Foods in a Transnational City,” emphasizes the changing nature of food production, distribution, and consumption as people, goods, foods and culinary and agricultural knowledge move over long distances and across cultural and national borders.
It explores the development of cities and their transnational marketplaces where new and old migrants, entrepreneurs and emerging migrant-origin middle classes settle in suburbs such as Scarborough, rather than in older downtown districts such as the historic Toronto Chinatown along Spadina.
To understand global and local food systems, we must give due attention to migrants, whether from rural districts or from cities, for they have historically provided knowledge and labour necessary to feed societies, while also altering the foodways of long-time natives of the areas where they settle.
The conference invites participants to examine the role of mobile people as workers, entrepreneurs, and innovators in agriculture, culinary infrastructure, and food preparation and consumption. Submissions may also consider the long distance movement of people, culinary knowledge, and foods as contributors to projects of colonization, sovereignty and creators of global inequalities. The conference will feature cultural events, art exhibits, and a banquet that highlight the diverse communities and cuisines of Scarborough and the Greater Toronto Area. Students and emerging scholars in particular are invited to submit proposals for a pre-conference to be held on June 21 and sponsored by CAFS.
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