Professor Alex Colás (Birkbeck) & Professor Gary McCulloch (IOE)

The project focuses on how food security – understood as the everyday availability of safe, nutritious and affordable food – can be reconciled with (or even complemented by) cultural diversity. It will take the form of an in-depth case study of the Food Strategy promoted by the London Borough of Wandsworth. Wandsworth has a diverse population and the challenge of reconciling equitable and universal provision with access to culturally appropriate foods is widely recognised. The contentious term ‘culturally appropriate food’ refers not just to the potential health benefits of certain staples traditionally consumed by different ethnic groups, but also the cultural value of heritage, memory and belonging associated with diverse foodways and their accompanying forms of public sociability and commensality. The research question to be investigated is how far these experiences of cultural difference and invocations of ethnic diversity in public food consumption either compromise or reinforce the principle of universal provision implicit in food security initiatives like universal free school meals and Wandsworth’s projected Sustainable Food Places partnership. 

Closing date for applications is:  Friday 16^th Feb 2024 (23.59)

Further details about the project may be obtained from: A.Colas@bbk.ac.uk

Further information about PhDs at Birkbeck is available from: t.hoe@bbk.ac.uk

How to Apply: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/student-services/financial-support/phd-funding/bloomsbury-colleges-studentship-cultural-appropriateness-and-food-security-in-wandsworth

Key References

Guthman, Julie (2008) “If They Only Knew”: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions’ The Professional Geographer, 60:3, 387-397. 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022) ‘Cultural Food Preferences in Food Service’. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/food-service-guidelines/strategize-and-act/cultural-food-preferences.html. 

Collins, Randall (2005) Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton University Press. 

LeGrand, Julian (1991) Equity and choice: An Essay in Economics and Applied Philosophy, Routledge. 

Parham, Susan (2018) ‘From the Agora to the Modern Marketplace: Food Markets as Landscapes of Business and Pleasure’ in Joshua Zeunert and Tim Waterman (eds) Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Food, Routledge. 

Rothstein, Bo (1998) ‘The autonomous citizen and the future of the universal welfare policy’ in Just Institutions Matter, Cambridge University Press. 

Singh Lalli, G. (2023) ‘Can culinary capital be (re) produced in school?’, Cambridge Journal of Education, online first, August 2023. 

Zelizer, Viviana (1988) ‘Review: Beyond the Polemics on the Market: Establishing a Theoretical and Empirical Agenda’ Sociological Forum, 3: 4, 614-634.