Spaces of nostalgia: the hollowing out of a London market

124

106

Race is, in part, made and remade through the practices of growing, selling, purchasing and eating food. Consequently, some food practices are also 'racial practices'. Drawing on a study in progress of the Minneapolis Farmers' Market, the paper covers two sub-themes of embodiment: racial division and intimacy. The corporeal feminist theory of Elizabeth Grosz offers the view that the body has explanatory power. This framework enables a discussion of the materiality of race rather than its representation or performance. Race emerges through the movement, clustering and encounter of phenotypically differentiated bodies. Through small segregations in which bodies move toward some vegetables and not others and through attractions that propel bodies to touch bitter melon and talk with growers, bodies shape the Market's meaning. This reflection on tendencies connecting phenotype, space and leaves is meant as a step toward a politics of bodily practice.

Section: Farmers' Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking race through corporeal feminist theory: divisions and intimacies at the Minneapolis Farmers' Market

Slocum¹

2008

124

106

“…22 While nostalgia is frequently invoked in accounts of the past written from a disappointed sense of the present (Watson & Wells, 2006), the participant accounts reported here clearly illustrate that -at least in the context of cooking and eating -the rhetoric of decline may be running ahead of the evidence.…”

Section: Kitchens As a Conduit To The Pastmentioning

confidence: 91%

Re-imagining the kitchen as a site of memory

Meah

Jackson

2015

Extending the focus of previous geographical research on public spaces of remembering, this paper demonstrates the ways in which memory work also takes place in private domestic spaces. The paper draws on a combination of life history and ethnographic research undertaken in Northern England, examining kitchens as a specific lieu de mémoire, showing how they serve as places where valued items are displayed and material artefacts are curated as part of the construction and reproduction of personal memories and familial identities. Using ethnographic and visual evidence from two case study households, the paper demonstrates the role of material artefacts in curating the past and materialising memory. Additionally, life history interviews with older women reveal narratives of everyday cooking practices which seemingly contradict popular discourses of the past, questioning conventional ideas about the distorted nature of nostalgia. In combination, our data represent complex narratives in which the past can be seen as infusing the present, and where present-day concerns are revealed as actively shaping public discourses which favour a return to an idealised past, which may have little bearing on people's actual lived experience. Ré-imaginer la cuisine en tant que site de mémoire RÉSUMÉElargissant le domaine des recherches géographiques précédentes sur les lieux publics de mémoire, cet article démontre comment le travail de mémoire a aussi lieu dans les espaces domestiques privés. L'article exploite un ensemble d'histoires de vies et de recherches ethnographiques menées au Nord de l'Angleterre et examine des cuisines en tant que lieu de mémoire spécifique tout en montrant comment elles servent de lieux où des objets appréciés ont été exposés et des objets anciens conservés, dans le cadre de la construction et de la reproduction de souvenirs personnels et d'identités familiales. Utilisant des preuves ethnographiques et visuelles d'études de cas de deux foyers, l'article démontre le rôle d'objets matériels dans la conservation du passé et la matérialisation de la mémoire. De plus, des entretiens sur des histoires de vie avec des femmes plus âgées révèlent des récits de pratiques culinaires quotidiennes qui contredisent apparemment les discours populaires MOTS CLÉS

“…Furthermore, as part of the AHD, there is no escaping the fact that nostalgic images can work to mask reprehensible processes of discrimination and exclusion that permeated the past (Watson and Wells, 2005). Recently, however, a blanket derision of nostalgia has been challenged and more positive outcomes of nostalgic imaginings and practices explored.…”

Section: Productive Nostalgiasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The accretive past is appreciated less for its own sake than because it has led to the present…continuity implies a living past bound up with the present, not one exotically different or obsolete (Lowenthal, 1985, p.61) As I have shown, this is by no means an unproblematic process and the assertion of knowledge pertaining to local history is infused with contestation and inflected by the power dynamics inherent in community (and wider) politics. It is also important to remember that nostalgic images can work to disguise the social divisions of the past and reflect the lives and memories of only certain, privileged individuals or social groups (Watson and Wells, 2005). When considering nostalgia as productive we must, therefore, be conscious of the question; for whom is it productive?…”

Section: Performing 'Community' Through Nostalgia: the Case Of 'Marthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local history as productive nostalgia? Change, continuity and sense of place in rural England

Wheeler

2016

Local history groups are often negatively associated with a tendency to indulge in nostalgic practices that yearn for a romanticised past and propagate resistance to change. Their role in local politics and power networks (particularly in relation to planning and development processes) has also been critiqued as exacerbating issues of social inequality and exclusion. While not contesting the realities of such arguments, this paper adds nuance to such debates by using the notion of 'productive' or 'mobile' nostalgia to explore possibilities for more positive renderings of local history and heritage activities. Empirical evidence from qualitative research in a rural village in Norfolk, England, is drawn on to demonstrate the role of these practices in providing a sense of continuity amid a continuously changing locale through the reassertion of place identities and attachments. Although by no means apolitical, this process need not necessarily be one of preservationism and resistance to change, but can be a mechanism through which residents are able to accept, or even welcome, changes to the social and physical constitution of their village. The paper also critically considers the value of productive nostalgia as a concept through which to explore local history practices and wider heritage movements.