Geography of food...!

Sounded strange at first isn't it? Geography of food...but it is a very serious field in cultural geography with enormous amounts of research and publications going on. Scholars are busy discussing different aspects of food geography like the political aspects, the health aspects, the life style aspects, the sociology of it, the psychology of it, the governance of it..and yes, it is a fun topic too. Just to give you an idea I copied some sessions from the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New York I was participating last week:

• Advancing debates on sustainable and local food
• Biodiversity and Food in the Context of Development and Climate Change
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 1: Food for Fuel
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 2: Governing Sustainability
• Biofuels, Food and the Bio-based Economy 3: A Technological Fix?
• Critical Geographies of Food in the City: Activism and Community
• Food in the City: Exploring Space, Place, and Taste
• Food security, food sovereignty, & food justice: the Geographies of Food
• FoodMediaPolitics 1: Celebrity Chef Space
• FoodMediaPolitics 2: Production, Consumption, Representation
• Hunger & Food Systems - Urban & Global Perspectives
• Navigating the Geographies of Food: People, Place, Culture, & Power
• New Directions in Political Ecology II: Addressing Food, Agriculture, Well-Being and Rural Livelihoods
• Processes of Globalization in Agri-Food Networks
• Sustainable communities through food systems: Considering urban/rural intersections, challenges and opportunities
• The Political Ecology of Alternative Food Systems
• The Role of Geographers in Promoting Leadership in Environmental Sustainability, Food Security and Health Policy Initiatives in Africa
• Theorizing the Geographies of Food: New Directions and Interventions for Alternative Food Praxis

See what I mean? And this is not all...there were hundreds of presentations in the field of geography of food just in this conference.

From Monday on we will move to other fields of human geography (rural geography first, and then slowly we'll move deeper into cultural geography in the coming weeks).

Have a great weekend!

Dr. Tuna Tasan-Kok