Stories
Food in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17: The Circular Economy as Dystopia
Bong Joon-ho's use of food, eating, and dystopic food systems to develop his arguments has not garnered the attention it deserves. Which is quite strange, as those elements are in your face, all the time, like in his last film Mickey 17. Class stratification and...
Eating Pets and Bomb Threats: How Weaponizing Food Helps Trump Win Votes
Maria Contreras illustration for Foreign Policy The dinner table unites and divides, especially the question of what we eat and how we eat it. It is therefore not surprising that politicians frequently use food as a wedge issue to push their ideological agendas and...
Fascism, food, and women: totalitarism at the table
This is a draft of my review of Diana Garvin's book, Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work, published on the journal MLN. Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 film Bicycle Thieves has marked world cinema with its raw representations of post-World War II poverty in...
The Makaron Case: Pasta, Poland, and Politics
Italian pasta has suddenly become very hot in Polish politics (ok, terrible pun, but bear with me…). On Wednesday October 3rd, Janusz Kowalski, the deputy minister for Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland, posted an infographic on his X account in which he...
Queering the Menu: a Dinner at Davide Scabin’s Table
A dinner at a Davide Scabin’s establishment is an event that keeps you thinking and musing for a while. And the tasting menu he now offers at his new Carignano Restaurant at the Grand Hotel Sitea in Turin is no exception. In many ways, this is not your run-of-the-mill...
Culinary Tourism and Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities
How can tourists be educated through experiences that allow them to share aspects of the local life without excessively disturbing nature and local communities? How do you avoid forms of disneyfication that may turn locals into extras? On March 24 and 25th, the 5the...