Food as Knowledge, interconnecting the Global South

Abstract

Food, a global process, is strongly anchored in plural partnerships. Tastes, aromas, combinations of foods, shape cultures and suggest interconnectedness across multiple epistemic territories that create our increasingly interconnected world. Food recipes, a special kind of oral archive, are key to rescue knowledges silenced by dominant epistemologies. Combining oral and written archives, this presentation explores paths for sustainable ways of dealing with food, from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South. This approach, by privileging the broad Indian Ocean space of contacts, is key to understand how food, by invoking other knowledges, contacts and identity processes, enables the emergence of other ontologies, beyond the nature/culture divide.

Autobiography

Maria Paula Meneses, a mozambican scholar, is a Principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. Her research focus on the political history and socio-legal complexity of southern Africa, especially in Mozambique, Angola and South Africa. At the heart of her interests are the relations between knowledge, power and societies. Her work has been published in journals, books and reports in several countries, including Mozambique, Spain, Portugal, Senegal, USA, England, Germany, Colombia, amid others.