White bread bio-politics: purity, health, and the triumph of industrial baking

Bobrow-Strain, Aaron

doi:10.1177/1474474007085783

Cited by 38 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Kabelo, a university student explained that Batswana in general preferred the ‘whitish and attractive’ maize meal to the ‘brownish and unattractive’ sorghum porridge ( bogobe jwa mabele ). Such preference for white maize is not specific to Botswana according to existing scholarship (McCann, ), with other foodstuffs such as sugar and wheat also connected to histories of ‘whiteness’ (Bobrow‐Strain, ).…”

Section: Factors Shaping Consumer Food Choice In Gaboronementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring food choices within the context of nutritional security in Gaborone, Botswana

Legwegoh

Hovorka

2016

Singap J Trop Geogr

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Food consumption experiences remain largely unexplored in urban Africa, despite mounting concerns regarding both over‐ and undernutrition of city dwellers and the potential impact on overall human health and development. This paper seeks to explore the foodstuffs people consume and the factors that shape consumer choice in Gaborone, Botswana. Empirical data were drawn from food diaries and observations of 40 households and discussions with them, plus key informants interviews in Gaborone. Analysis reveals the range of foodstuff people consume, highlighting the prevalence of diets comprised of energy dense, processed and animal‐sourced foods, which are major nutritional security concerns. However these diets were not summarily western or westernizing as per the nutritional transition thesis, as our analysis suggests subtleties of dietary patterns, including the fact that meat‐based diets are traditionally rooted rather than imported and meals tend to comprise both local and western components. The paper also identifies multiple interacting factors influencing consumer food choices, illustrating how food decisions embody context‐specific personal and social circumstances. Understanding how these factors shape what people eat in Gaborone may enable policy makers to facilitate the conditions within which healthy food choices can be made and to address emerging public health and nutrition challenges in African cities.

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Section: Factors Shaping Consumer Food Choice In Gaboronementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring food choices within the context of nutritional security in Gaborone, Botswana

Legwegoh

Hovorka

2016

Singap J Trop Geogr

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“…As Bobrow-Strain (2008) suggested, an ''actionable hierarchy'' is being created here, with particular and intentional effects on the future biosocial collectivities which constitute/are constituted by each livestock breed.…”

Section: Categories and Hierarchies Of Pedigree Livestock Animalsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Choosing and rejecting cattle and sheep: changing discourses and practices of (de)selection in pedigree livestock breeding

et al. 2010

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This paper examines the discourses and practices of pedigree livestock breeding, focusing on beef cattle and sheep in the UK, concentrating on an under-examined aspect of this-the deselection and rejection of some animals from future breeding populations. In the context of exploring how animals are valued and represented in different ways in relation to particular agricultural knowledgepractices, it focuses on deselecting particular animals from breeding populations, drawing attention to shifts in such knowledge-practices related to the emergence of ''genetic'' techniques in livestock breeding which are arguably displacing ''traditional'' visual and experiential knowledge's of livestock animals. The paper situates this discussion in the analytical framework provided by Foucault's conception of ''biopower,'' exploring how interventions in livestock populations aimed at the fostering of domestic animal life are necessarily also associated with the imperative that certain animals must die and not contribute to the future reproduction of their breed. The ''geneticization'' of livestock breeding produces new articulations of this process associated with different understandings of animal life and the possibilities of different modes of intervention in livestock populations. Genetic techniques increasingly quantify and rationalize processes of selection and deselection, and affect how animals are perceived and valued both as groups and as individuals. The paper concludes by emphasizing that the valuation of livestock animals is contested, and that the entanglement of ''traditional'' and ''genetic'' modes of valuation means that there are multiple layers of valuation and (de)selection involved in breeding knowledgepractices.

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“…The American agrifood industry has embraced and promoted xenophobic fears, promoting "sanitary" and "pure" foods of European origin such as pasteurized cow's milk and white bread (Bobrow-Strain 2008;DuPuis 2002), in contrast to foods consumed by immigrants of color or "contaminated" foods. In the context of this study, food assistance workers have interpreted immigrant foods as unhealthy and even unclean, reflecting the lack of understanding of immigrant foodways.…”

Section: Immigrant Food and Racial Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowing “Good Food”: Immigrant Knowledge and the Racial Politics of Farmworker Food Insecurity

Minkoff-Zern

2014

Antipode

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This article explores the ways that farmworkers, many of whom come from a culture deeply rooted in food and agricultural practices, cope with food insecurity by utilizing their agricultural and nutritional knowledge. Food assistance providers in the USA often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge about healthy eating, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color don't know "good" food. I argue that in contrast to food banks and low-income nutrition programs, home and community gardens provide spaces for retaining and highlighting agricultural, cultural, and dietary practices and knowledge. This paper investigates the linkages between workers' place in the food system as both producers and consumers, simultaneously exploited for their labor, and creating coping strategies utilizing agrarian and culinary knowledge. I argue that food security and healthy eating, rather than being a matter of consumers making healthy "choices", is a matter of class-based and racial differences in the food system.

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White bread bio-politics: purity, health, and the triumph of industrial baking

Cited by 38 publications

References 11 publications

Exploring food choices within the context of nutritional security in Gaborone, Botswana

Exploring food choices within the context of nutritional security in Gaborone, Botswana

Choosing and rejecting cattle and sheep: changing discourses and practices of (de)selection in pedigree livestock breeding

Knowing “Good Food”: Immigrant Knowledge and the Racial Politics of Farmworker Food Insecurity

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