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Issue 4, 2014
Food Infrastructures
Editors: Xaq Frohlich, Mikko Jauho, Bart Penders, and David Schleifer
This issue of Limn analyzes food infrastructures and addresses scale in food production, provision, and consumption. We go beyond the tendency towards simple producer “push” or consumer “pull” accounts of the food system, focusing instead on the work that connects producers to consumers. By describing and analyzing food infrastructures, our contributors examine the reciprocal relationships among consumer choice, personal use, and the socio-material arrangements that enable, channel, and constrain our everyday food options.
Articles
- Preface: Food Infrastructures
The Editors of Issue #4 take a look at the concept of "food infrastructures."
- Elements of Food Infrastructure
As food has industrialized, it has changed, along with our bodies and our economies. Matthew Hockenberry charts conceptual connections in this issue with a timeline.
- Scale, Evolution and Emergence in Food Systems
Christopher Otter diagnoses the impossibility of fully governing large-scale food systems and the novel ecologies they create.
- Scaling Up/Scaling Down
Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier shows how French markets and social movements interact in food provisioning
- The Silence of the Labs
Is sugar a choice? Kim Hendrickx explores how a Sugar Museum in Belgium puts life and health into perspective.
- The Fish at the Heart of the Food System
David Schleifer and Alison Fairbrother introduce menhaden, the fish you've never heard of but are probably eating right now.
- Trojan Cans
How did the self-service economy emerge? Franck Cochoy displays the ‘pico-infrastructure’ behind modern consumption.
- The Secret Lives of Corporate Food
Big companies are not just tracing their products’ life stories, but telling them too. Susanne Freidberg explores why.
- The Art of the Monger
How do cheesemongers extend the value of a dying commodity? Heather Paxson explores how mongers care for living cheese—and for the craft of their trade.
- Refrigerator Units, Normal Goods
Emily Yates-Doerr tells two stories that reveal the challenge of grasping global inequality.
- Fat/Cholesterol
Mikko Jauho demonstrates how a 'double risk object' connects the worlds of food and health across different scales.
- The Oil Palm Kernel and the Tinned Can
Do you see the peculiar industrial legacy of West Africa's oil palm tree in a humble tin can? Makalé Faber-Cullen does.
- Labels for Life
The labels on our food exist in a complex political struggle over consumers’ attention. Xaq Frohlich walks us through the information infrastructure of the label and its impact on our “choices.”
- Iconoclasm in the Supermarket
What happens when activists re-label your food? Javier Lezaun explores the "Label it Yourself" movement and its ambivalent power.
- All Lost In The Supermarket
Anthropologist and retail consultant Michael Powell takes us on a stroll down Aisle #6. What's in the center of the grocery store and why is it causing a crisis in the industry?
- Infrastructures of Credibility
What makes a claim believable? Bart Penders and Steven Flipse explore two cases of credibility engineering.
- Measuring Food
Food system activist Anna Lappé takes stock of the pieces in this issue.