[URBANTH-L]CFP: Sow's Ears to Silk Purses

[Angela Jancius]

Call for Papers: Sows' Ears to Silk Purses

ETHNOLOGY: An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology

ETHNOLOGY: An International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology 
welcomes papers for a special issue on the creative use of trash foods; that 
is, provisions used by poor people and enhanced by them, and not food taken 
from garbage cans and city dumps. The proposed theme issue is about 
stratified societies having institutionalized differences of wealth and 
power, whose populations have unequal access to quantities and varieties of 
food because of the organization of commodity distribution. This results in 
ranking food and food ingredients based on their desirability, and 
encourages the emergence of haute cuisine as a culinary art. Admiration of 
artistic creativity is extended to chefs (men), and the cooks (women) are 
not appreciated for their innovations with low cuisine, although they can 
turn trash into treasure. It seems there is a lack of awareness of how poor 
people create what become popular dishes from rejected foods and 
ingredients, such as the parts of a butchered animal that are despised or 
considered inedible or garbage. The focus here is on culinary creativity 
with limited resources. Examples include scrapple, chitlins in various forms 
around the world, head cheese, and aspic. It also is interesting that ideas 
about preferred foods and dishes move not only from the top down, but 
also trickle up. Manuscripts should be about 30 pages, double spaced, with 
an abstract and several key terms. Manuscripts may be sent in email 
attachments or by regular mail.

Contact Information
Leonard Plotnicov, Editor-in-Chief
University of Pittsburgh
3310 Posvar Hall
Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA
Phone: 412-648-7503
Email: ethnolog at pitt.edu
URL http://www.pitt.edu/~ethnolog