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Call for papers: Nutritional Imaginaries

Charlotte Altman-Morant and Ghislaine Gallenga

Call for papers: Nutritional imaginaries

The question surroundings imaginaries of food has already been explored in history (Heimberg 2010; Vierne 1989), in literature (Lambert-Perreault et Sicotte 2016) and in communication studies (Boutaud and Dufour 2015), but much more rarely in anthropology. To address this research gap, we follow the footsteps of the anthropologist Annie Hubert who, in her introduction to the S1 issue (2001) of this Journal, Alimentation et Santé: la Science et l’imaginaire, wrote that food “satisfies physiological needs, of course, but its symbolic, imaginary dimension is a fundamental aspect of the relationship between humans and their food. The act of eating generates and structures beliefs and representations. It is therefore a code through which communication and information circulate. An important aspect of this code throughout humanity concerns the idea of health.” Our aim, with the introduction of the concept of “nutritional imaginaries,” which encompasses the notions of body, sport, food, and health, is to provide a conceptual framework that brings together the representations, practices, and the material, symbolic, and immaterial dimensions associated with eating and food. The concept of “imaginary” is polysemous and used across numerous disciplines, its definition shifting depending on historical contexts and fields of knowledge. We adopt here the understanding that an individual or group produces narratives, myths, and images that give meaning to reality, through which they categorize the world beyond established scientific facts - facts that are themselves traversed and influenced by the imaginary (Martin 1991). Furthermore, we use the term “nutrition” (and its derivatives, such as “nutritional”) to designate the articulation between body, sport practice, food, and health, understood through the framework of scientific knowledge and recommendations, while acknowledging that these are historically situated and periodically reshaped in relation to public policies for instance (Gallenga and Soldani 2023).

To this end, in this issue of Anthropology of Food, we propose to refine the notion of foodscape as developed by Arjun Appadurai (1990) concerning the scapes, and later by Liselotte Hedegaard (2013) for foodscapes, which has largely emphasized spatial and locational dimensions (for example, street food). Our purpose is to foreground instead its dimension as an imagined symbolic landscape. Within the framework of the “nutritional imaginary,” we retain the conception of the imaginary proposed by Appadurai and extended by Pauline Adema (2007), but we deploy it at an experiential rather than globalized scale. This epistemological approach does not ignore territorial anchors or the places in which people are immersed (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), but rather focuses on the embodied, anthropological dimension of nutrition. This allows us to propose a definition that integrates the imaginary, practices, the body, and everyday life. In addition, nutritional imaginaries carry both medical and sensory dimensions, which we aim to explore beyond the initial foodscape framework. Extending on this notion, we consider nutrition not merely as a system of prescriptions or prohibitions but as a universe of situated, embodied, and sensory experiences. Nutrition is indeed a legitimate register of behavioral regulation, mobilized by dietetics, medicine, and biomedical categories. Yet this register interacts with lay forms of knowledge - such as the “doctrine of signatures,” according to which foods resembling an organ may benefit or heal it - or with embodied knowledge, in which eating is situated within relational and sensory contexts: eating alone or collectively, with bare hands or utensils, in ritualized or informal settings.

Our focus, therefore, is to understand the imaginaries beyond the religious framework - a domain already extensively documented, particularly regarding food taboos (Bergeaud-Blackler and Brisebarre 2006) - by turning toward the profane and the everyday, such as the food “bricolages” analyzed by De Certeau (1980). We choose to question beliefs not at the macro-collective level but as situated, personal, and embedded within familial histories and diverse cultural and geographical environments. It is not, for example, a matter of explaining “why don’t people eat cows” in India in the name of religion, but rather understanding how and why the draught animal is not eaten because it is primarily perceived as a working tool.

Building on this, we propose to examine how food is not only consumed but also “incorporated.” Food makes the body; it contributes to the material, symbolic, and sensory constitution of individuals (Merleau-Ponty 1944). This dimension also involves a moral economy of food (Fassin 2009): food choices are not neutral but charged with evaluations, obligations, and values. In this context, nutritional imaginaries engage moral judgments (“clean eating,” “bad/poor eating”) and produce hierarchies, which may be upheld or reinforced by public policies as well as by individuals themselves. The relationship to food may also be shaped by processes of stigmatization (Goffman 1963): certain foods become associated with shame (Wong 2024), bad taste, or vulgarity, while others carry positive values of purity (Douglas 1966) or cultural “legitimacy” (“clean,” “dirty,” “vulgar,” or “powerful” foods). In such categorizations, we find, for example, positive or negative food homonyms - when a food name evokes a socially connoted meaning (e.g. “nuts”, “cookies”, “cherries”), thus producing effects of valorization or rejection. Naming animals provides another illustration: when farm animals are given names, they shift from being considered a food resource to being regarded as companion animals, rendering their consumption improper. A further aspect lies in the symbolic association of certain foods with a specific gender (Diasio and Fidolini 2019) or age group (Ferry 2010).

These imaginaries unfold within a contemporary neoliberal context marked by a widening rupture between production and consumption (Lefebvre 1947; Pruvost 2021, 2024). Consumers are increasingly distanced from the places and modes of production of what they eat. This separation opens a space for the circulation and transformation of food representations. A few examples illustrate this shift: insects, alternately defined as a sustainable food of the future or as a source of repulsion; lobster, once a “poor man’s food,” now a luxury product; or the reconfiguration of “edible/inedible” categories depending on cultural contexts. Dietary regimes (Okinawan, Mediterranean, vegan, high-protein, “detox,” color-based diets, intermittent fasting, etc.) demonstrate how these imaginaries structure both lifestyles and dietary practices, articulating eco-ethics, health, communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), as well as embodied practices.

In sum, for this issue, we welcome contributions that engage with the perspective of nutritional imaginaries, in line with the thematic directions outlined above.

Deadline

Abstracts (max. 12 lines and max. 5 keywords) in English and in French, should be sent to ghislaine.gallenga@univ-amu.fr and altmorant@gmail.com by February 1st 2026.

We will communicate our decision regarding the proposals on February 16, 2026.

Papers in English, max. 8000 words including notes and bibliography, following AoFood editorial norms (https://journals-openedition-org.lama.univ-amu.fr/aof/6899) will be expected before July 1st 2026.

The journal issue is scheduled for publication the following year, in February 2027.

Bibliography

Adema P. 2007. Foodscape: An Emulsion of Food and Landscape, Rumblings from the World of Food, Gastronomica, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 2007), p 3.

Bergeaud-Blackler F., Brisebarre A.-M. (dir.). 2006. Alimentation et religion, Anthropology of Food, 5, 2006. https://journals.openedition.org/aof/31

De Certeau M. 1980. L’invention du quotidien, 1 : Arts de faire, Paris, Gallimard.

Diasio N., Fidolini V. 2019. Garder le cap. Corps, masculinité et pratiques alimentaires à « l’âge critique », Ethnologie française, .49(4), 751-767.

Douglas M. 1992 (1966). De la souillure : Essai sur les notions de pollution et de tabou. Paris : La Découverte.

Fassin D. 2009. Les économies morales revisitées, Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2009; 64 (6) : 1235-1266.

Ferry M. 2010. Nutrition, vieillissement et santé, Gérontologie et société, 33 / n° 134(3), 123-132.

Gallenga G., Soldani J. (dir.). 2023. Les politiques publiques du corps sain, Émulations, 45.

Goffman E. 1975 (1963). Stigmate : les usages sociaux des handicaps. Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit.

Gupta A., Ferguson J. 1997. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Heimberg C. 2010. Les imaginaires alimentaires. Histoire, cultures, représentations, Le cartable de Clio, 10 (2010).

Hubert A. 2001. “Alimentation et Santé : la Science et l’imaginaire”, Anthropology of Food, s1, 2001. http://journals.openedition.org/aof/1108; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/aof.1108

Lambert-Perreault M-C. Sicotte G. (dir.). 2016. Dossier « Raconter l’aliment », Captures, vol. 1, no 2 (mai). En ligne : revuecaptures.org/node/482

Lave J., Wenger E. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lefebvre H. 1947. Critique de la vie quotidienne. Introduction. Paris: L’Arche.

Merleau-Ponty M. 1976 [1944]. Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard.

Pruvost G. 2021. Quotidien Politique, féminisme, écologie, subsistance, Paris : La Découverte.

Pruvost G. 2024. La subsistance au quotidien - conter ce qui compte, Paris : La Découverte.

Vierne S. 1989. L'imaginaire des nourritures. Grenoble : PUG.

Wong B. 2024. « The Asian Kid with the stinky Lunch » narrative is a pop culture trope, but it’s still worth telling, 17 septembre 2024, HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/asian-kid-stinky-lunch-narrative_l_66e323e8e4b02a333c0b5430

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