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Thematic collection on “Nutrition”

Deadline for submissions: 10 October 2019

One of the two 2020 issues of the History, Medicine and Health journal will be devoted to a thematic collection on nutrition from a social and cultural perspective relevant to the scientific focus of the journal.

For about twenty years, food has not only been considered in its economic and nutritional aspect, but it has also been regarded as “a cultural asset” (F. Braudel), thus becoming a real field of historical investigations allowing to understand a given society. More specifically, the prevalence of current debates on nutrition as related to health now highlights some stakes which raise new research challenges for historical analyses and which the journal will explore in this collection.

The nutrition-health relationship may be developed from different standpoints:

  • Public health: people’s responses to such problems as hygiene, the environment and food contamination are social indicators allowing to analyze the public authorities’ strategies and choices regarding their management of these issues.

  • Dietetics: this must be understood in the Hippocratic sense of the term, namely as eating habits that can ensure good health. Then comes the question of what can be considered dietetic, but also of what can jeopardize good health, namely food crises, malnutrition (under or over consumption) as well as eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia, for example).

  • The distribution of food products and processing techniques: this distribution can be economic, (within the frame of trade exchanges), but also cultural, (through the influences and / or transmission of the know-hows in food production, exploitation and uses). This question can lead on to the research challenges posed by the food industry and its effects.

  • Nutrition as an identity marker: eating habits are first of all social habits that can be inclusive and exclusive as well. Such social interactions may be studied through different categories, (social, cultural and ethnic ones), and different types of individuals, (men, women, children, old people).

  • Food symbolism: the incorporation principle, according to which he or she who eats ingests the properties of the products they swallow, is a clue allowing to understand rejections, taboos and the therapeutic uses of some foods.

The last two research tracks make it possible to open up reflections on nutrition as a means to claim a way of life. It will thus be possible to take some interest in ascetism and vegetarianism as well, in so far as the chosen diet partakes of a voluntary and thoughtful choice that is relevant to some ideology.

This nutrition collection aims to put forward both diachrony and synchrony. That is why it will welcome proposals spanning all historical times and all cultural and geographical spaces.

Submissions focusing on this topic but more devoted to the critical presentation of textual or iconographic sources may also be proposed for the “Sources and documents” section of the journal.

History, Medicine and Health publishes papers written in French, English or Spanish. The contribution proposals for the “Sources and documents” section can be submitted in any of these three languages, but the printed publication of these texts will be in their French translation exclusively: however, the digital version can be bilingual.

Submissions cannot exceed 45,000 characters, (spaces included), for papers, vs. 10,000 for the presentations of the sources texts.

They must be sent to Céline Barthonnat (celine.barthonnat [@] cnrs.fr).

For any scientific question concerning this call, you may contact Alexandra Kovacs (alexandra.kovacs [@] hotmail.fr), Hervé Guillemain (herve.guillemain [@] univ-lemans.fr) ou Nahema Hanafi (nahema.hanafi [@] univ-angers.fr).

Instructions to authors are available on the journal website at the following address: https://journals.openedition.org/hms/757.

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