For its 2012 annual conference, the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto presents “Foodways, Diasporic Diners, Transnational Tables, and Culinary Connections,” Thursday October 4 – Sunday, October 7, 2012.
Panel Description: “Wine Culture in the Transnational World”
I am interested in showcasing work that introduces critical concepts to the study of wine culture and society. How is our understanding of the wine trade, wine aesthetics, wine science, or wine geography developed by the interventions of cultural studies, feminism, critical race theory or other variations of critical theory? And what can the social and cultural study of wine, its changing forms, networks and practices, reveal about processes and structures of contemporary social life? My own contribution to the panel examines the social importance of wine in consumer society by historicizing its promise and appeal in relation to the crises which accompany globalization.
A few potential topics:
Navigating wine’s local and global networks
Changing technologies and traditions
Labor processes & structure of expertise in global wine
Consumer behavior, status and class
The performance of taste and power across cultures
Hybridity and heritage in new wine communities
Wine, agribusiness and development
The ecologies of the wine industry and wine tourism
Global semiotics of wine markets
The cultural and political economies of good taste
See the conference call for papers for more ideas.
Please send titles, abstracts (200 words), and contact information to David Michalski by March 1, 2012: michalski_at_ucdavis_dot_edu.