The World on our Plates: Culture, Politics, and Food Systems
To explore the food that ends up on our plates and understand how the personal is entwined with the social and the political in terms of the larger structures involved in food production.
About This Course
This co-taught course takes as its starting point something everyone needs in order to survive - food - and examines how the personal is entwined with the social and the political. It must be clear this is not a course on “clean” eating or dieting - rather, it aims to examine how our individual choices are shaped by the larger food systems around us. Together, we will examine the food that ends up on our plate - where it comes from, what it is made up of, who is involved in putting it together - to attend to larger questions around the systems that produce food. This course is less interested in the breaking of bread than in the baking of bread. That is to say, whilst the symbolic and cultural elements of food are generally known, this course aims to focus squarely on the material dimensions of how food is made. We will consider how questions around labour, migration, race & gender, coloniality, capitalism and the climate crisis are wrapped up in the production of food. With our guidance, students will come to see how their choices around the food they consume are shaped by larger social and political contexts. They will see how these contexts affect their individual lives - their nutrition, health, bodies and selves. They will reflect on their individual contexts and produce personalised analyses on whether and how they might want to change the food choices they make - in a way that is conscious, intentional and realistic.
Who Is This Course For?
People interested in cultural theory and the intersections of feminism, race, capitalism, and food;
People who want to be more intentional and conscious about how they make food choices;
Activists and community organizers involved in food, hospitality, labour relations, anti-racism, anti-capitalism, and liberation work
What You'll Learn
- ✓Students will understand how food systems shape individual choices and the effects these have on our bodies, health, and selves
- ✓Understand how labour around food production is often gendered and racialized
- ✓Connect the three fundamental elements of food systems: the person (consumer), the ingredients, and the environment (land)
- ✓Students will become aware of the historical role of colonisation with regards to food
- ✓Develop a personalised analysis of students’ individual contexts and choices around food
- ✓Where applicable, students will also develop a plan to change what and how they eat in a way that works for them
What's Included
Live Sessions
Interactive classes with your instructor
Session Recordings
Lifetime access to all recordings
Community Access
Connect with fellow learners
Certificate
Proof of course completion
Real-World Project
This is a reflective project that begins with the baking of bread. In one of the weekly classes, we will hold a bread-making workshop where we will make a loaf of bread together. Students will be encouraged to reflect on this process of making bread from scratch and by hand - how they feel, what the bread looks like, where their ingredients came from, etc.. This is an exercise that is auto-ethnographic in spirit. It offers the chance for students to reflect on questions around nutrition (i.e., what goes into real bread as opposed to mass-produced, ultra-processed bread and its nutrition), labour (i.e., the physical work involved in making bread), capitalism (i.e., how this process is often made the responsibility of women in the household or outsourced into factories). In their projects, students will reflect on this process of baking bread. Food production is often obscured from view or glossed over in our lives - this project is a corrective that affords students the opportunity to consider what goes into making food in a conscious, intentional, and reflective way. Students will disseminate their reflections on bread-making in a format of their choice - indicatively, this could take the form of an essay, illustrated zine, a video, podcast, or any other inventive format they come up with. Some of the questions that reflections might touch on are (but not limited to): How does the tactile process of making bread connect us to our food, our bodies, as well as where the ingredients come from? What is the labour that goes behind making food? How has capitalism/industrialism stripped food from its purpose of nourishing the body? How does feminism affect the nature of domestic labour? How do migration and labour intersect with the food we consume? Bread is an illustrative example of the various topics we discuss on the course. It is simple and accessible, comprising 4 humble ingredients (flour, water, salt & yeast), but it allows us to open questions about provenance of ingredients, traceability, sustainability and food systems. In a practical way, this also means all students will leave the course having learnt how to make bread for themselves, and therefore have at least one way they can change what and how they consume, should they choose to do so.
About the Instructors
Dr Josefina Venegas Meza
Born in Chile, I came to the UK to study Literature (PhD, King's College London). Subsequently, I trained as a baker and have since worked in various kitchens in London, including Michelin-starred restaurants and am currently authoring my first cookbook. I believe in cooking with whole ingredients and that through the food we make we can create the kind of world we want to inhabit – diverse, considered and one that connects us more to our roots, land and communities. Food is a powerful tool: at its core it is about nourishment and the relationship with our bodies. It is also about the environment and where that food comes from. In this way, food is key in making the link between our physical wellbeing and that of our surroundings explicit. And it is also about the entire communities that are involved in the production of our food. To be conscious about what we eat puts our individual selves at the centre of a complex network of critical environmental, social and political choices.
Dr Pavan Mano
Co-instructorPavan Mano is a cultural theorist working in contemporary literature and cultural studies. His teaching and research engages with critical and literary theory, and he is interested in culture broadly speaking as a collection of systems that govern how we live. Pavan's first monograph, Straight Nation (Manchester UP, 2025) examines postcolonial nationalism in Singapore and how states can cultivate cultural ideas of "good" and "bad" members of society. He is currently working on a new project around the politics of food and cuisine.
Coming Soon
Pricing available when registration opens
Course Details
All courses include live sessions, community access, and direct interaction with the instructor.