エピソード

  • Po-Yi Hung, "Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality" (U Washington Press, 2026)

    Po-Yi Hung, "Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality" (U Washington Press, 2026)
    2026/08/19
    From misty mountain oolongs to the global boba boom, Taiwan’s teas carry far more than flavor. They embody contested borders, evolving identities, and the complexities of nationhood. Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Po-Yi Hung traces tea varieties, processing expertise, and merchants across Taiwan and Southeast Asia to reveal how a simple leaf has become a force in global politics.Drawing on decades of fieldwork and extensive archival research, Dr. Hung delves deep into the history of Taiwan’s tea industry, from its roots in the Qing empire to its role in modern food nationalism. Hung shows how advocacy for Taiwanization—the movement to recover and celebrate the island’s unique history and culture—occurs not only within Taiwan’s food scenes but also through cross-border exchanges. Oolong cultivation in Thailand’s highlands and bubble tea’s rise in Vietnam demonstrate how tea acts as a nonhuman agent, fostering connections and unsettling conventional notions of sovereignty. Through these routes, tea becomes more than agriculture; it becomes an instrument of diplomacy, a marker of authenticity, and a symbol of cultural pride.Offering a fresh perspective on Taiwan’s geopolitical positioning, Routes of Taiwan Tea redefines how borders are imagined and lived. It is an essential contribution to food studies, political geography, and East and Southeast Asian studies, illuminating how everyday practices like drinking tea shape global relations. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    52 分
  • Dan Du, "This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U. S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

    Dan Du, "This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U. S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
    2026/08/18
    Popular history tells the story of how the tea boycott during the American Revolution caused a transition in American taste from tea to coffee, making the young country a coffee-drinking nation. In truth, Americans did not give up their tea so easily, and the United States grew to be the second-largest importer of tea from China. Diverging from British black tea traditions, U.S. consumers preferred green tea, cultivated a particular taste for Oolong tea, and invented the English Breakfast Tea brand to market Chinese black tea. This World in a Teacup: Credit, Taste, and Power in the U.S.-China Tea Trade, 1784–1911 (University of Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Dan Du is the first book to detail the American tea trade with China after the American Revolution through the early twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources and perspectives from both sides of the Pacific, Dr. Du offers new insights to help understand fundamental developments in U.S.-China relations within a global context. This World in a Teacup shows that, rather than depending on hard-money transactions or a barter economy, a sophisticated credit system buttressed American tea purchases in China: Credit instruments such as promissory notes, bills of exchange, and checks financed the transactions between Chinese and U.S. tea merchants, crystallizing changing power dynamics in the global economy. This World in a Teacup explains how the circulation of these credit instruments challenged the conventional understanding of China’s economy as a primitive system and how the power structure of American, British, and Chinese tea trade in the credit economy reshaped American consumption patterns. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 1 分
  • Matias E. Margulis, "Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security" (Stanford UP, 2023)

    Matias E. Margulis, "Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security" (Stanford UP, 2023)
    2026/08/15
    Shadow Negotiators: How UN Organizations Shape the Rules of World Trade for Food Security (Stanford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Matias E. Margulis is the first book to demonstrate that United Nations (UN) organizations have intervened to influence the discourse, agenda, and outcomes of international trade lawmaking at the World Trade Organization (WTO). While UN organizations lack a seat at the bargaining table at the WTO, Dr. Margulis argues that these organizations have acted as "shadow negotiators" engaged in political actions intended to alter the trajectory and results of multilateral trade negotiations. He draws on analysis of one of the most contested issues in global trade politics, agricultural trade liberalization, to demonstrate interventions by four different UN organizations—the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (SRRTF). By identifying several novel intervention strategies used by UN actors to shape the rules of global trade, this book shows that UN organizations chose to intervene in trade lawmaking not out of competition with the WTO or ideological resistance to trade liberalization, but out of concerns that specific trade rules could have negative consequences for world food security—an outcome these organizations viewed as undermining their social purpose to reduce world hunger and protect the human right to food. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    55 分
  • Sophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger" (Duke UP, 2025)

    Sophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger" (Duke UP, 2025)
    2026/08/15
    In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably situated humans, animals, plants, institutions, infrastructures, spirits, and sorcerers. When approached through the lens of Indigenous Marind philosophies, practices, and protocols, hunger reveals itself to be a multiple, more-than-human, and morally imbued modality of being—one whose effects are no less culturally crafted or contested than food and eating. In centering Indigenous feminist theories of hunger, Chao offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between the environment, food, and nourishment in an age of self-consuming capitalist growth. She also considers how Indigenous theories invite anthropologists to reimagine the ethics and politics of ethnographic writing and the responsibilities, hesitations, and compromises that shape anthropological commitments in and beyond the field. Dr Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, and coeditor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice, both also published by Duke University Press. Land of Famished Beings won the 2026 ASAA Mid-Career Book Prize. Her latest book Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge UP, 2026), came out in June. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 2 分
  • The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods

    The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods
    2026/08/07
    What role do microbes play in aquaponic farming and cultivated meat production, and how might such novel food technologies impact microbiomes? In this episode, Ishita Dey of Gastronomica hosts Lukáš Senft, Tereza Stöckelová, and Varvara Borisova in a conversation about their new article, “The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods: The Pro- and Antibiotic Implications of Cultivated Meat and Aquaponic Farming.” In a discussion that connects food futures with environment, sustainability, health, and technology, the research team shares insights from their multisited ethnography of indoor vertical farms, bioreactors, and alternative food production in Czechia. They illuminate the emergence of new food technologies and the regulatory landscape, discuss the demand for protein and alternative protein sources, and reflect on the broader implications for microbial diversity and resilience-building in food systems. “The Microbiopolitics of Novel Foods: The Pro- and Antibiotic Implications of Cultivated Meat and Aquaponic Farming” by Lukáš Senft, Tereza Stöckelová, and Varvara Borisova, appears in issue 26.1 of Gastronomica. Their article is one of eleven in a newly published special section on microbes in food and food systems. Learn more about the two-part special section and access the articles in the Spring 2026 and Summer 2026 issues of the journal. Lukáš Senft has a PhD in sociology from Charles University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His work on food systems has explored topics related to small-scale farming, mushroom foraging, precision agriculture, and the use of medicinal plants through multispecies ethnography and public scholarship. Tereza Stöckelová is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and also an associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Charles University. An expert in social studies of science, her current research on food and health focuses on extended metabolism in relation to bodies, ecologies, and technologies. Varvara Borisova recently completed her PhD in anthropology at Charles University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences where she is pursuing research on science and technology, obesity, metabolism, and alternative proteins. Ishita Dey is an assistant professor of sociology at South Asian University and a member of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective. Her new book, a multisited ethnography of sweet-making titled Sweet Excess: Crafting Mishti in Bengal, was published by Routledge in 2025. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Robert Lee Maril, "Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity" (U Oklahoma Press, 2026)

    Robert Lee Maril, "Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity" (U Oklahoma Press, 2026)
    2026/07/30
    In Oklahoma, one out of every six residents is poor. One in five children lives in poverty and faces food insecurity. In Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity (U Oklahoma Press, 2026), native son and sociologist Robert Lee Maril follows in the tradition of the national bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Evicted to illuminate the lived experience of poverty and food insecurity in communities across the state. Maril's account is immediately personal. He begins with "guests," as shoppers are called by volunteers, waiting in line in the sweltering heat one summer for "Thy Will Be Done," a food pantry, to open. Unable to afford air conditioning, some guests don't buy foods that would spoil on the counter. One woman, Norma, carefully places only canned vegetables in her cart. When she returns to her twenty-year-old pickup, in the truck bed are lawn chairs, blankets, and pans-everything she owns. "The landlord told us this morning we was homeless," Norma says. "I'm not thinking straight." Drawing on interviews and participant-observation data from his volunteer work at a food pantry, as well as census and sociological data, Maril documents in rich ethnographic detail the status of poverty and low-wage workers in the state today and within historical context. He explores how institutions-such as faith-based organizations, government, and food pantries-structure and shape experiences of poverty. While Maril celebrates the nonprofit and faith-based efforts that make a difference, this book also is critical of conditions and stereotypes that have entrenched poverty in the state. Hungry Oklahoma ultimately suggests that persistent and pervasive poverty can be eliminated. Its moving accounts of real Oklahomans and their experiences make it a clarion call for not only those interested in policy issues but all Oklahomans who want a better today and tomorrow for those who call the state home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    35 分
  • Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)

    Samantha Iyer, "Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States" (Columbia UP, 2026)
    2026/07/25
    The United States’ superpower status is often associated with its industrial, financial, and military might. Yet its global power after the Second World War hinged in part on something often seen as backward: agriculture. In contrast to Britain, the predominant global power of the nineteenth century, which depended on its current and former colonies for food and raw materials, the United States produced vast agricultural surpluses. During the 1950s, an era of decolonization and rising Cold War competition, the United States became the dominant exporter of food staples to industrializing nations in the Third World through its massive food aid program. Through the lens of food and agriculture, Agrarian Superpower: Food, Development, and the Global Ascendancy of the United States (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Samantha Iyer offers new ways to understand the roots of the post–Second World War global order and the US position in it. Samantha Iyer traces how two former British territories and agricultural competitors of the United States, India and Egypt, became two of the largest importers of US food aid. She investigates the origins and consequences of the US-centric postwar food regime by examining changes in the production, distribution, and consumption of agricultural surpluses from the late nineteenth century to the early 1970s. Bringing together life in villages, towns, and cities with national, imperial, and international affairs, Dr. Iyer demonstrates that food aid was the expression of a changed political, economic, and ecological world that the United States did not create alone. Drawing on sources in Arabic, French, Urdu, and English, Agrarian Superpower is a groundbreaking comparative history of food, agriculture, and development. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    46 分
  • Andrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

    Andrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
    2026/07/24
    Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his grandmother’s overflowing backyard garden, author Andrew Flachs has embarked on a multi-continent, decades-long look at agriculture and its value. The dominant view of agriculture has focused only on what we produce. It sees value in terms of capital gains or yield efficiency, masking how our global food system produces tremendous amounts of food commodities while failing to feed people, support rural communities, or enhance ecological well-being. Feeding the World as if People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields (University of Arizona Press, 2026) asks us to look more deeply and more humanely at what we perceive to be most valuable in our agricultural systems. This book draws on fifteen years of anthropological research, taking readers to fields in South India, Eastern Europe, and North America, where people are already feeding the future amid global change. From these fields, Flachs shows us how a radical rethinking of the value of small farms and farmers is already happening. Bringing together conversations in agriculture, economics, anthropology, and the environmental humanities, Flachs deftly shows how small farms reproduce social and ecological relationships that are the only sustainable path forward. For anyone who is curious about the food on their plate and the people who helped to get it there, Feeding the World as if People Mattered will offer a new way to find value in the food we grow and the people who grow it. Dr. Andrew Flachs researches food and agriculture systems, exploring genetically modified crops, heirloom seeds, and our own microbiomes. Born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, he graduated from Oberlin College with dual Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees in 2010. He earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in April 2016 and was a 2016-2017 Volkswagen Exchange Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Heidelberg University Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies. He is currently an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University. His work among farmers in North America, the Balkans, and South India investigates ecological knowledge and technological change in agricultural systems spanning Cleveland urban gardens and Indian GM cotton fields. His research has been supported by public and private institutions including the Department of Education, the National Geographic Society, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Social Science Research Council, while his writing on agricultural development has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed publications as well as public venues including Sapiens, Salon, and the National Geographic magazine. His work has been recognized by eight international awards, including most recently as a finalist for the Society for Economic Anthropology Kate Browne Creativity in Research Award and the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Book Prize. Sandra Elizabeth is a graduate student enrolled at the Department of Sociology in Shiv Nadar University, Delhi- NCR. She looks at rice farmers’ and their way of life in Kuttanad, Kerala—which is dubbed as the state’s rice granary. She can be reached out on X.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
    続きを読む 一部表示
    50 分