Session Information
07 SES 09 A, Intercultural Education and Social Justice
Paper Session
Contribution
My proposal will present and critically reflect on the “culture of food production, distribution and consumption” in todays’ political and educational debate, through the life stories of some Padua (Italy) nursery and childhood school cooks, that I collected during Spring 2015, after having carried out observations of, and informal conversations with them after work, for the last three years. This paper widens the exploration of childhood education, food education and production that I presented in past ECERs and international conferences, and aims to highlight the interculturally relevant realization that “out of the environmental crisis in which we find ourselves, we still do not assign the highest role to that activity necessary to the survival of every human being: the act of eating” (Petrini 2015).
My research builds on the belief that the concern for social justice - characterizing from the beginning the Network 7’s approach to intercultural education - is strengthened, as well as problematized, by research about a country’s internal cultural diversity, and its multifaceted identity, in front of the changes taking place in European societies as consequence of dramatic events and unjust social conditions (war, political, religious, ethnic oppression and repression, economic inequity, lack of decent life opportunities) that push people to leave their native countries, and too often to lose their life while trying to secure a life. To pursue social justice within a renewed intercultural perspective is thus urgent, also because of the spread of political and social movements opposing the immigrants’ and refugees’ reception and inclusion by claiming to protect and preserve the supposedly neat boundaries of a national identity and the citizens’ prospects of socio-economic mobility through education, however now seriously undermined by the prolonged economic world crisis and by “the self-destructive process” of the planet, rooted in the industrial revolution, “that has accelerated to unprecendented levels in the last century” (idem). It is thus relevant for intercultural discourse that recent considerations on current limited social mobility and disenchantment towards education point out how “any change that restores a viable linkage between education and economy now must also be tied to equity” (Noblit, Pink 2015), while rethinking and reconfiguring the intersection of education, equity and economy are deemed as most urgent tasks.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Gobbo F. (2012a), Nourishing Learning, Nourishing Culture, (paper presented at ECER Cadiz, Sept. 2012). Gobbo F. (2012b), The “RIGHT” food at the “RIGHT” time in the “RIGHT” way: the art of cooking for nursery and childhood school children (paper presented at AAA Annual Meeting, San Francisco CA, Nov. 2012) Gobbo F. (2013a), Food for thought (paper presented at the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group Meeting, San Diego CA, April 2013) Gobbo F. (2013b), Food and the Transmission of Cultural Ways and Meanings in a Padua (Italy) Municipal Scuola dell’Infanzia (Childhood School) (paper presented at ECER Porto, Sept. 2013). Gobbo F. (2013c), Food For The Babies: The Ritual of School Lunch In A Padua (Italy) Municipal Nursery, (paper presented at ECER Porto, Sept. 2013). Gobbo F. (2015), “Nourishing Learning, Nurturing Culture, Cultivating Justice”, in G. W. Noblit, W. T. Pink eds., Education, Equity, Economy: Crafting a New Intersection, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 25-50. G. W. Noblit, W. T. Pink eds., Education, Equity, Economy: Crafting a New Intersection, Dordrecht, Springer. Petrini Ca. (2014), Cibo e libertà. Slow Food: storie di gastronomia per la liberazione, Firenze/Bra (CN), Giunti & Slow Food Editore. Petrini C. (2015), “Will 2016 usher a new environmental paradigm?”, originally published in Il manifesto, Dicembre 31, 2015.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.