Published on Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Abstract
Anthropology of Food prépare un numéro spécial sur les imaginaires nutritionnels pour une parution en février 2027. Nous attendons des contributions qui s’inscrivent dans la perspective des imaginaires nutritionnels.
Announcement
Guest Editors
Charlotte Altman-Morant (AMU-IDEAS) & Ghislaine Gallenga (AMU-IDEAS)
Argument
The question surroundings imaginaries of food has already been explored in history (Heimberg, 2010; Vierne, 1989), in literature (Lambert-Perreault & Sicotte, 2016), and in communication studies (Boutaud & Dufour, 2015), but much more rarely in anthropology. To address this research gap, we follow in the footsteps of anthropologist Annie Hubert who, in Alimentation et Santé: la Science et l’imaginaire (2001), wrote that food “satisfies physiological needs, of course, but its symbolic, imaginary dimension is a fundamental aspect of the relationship between humans and their food. The act of eating generates and structures beliefs and representations. It becomes a code through which communication and information circulate. An important aspect of this code, throughout humanity, concerns the idea of health.” Our aim, through the introduction of the concept of “nutritional imaginaries,” which encompasses the notions of body, sport, food, and health, is to provide a conceptual framework that brings together the representations, practices, and the material, symbolic, and immaterial dimensions associated with eating and food. The concept of “imaginary” is polysemic and used across numerous disciplines, its definition shifting depending on historical contexts and fields of knowledge. We adopt here the understanding that an individual or group produces narratives, myths, and images that give meaning to reality, through which they categorize the world beyond established scientific facts—facts that are themselves traversed and influenced by the imaginary (Martin, 1991). Furthermore, we use the term “nutrition” (and its derivatives, such as “nutritional”) to designate the articulation between body, sport practice, food, and health, understood through the framework of scientific knowledge and recommendations, while acknowledging that these are historically situated and periodically reshaped in relation to public policies, for instance (Gallenga & Soldani, 2023).
To this end, in this issue of Anthropology of Food, we propose to refine the notion of foodscape as developed by Arjun Appadurai (1990) for the scapes and later by Liselotte Hedegaard (2013) for foodscapes, which has largely emphasized spatial and locational dimensions (for example, street food). Our purpose is to foreground instead its dimension as an imagined symbolic landscape. Within the framework of the “nutritional imaginary,” we retain the conception of the imaginary proposed by Appadurai and extended by Pauline Adema (2007), but we deploy it at an experiential rather than globalized scale. This epistemological approach does not aim to ignore territorial anchors or the places in which people are immersed (Gupta & Ferguson, 1997), but rather to focus on the embodied, anthropological dimension of nutrition. This allows us to propose a definition that integrates the imaginary, practices, the body, and everyday life. In addition, nutritional imaginaries carry both medical and sensory dimensions, which we aim to deepen beyond the initial foodscape framework. Extending on this notion, we consider nutrition not merely as a system of prescriptions or prohibitions but as a universe of situated, embodied, and sensory experiences. Nutrition is indeed a legitimate register of behavioral regulation, mobilized by dietetics, medicine, and biomedical categories. Yet this register interacts with lay forms of knowledge—such as the “doctrine of signatures,” according to which foods resembling an organ may benefit or heal it—or with embodied knowledge, in which eating is situated within relational and sensory contexts: eating alone or collectively, with hands or utensils, in ritualized or informal settings.
Our focus, therefore, is to understand these imaginaries beyond the religious framework—a domain already extensively documented, particularly regarding food taboos (Bergeaud-Blackler & Brisebarre, 2006)—by turning toward the profane and the everyday, such as the food “bricolages” analyzed by De Certeau (1980). We choose to question beliefs not at the macro-collective level but as situated, personal, and embedded within familial histories and diverse cultural and geographical environments. It is not, for example, a matter of explaining “why one does not eat cows” in India in the name of religion, but rather of understanding how and why the draught animal is not eaten because it is primarily perceived as a working tool.
Building on this, we propose to examine how food is not only consumed but also “incorporated.” Food makes the body—it contributes to the material, symbolic, and sensory constitution of individuals (Merleau-Ponty, 1944). This dimension also involves a moral economy of food (Fassin, 2009): food choices are not neutral but charged with evaluations, obligations, and values. In this context, nutritional imaginaries engage moral judgments (“clean eating,” “bad/poor eating”) and produce hierarchies, which may be upheld or reinforced by public policies as well as by individuals themselves. This relationship to food may also be shaped by processes of stigmatization (Goffman, 1963): certain foods become associated with shame (Wong, 2024), bad taste, or vulgarity, while others carry positive values of purity (Douglas, 1966) or cultural “legitimacy” (“clean,” “dirty,” “vulgar,” or “powerful” foods). In such categorizations, we find, for example, positive or negative food homonyms—when a food name evokes a socially connoted meaning (e.g., “nuts”,“cookies”, “cherries”), thus producing effects of valorization or rejection. Naming animals provides another illustration: when farm animals are given names, they shift from being considered a food resource to being regarded as companion animals, rendering their consumption improper. A further aspect lies in the symbolic association of certain foods with a specific gender (Diasio & Fidolini, 2019) or age group (Ferry, 2010).
These imaginaries unfold within a contemporary neoliberal context marked by a widening rupture between production and consumption (Lefebvre, 1947; Pruvost, 2021, 2024). Consumers are increasingly distanced from the places and modes of production of what they eat. This separation opens a space for the circulation and transformation of food representations. A few examples illustrate this shift: insects, alternately defined as a sustainable food of the future or as a source of repulsion; lobster, once a “poor man’s food,” now a luxury product; or the reconfiguration of “edible/inedible” categories depending on cultural contexts. Dietary regimes (Okinawan, Mediterranean, vegan, high-protein, “detox,” color-based diets, intermittent fasting, etc.) demonstrate how these imaginaries structure both lifestyles and dietary practices, articulating eco-ethics, health, communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), as well as embodied practices.
In sum, for this issue, we welcome contributions that engage with the perspective of nutritional imaginaries, in line with the thematic directions outlined above.
Submission guidelines
Abstracts of max. 12 lines, with max. 5 keywords, in English, should be sent to ghislaine.gallenga@univ-amu.fr and altmorant@gmail.com by February 1st 2026.
We will communicate our decision regarding the proposals on February 16, 2026.
Papers in English, max. 8000 words including notes and bibliography, following AoF editorial norms will be expected before July 1st 2026.
The journal issue is scheduled for publication the following year, in February 2027.
Abstracts (max. 12 lines and max. 5 keywords) in English and in French, should be sent to ghislaine.gallenga@univ-amu.fr and altmorant@gmail.com by February 1st 2026.
We will communicate our decision regarding the proposals on February 16, 2026.
Papers in English, max. 8000 words including notes and bibliography, following AoFood editorial norms (https://journals-openedition-org./aof/6899) will be expected before July 1st 2026.
The journal issue is scheduled for publication the following year, in February 2027.
Review policy
Review process: double blind peer review
Average time between submission and publication: 12 weeks
References
Adema P., 2007, Foodscape : An Emulsion of Food and Landscape, Rumblings from the World of Food, Gastronomica, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 2007), p 3.
Bergeaud-Blackler F., Brisebarre, A.-M., (dir.), 2006, Alimentation et religion, Anthropology of Food, 5, 2006.
De Certeau, M., 1980, L’invention du quotidien, 1 : Arts de faire, Paris, Gallimard.
Diasio N., Fidolini V., 2019, Garder le cap. Corps, masculinité et pratiques alimentaires à « l’âge critique », Ethnologie française, .49(4), 751-767.
Douglas, M. ,1966, De la souillure : Essai sur les notions de pollution et de tabou, Paris, La Découverte (éd. française, 1992).
Fassin D., 2009, Les économies morales revisitées, Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 2009; 64 (6) : 1235-1266.
Ferry M., 2010, Nutrition, vieillissement et santé, Gérontologie et société, 33 / n° 134(3), 123-132.
Gallenga G., Soldani J., (dir.), 2023, Les politiques publiques du corps sain, Émulations, 45.
Goffman, E., 1975, Stigmate : les usages sociaux des handicaps, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit. (Œuvre originale publiée 1963).
Gupta A., Ferguson J.,1997, Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham & London, Duke University Press.
Heimberg, C., 2010, Les imaginaires alimentaires. Histoire, cultures, représentations, Le cartable de Clio, 10 (2010).
Hubert A., 2001, “Alimentation et Santé : la Science et l’imaginaire”, Anthropology of Food, s1, 2001.
Lambert-Perreault M.-C., Sicotte G., (dir.). 2016, Dossier « Raconter l’aliment », Captures, vol. 1, no 2 (mai). En ligne : revuecaptures.org/node/482
Lave, J., Wenger, E., 1991, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Lefebvre H., 1947, Critique de la vie quotidienne. Introduction, Paris, L’Arche.
Martin, E., 1991, The egg and the sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16 (3), 485-501.
Merleau-Ponty, 1976 [1944], Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard.
Pruvost G., 2021, Quotidien Politique, féminisme, écologie, subsistance, Paris, La Découverte.
Pruvost G., 2024, La subsistance au quotidien - conter ce qui compte, Paris, La Découverte.
Vierne S., 1989, L'imaginaire des nourritures, Grenoble, PUG.
Wong B., 2024, « The Asian Kid with the stinky Lunch » narrative is a pop culture trope, but it’s still worth telling, 17 septembre 2024, HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/asian-kid-stinky-lunch-narrative_l_66e323e8e4b02a333c0b5430
Subjects
Date(s)
- Sunday, February 01, 2026
Attached files
Keywords
- foodscape, anthropologie, imaginaire, alimentation
Contact(s)
- Ghislaine Gallenga
courriel : ghislaine [dot] gallenga [at] univ-amu [dot] fr - Charlotte Altman-Morant
courriel : altmorant [at] gmail [dot] com
Reference Urls
Information source
- Ghislaine Gallenga
courriel : ghislaine [dot] gallenga [at] univ-amu [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Nutritional Imaginaries », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, November 26, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/15840
