Today’s discourse of the contemporary experience of eating―what we should eat and how our foods should be produced―is a highly political issue rather than merely a matter of personal taste and choice. So-called "Gastropolitics" refers to the various social activism for "food justice" and wide-ranging academic discussions, including gastronomy, sociology, cultural studies, environmental criticism, and other related disciplinary fields. In the 1960s, mirroring the increasing public attention to ecological concerns, hippies took on their attempt to realize a self-sufficient diet in their communities as an alternative to industrial agriculture with the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Growing social awareness of the various problem caused by the fast-food industry gave worldwide momentum to the slow food movement in the 1980s and the popularity of locavorism. Following these activists, the multitude of publications on the experience of contemporary eating since around the 2000s took shape as an interdisciplinary academic field now known as "food studies". Our ordinary daily act of eating and choosing food is political and should be understood as a part of a larger social environment. In this context, Raymond Carver’s representation of eating and food calls for sociopolitical examination and should be reinterpreted in the new light of food studies’ discourse. This paper will explore Carver’s images of food in "A Small, Good Thing" and reach a new understanding of the story.

Authors:
Takeshi Kurihara, The Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Takeshi Kurihara is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima in Japan

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