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Clearing Up the Table: Food Pedagogies and Environmental Education — Contributions, Challenges and Future Agendas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2015

Elaine Swan  and
Rick Flowers
Elaine Swan*
Affiliation:
University of Technology Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Rick Flowers
Affiliation:
University of Technology Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Elaine Swan, School of Communication, UTS, 365 Jones St, Broadway NSW 2000. Email: Elaine.Swan@uts.edu.au
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Abstract

In our paper, we draw on recent scholarship on food pedagogies and pedagogy studies to explore themes in the collection of articles in this special issue. In particular, we show how the articles variously conceptualise formal and informal pedagogies, their curricula, aims, and potential effects in relation to food and sustainability. Drawing on debates in pedagogy studies, we investigate how the papers reflect on what makes a pedagogy pedagogical. We then turn to food studies literature to identify how the articles in this special issue construct food as a theoretical and empirical object. Given food's multifaceted nature, which means that food works materially, biologically, economically, symbolically and socially, we explore which versions of food and its attributes are profiled across and within the articles. Inspired by critiques on race and class in relation to food and food social movements, in the final section of the paper we ask how the articles and future research on food and environmental education can take account of the racialised, gendered and classed dimensions of education for food sustainability. As part of our discussion, we evaluate the ethics of doing good, the moral economy educators reproduce in relation to class, race and gender, and the contribution feminism and critical race theory can make to future research agendas and writing in the field.

Keywords

food pedagogiespublic pedagogycultural pedagogieseveryday pedagogiesfood and genderfood and race
Type
Feature Articles
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 31 , Special Issue 1: Putting Food on the Table , July 2015 , pp. 146 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015 

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