HW 5 - Dominant Discourses Regarding Contemporary Foodways in the U.S.

You've learned what a "dominant discourse" might be and you've thought about contemporary dominant discourses regarding foodways in the U.S. (BTW - I find online definitions of this key concept at the following places - a, b, c, d - I would argue with all of them, but I like the definition on page 4 of c best, and I like the site d the best. For your blog post please reword the explanation I gave in class in your own way perhaps enriched by looking at the above definitions). I argued that we can simplify much of the current dominant food-related discourses as focusing on either "food as medicine" or "food as poison."

Investigate this terrain more carefully.

1. Read some of the following links from the NY Times

Told To Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries

Doctor's Orders: Eat Well, To Be Well

Fresh Vegetables Where Fast Food Reigns

Salmonella At Egg Farm Traced to 2008

Fixing A World That Fosters Fat

Senate Bill on Food Safety Stalls

2. Search food related topics in other dominant mass-media - you can either navigate to their site and type "food" or "eating" in the search box - or you can type in the name of the source and "food" or "eating" or something else in Google's search box.

newspapers Wall Street Journal USA Today

magazines People, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Time, Sports Illustrated

TV stations like CNN, ABC, etc.

3. Does it seem to you that the people writing (and quoted) think we are living in a time in which significant reform of U.S. foodways might occur or has occurred?

4. What do you imagine might be the food practices of a reasonably well-informed member of our society whose worldview gets sculpted by mass-media-propagated dominant discourse? What does she eat, where, when, with whom, why? How does she think food?

In 3-6 paragraphs please describe contemporary dominant discourses in the U.S. regarding foodways. What topics seem most frequently discussed? Who gets included and quoted in the conversation? What problems require what solutions? What preoccupations or frameworks seem to contextualize debate? Please use quotes and paraphrases (accurately cited or at least hyperlinked) from your web-research to evidence your description.

Since we're in the "Citizen" phase of our Food unit, I'm not asking you to evaluate the dominant discourse - just to map major themes, positions, ways of conceptualizing, problems/solutions, participants, and stakes in the current mainstream discussion. But don't feel anxious - we'll get to critiquing before we finish the unit.

Due 8:30am Wednesday, September 29.