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“Reverse-Engineering <i>Terroir</i>:<br>
Crafting Nature-Culture<br>
In American Artisanal Cheese Production”<br>
</b></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#000080">
Heather Paxson</font>, MIT Anthropology<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#000080">Sponsored by
the MIT Anthropology Program<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>Monday, December 11 @
12:30<br>
MIT</font> Building 16, Room 220<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5> <br>
<img src="cid:6.2.3.4.2.20061120121306.02b66f70@hesiod.1" width=376 height=249 alt="[]">
</font><br>
<font face="Bookman Old Style, Bookman" size=1 color="#000080">Photo
courtesy of Jasper Hill Farm
(<a href="www.jasperhillfarm.htm">www.jasperhillfarm.com</a>)<br>
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<font face="Times New Roman, Times"> <br>
In Europe, artisanal cheesemaking calls on a romanticized vision of
peasant tradition, in which craft practice is said to produce flavors
distinctive to the landscape and climate of particular regions. The
French notion of <i>terroir</i>, initially developed for wine, names a
nature-culture nexus that gathers up essentialist associations between
land, animal, technique, taste, and cheese identity. What happens to the
notion of <i>terroir</i> when it is transported to the United States,
which lacks a peasant history and where independent farmers are
idealized? This paper reports from fieldwork among American artisan
cheesemakers who are debating this question. While some speak of
reverse-engineering durable, distinctive relations between land, climate,
animal breed, technique, and flavor, others work in a more avowedly
constructivist, and indeed, American, register, invoking <i>terroir</i>
to speak to the non-industrial politics of farmstead production and the
entrepreneurial innovation of individual producers, rather than
conformity to tradition. At the intersection of these concerns, are
new notions of food localism in the making? <br>
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<br>
<i>Lunch will be provided. <br>
Please RSVP to: <a href="mailto:asteward@mit.edu">asteward@mit.edu</a> by
Tuesday November 28<sup>th</sup>.<br>
</i></font></div>
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</font><font face="Bookman Old Style, Bookman" color="#000080"> <br>
<br>
Amberly Steward<br>
Administrative Assistant<br>
Anthropology Program<br>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
77 Massachusetts Avenue<br>
Bldg. 16-267<br>
Cambridge, MA 02139<br>
p) 617.253.3065<br>
f) 617.253.5363 </font></blockquote></body>
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