[Sci-tech-public] December 11th Anthro Talk

[Debbie Meinbresse]

>"Reverse-Engineering Terroir:
>Crafting Nature-Culture
>  In American Artisanal Cheese Production"
>Heather Paxson, MIT Anthropology
>Sponsored by the MIT Anthropology Program
>
>Monday, December 11 @ 12:30
>MIT Building 16, Room 220
>
>[]
>
>Photo courtesy of Jasper Hill Farm 
>(<www.jasperhillfarm.htm>www.jasperhillfarm.com)
>
>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 terroir, 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 terroir 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 terroir 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?
>
>Lunch will be provided.
>Please RSVP to: <mailto:asteward at mit.edu>asteward at mit.edu by Tuesday 
>November 28th.
>
>
>
>Amberly Steward
>Administrative Assistant
>Anthropology Program
>Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>77 Massachusetts Avenue
>Bldg. 16-267
>Cambridge, MA 02139
>p) 617.253.3065
>f) 617.253.5363
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