Recipes and Reciprocity: Building Relationships in Research

Recipes as Reciprocity explores how food and research intersect, demonstrating how everyday acts around food preparation, consumption, and sharing can enable reciprocal research and fuel relationships across cultures, generations, spaces, and places. Contributors use food knowledge and processes to examine topics like identity, community-based research ethics, food sovereignty, and nutrition, incorporating storytelling, recipes, and methodological practices to offer insight into how food facilitates relationship-building and knowledge-sharing.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 277 pages
Publication date: 19 August 2022
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press

Recipes as Reciprocity delves into the captivating intersections of food and research, unraveling the ways in which they converge for researchers, participants, and communities alike. By exploring the everyday rituals surrounding food preparation, consumption, and sharing, this insightful volume showcases how these seemingly mundane acts can unlock unexpected avenues for reciprocal research and foster meaningful relationships across cultures, generations, spaces, and places.

Drawing from diverse research contexts in Canada, Cuba, India, Malawi, Nepal, Paraguay, and Japan, the contributors employ the sharing of food knowledge and processes, such as drying, steaming, mixing, grinding, and churning, to examine a range of topics, including identity, community-based research ethics, food sovereignty, and nutrition. Each chapter embeds practical and experiential elements of fieldwork, incorporating storytelling, recipes, and methodological practices to provide deep insights into how food fosters relationship-building and knowledge-sharing across geographical and cultural boundaries.

The contributors to this volume hail from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, including anthropology, public health, social work, history, and rural studies. Their collective expertise brings a rich tapestry of perspectives to the exploration of global and Indigenous foodways, perceptions around ethical eating and authenticity, language and food preparation, perspectives on healthy eating, and the complexities of developing research relationships through food.

Recipes as Reciprocity challenges the traditional boundaries between academic and less formal ways of knowing, illuminating the ways in which food can bridge these divides and propel meaningful research and reciprocal relationships. By foregrounding the role of food in fostering connections and understanding, this book offers a valuable contribution to the field of research, highlighting the potential of culinary practices to enrich our understanding of the world and promote positive change.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780887552915