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We congratulate Valentina Peveri, adjunct professor of the M.A. in Food Studies program, on the publication of the volume Rhetoric and Social Relations: Dialectics of Bonding and Contestation (Berghahn Books, 2021), which features her chapter entitled 'Flavouring the Nation: The Rhetoric of Nutrition Policies in Ethiopia'. 

The abstract of Professor Peveri's chapter reads: 

The article sketches out an analysis of how in Ethiopia the dictates of the Green Revolution – which privilege productivity over justice, and calculation over taste and experience – translate into, and inform, national nutritional guidelines. This reading of the rhetoric of nutrition policies provides a critique of the discourse of nutritionism and the technical fixes it promotes; and complements this expert scientific view with the voices of useful plants and charismatic small farmers. The focus shifts from nutritional deficits to self-sufficiency in food production; and from nutrition security to food systems that are sympathetic to history, locality, and cultural identity. An integration of diversified (cultural and agricultural) resources into the national basket is advocated as a strategy for broadening the diet as well as a sense of meaningful citizenship in otherwise disenfranchised peripheral communities

The chapter was reviewed very positively:

Valentina Peveris' chapter is an excellent example of the diverse ways in which rhetoric – in this case, ‘the rhetoric of nutritional policies’ – creates tension in social relations when it challenges ‘traditional’-local practices and national identities. After reading this chapter, the popular expression ‘We are what we eat!’ immediately comes to mind, along with its chiastic equivalent, ‘We eat what we are!’ Withing the context of Ethiopian nutrition policies and nation-building, of which schoolchildren and their parents are in part the subject, Hadiyya farmers, who already face, accept and combat conditions of environmental uncertainty by cultivating and storing ensete (a drought-resistant plant), must now live with the added uncertainty as to the meaning of new rhetoric related to national nutrition policies, school programmes and the long-term effects of such policies on their children and communities. Given the rhetorical value – and current devaluing – of ensete, food has become the rhetorical language through which a sense of belonging, ethnic identity and ethnic nationalism are expressed. As Valentina writes: ‘we find a nationally constructed idea of what being a modern citizen should entail – that is, learning a structure of taste which revolves around ¾±²ÔÂá±ð°ù²¹Ìýas the common ground for the palate as well as for achieving a full sense of Ethiopianness’. More broadly, the testimonies that she includes ask: ‘how could young people feel that they are part of the nation if the approved type of meal configuration does not capture the story of the ±ð²Ô²õ±ð³Ù±ðÌý– its dignity, salience, resilience, and comforting taste – into the national [food] basket?’ Using detailed ethnographic examples, Valentina positions current education on food and nutrition, especially in the school curriculum, as rhetorical practices of nation/identity building. This case of ensete growers in Ethiopia ‘offers an alternative narrative framework where ecosystems are densely interconnected with social relationships.

Congratulations to Professor Peveri on the publication!