Food Literacy, Curriculum, and The Global South

Dishari Chattaraj

• 05 juli 2025
• 9783031961526

Samenvatting:

This volume explores concepts and theories of food literacy to understand the interdisciplinary paradigms, perspectives, and emerging discourses in and beyond formal educational contexts in the Global South, specifically South Asia.

“This masterful volume is a welcome – and necessary – addition to the growing study of food literacy. It is the first book to focus on food literacy in the Global South, encompassing Latin America, Africa and Asia, with an emphasis on research in South Asia. As such, it fills a yawning gap in the literature that is dominated by studies of food literacy in the Global North.”

—Jennifer Sumner, Associate Professor (Teaching Stream) in the Adult Education and Community Development Program, OISE/University of Toronto, Canada

"This book explores how school curricula of diverse countries in the Global North and South construct food literacy—the ability to source and cook food and to understand and critique the food system. It performs an original and interesting analysis of curriculum documents from several South Asian countries and evaluates their impact on food literacy, particularly regarding sustainability, food security, and food justice. It makes an important contribution to understanding the complex interplay between food and education."

—Carole Counihan, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, Millersville University, USA and Editor-in-Chief, Food and Foodways Journal

This volume explores concepts and theories of food literacy to understand the interdisciplinary paradigms, perspectives, and emerging discourses in and beyond formal educational contexts in the Global South, specifically South Asia. In doing so, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of existing literature on food literacy and the methodologies utilized to study the same across the Global North and South. Furthermore, this volume reports the findings of a primary research study conducted in the domain of curriculum analysis across school education boards of six South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It also documents the teaching-learning experiences and perceptions of various stakeholders from select schools and regions in India. Besides highlighting the dynamic, contextual, and place-based nature of food literacies, the volume questions the autonomous nature of literacy studies, thereby promoting a less deterministic and more sustainable, inclusive, and discursive paradigm of food literacy/literacies.

Dishari Chattaraj is Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India, where she leads the Education and Critical Food Studies lab. She completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and has been hosted as a Fulbright Fellow at Indiana University Bloomington, USA.