SOAN Professors Share Expertise in New Book ‘Recipes and Reciprocity’

A University of Guelph anthropologist has co-edited a new book, Recipes and Reciprocity: Building Relationships in Research, a collection of ideas about food, intercultural engagement and reciprocal, relationship-based research.  

Dr. Elizabeth Finnis, professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, edited the work with the University of Waterloo’s Hannah Tait Neufeld, a nutritionist, Canada Research Chair and professor in the School of Public Health Sciences.  

The book, a collection of works by various contributors, explores the ways in which food and research intersect globally – including in Canada, India, Malawi, Nepal, Paraguay, Japan and Thailand – using everyday food preparation, consumption and sharing to consider unique approaches to reciprocal research.  

Identity, community-based research ethics, food sovereignty and nutrition are examined throughout the chapters, challenging colonial, heteropatriarchal and methodological divisions between academia and other, less formal ways of knowing.  

The anthology’s chapters also offer recipes for traditional dishes such as dumplings, soup and small fry.  

The combination of storytelling and methodological practices shows how food can build relationships and act as a vehicle in which to share knowledge across geographical and cultural borders.  

Among the contributors to Recipes and Reciprocity are Lauren Classen, who earned a master’s degree in international development at U of G, and Dr. Karine Gagné and Dr. Satsuki Kawano, professors in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. 

Recipes and Reciprocity: Building Relationships in Research is published by the University of Manitoba.