CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue: E-Politics of Food from Online Campaigning to Food Porn

ALL QUERIES TO:
Guest editor: Anita Howarth anita.howarth@brunel.ac.uk
Journal editor: Yasmin Ibrahim y.ibrahim@qmul.ac.uk
SUBMISSION DUE DATE: 28 February 2015
PUBLICATION: International Journal of E-Politics
OBJECTIVE OF THE THEMED ISSUE:
This special issue invites submissions on the E-Politics of Food from online
campaigning to the aesthetics of food porn. Food retains a centrality in our daily lives;
its production, consumption, manufacture and processing is enmeshed with complex
issues of sustainability, biodiversity, fair trade, carbon footprint, taboos, ecological and
ethical concerns. Food remains controversial both in our imagination of our identities
and in constructing others. In an age of austerity or prosperity, food can reflect our
changing values and be symbolic of our orientation towards our immediate and distant
worlds. As we create new online rituals of imaging food and archiving daily memories,
food assumes a renewed focus in our digital culture. Beyond the aesthetic, we want
to know why food can become the focal point of conflict and in the process become
politicized. The politicization of food issues has wide social, economic and cultural
significance in that it can draw attention to policy failures, perceived threats to a society
or existing practices that serve to define a cultural identity. What has changed is the
proliferation of online platforms that allow more organisations and individuals to
engage with the politics of food; enabling a wider dissemination of these views; and
the potential for an expansion of conflict nationally and transnationally. We welcome
theoretical or empirical papers about online food fights. The International Journal of EPolitics is interdisciplinary so we welcome any disciplinary, theoretical or
methodological approach. We also welcome papers that explore the issues at any
level i.e. individual or social, national or transnational.

SUGGESTED TOPICS:
We are interested in topics that include (but are not limited to) the following:

Online scares, controversies or scandals about food e.g. over breaches in

cultural taboos, fraud, contamination, etc.
E-health campaigns e.g. plastic wrappings, or salt/sugar content of food and
drinks
Counter-campaigns e.g. use of viral campaigns by fast food or drinks industry
to fight back against negative publicity
Using food to raise awareness of social inequalities, injustices or conflict e.g.
Conflict Kitchen in Philadelphia, biodiversity and food consumption
Online debates about the loss or sale of large tranches of farmland/food
production in Africa, Asia and South America
Conflict over food inequality or food insecurity in a digital age
Avoiding or minimising conflict through predictive analytics and big data e.g. in
health inspection protocols, tracking food health scares, predicting famine, etc
Food in an age of austerity e.g. blogging about cheap food and conflict over
food banks
Imaging food in our daily lives

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:
Researchers from any field of enquiry that deals with the online politics of food
broadly defined are invited to submit papers for this themed issue. All submissions
are due by February 28, 2014.
Full papers to be submitted electronically,
http://www.igi-global.com/submission/manuscripts/
Editors-in-Chief:
Celia Romm Livermore, School of Business Administration, Wayne State University,
Detroit, USA
Yasmin Ibrahim, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of
London.

Published: Quarterly (both in Print and Electronic form)

PUBLISHER:
The International Journal of E-Politics is published by IGI Global (formerly Idea
Group Inc.), publisher of the Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group
Reference) and Medical Information Science Reference imprints. For additional
information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com.