Literatur vom gleichen Autor/der gleichen Autor*in
plus bei Google Scholar

Bibliografische Daten exportieren
 

Food as medicine: Making "better bananas" in Uganda

Titelangaben

Calkins, Sandra:
Food as medicine: Making "better bananas" in Uganda.
In: The Sociological Review. Bd. 69 (2021) Heft 3 . - S. 560-579.
ISSN 1467-954X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261211009059

Volltext

Link zum Volltext (externe URL): Volltext

Abstract

Cooking bananas (matooke) are a main staple in central Uganda and are very important to well-being and health. Recently, matooke have also been associated with micronutrient deficiencies among children and women. For a number of years, this fruit has been at the heart of a public health strategy that seeks to create ‘better bananas’, that is, biofortified or nutritionally enriched bananas. The efforts to biofortify food crops are part of a recent trend in the nutrition world towards improving the quality and not only the quantity of food. This article unpacks recent configurations of philanthropy, plant science and global public health and the ways in which they make conventional food crops thinkable, for instance, as cost-effective medicines. This emergent and economized form of valuing bananas is in tension with how Ugandans appreciate bananas in everyday life. I show that emerging valuations of food matter but still should not be mistaken for changes on the ground. This article thereby searches for a middle ground between critiques of global public health and everyday practice in Uganda as well as between praxeological and structuralist/culturalist approaches to food. Instead of dismissing this banana as part of a mere paternalistic project, I show that it also is ‘good’ conceptually in that it makes bananas and health thinkable in new ways.

Weitere Angaben

Publikationsform: Artikel in einer Zeitschrift
Begutachteter Beitrag: Ja
Institutionen der Universität: Fakultäten > Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät > Professur Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie mit Fokus Afrika
Titel an der UBT entstanden: Nein
Themengebiete aus DDC: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie
Eingestellt am: 26 Mär 2025 08:53
Letzte Änderung: 26 Mär 2025 10:05
URI: https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/92967