Call For Papers

Indigeneity and Sustainable Foodways: Planetary Challenges

from the Global South

Editors:

Shreyasi Dasgupta, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur

University

Sayan Mazumder, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur

University

Debashree Dattaray, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University

The Global South has witnessed forced transformations in Indigenous food systems due to

constant colonial and neo-colonial capitalist encroachments upon the lands and resources of

Indigenous People. On one hand, this has dissociated many communities from their traditional

modes of being by distorting the reciprocity and interconnectedness between people and their

environment. On the other hand, such tensions have created the possibilities for sustainable

innovations and the demonstration of Indigenous resilience through the renewal of traditional

practices. Thus, a study of Indigenous food systems of the Global South from the perspectives of

sustainability and resilience not only allows a rethinking of how to address planetary challenges

but also promotes an understanding of the ethical standpoint of our academic engagements. It

offers resistance to the blatant discursive hijacking of Indigenous ecological beings by creating

an imperative to comprehend the ethical reasoning behind sustainable living. Lastly, it offers

pragmatic frameworks for sustainability praxis by citing precedents in conservation, policy, and

education affecting Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are not limited to generating food alone. Since Indigenous food

systems rely on the resources within their territories, Indigenous Peoples across the world have

played a crucial role in protecting and conserving natural resources and biodiversity for thousands

of years. Sustainable practices have always been integral to Indigenous modes of Knowing and

Being. For instance, the traditional practice of tending a loxiwe, also known as “turning the

garden”, dates back to almost 3,800 years and has nourished the Indigenous coastal food

systems in British Columbia, Canada. Similarly, the techniques of mixing dew saw (red soil) and

dew iong (black soil) with particles of rock, and identifying healthy soil by examining the

abundance of earthworms and moisture have been traditionally used by the Khasis of Meghalaya

to retain the fertility of the Himalayan soil. Since soil conditions are not uniform throughout the

landscape, the community adjusts by growing crops based on slope orientations and the land’s

exposure to sunlight. A critical understanding of such Indigenous innovations complicates our

commonplace misunderstanding of situating food at the juncture of the nature/culture divide.

In the last two decades, the study of foodways from the vantage point of the Anthropocene has

understood the mundane act of eating as ecologically situated. Human taste no longer occupies

the privileged position of being cultural, and hence being different from the rest of nature. Recent

studies have understood human consumption as a part of trophic ecosystems. Numerous

attempts to decolonise the Anthropocene have revealed the relevance of Indigenous knowledge

frameworks in addressing the issues of human-environment interactions. Striving for sustainability

has been a core area of human-environment interactions, deeply embedded in the Indigenous

ontologies. In the given context, we could seek the example of Yacouba Sawadogo, a Burkinabéfarmer and agronomist who successfully used the traditional Sahelian West African farming

technique of Zaï, or tassa, to combat desertification and drought. Sawadogo’s success reminds

us that the sustainability episteme is not an invention of neoliberal academia or the market-driven

forces. Long before its discursive hijacking, the collaborative efforts of various agents of

Indigenous Knowledge Systems have contributed to the formation of the ‘frameworks’ of

sustainability to address worldwide environmental concerns. However, as Adrian Parr argues in

Hijacking Sustainability (2009), the growing popularity of the ‘sustainable culture’ in the cultural

mainstream correlates with the commodification of sustainability, reducing the holistic concept

into superficial components. Thus, the goals emerging from grassroots movements are

appropriated to be mediated by profit-maximising values as sustainability becomes a tool for

corporate ‘image-greening’.

This book aims to rethink approaches to contemporary scholarship regarding Indigenous food

systems in the contexts of the Global South. Methodologically, it aims to move beyond the

empirical approaches of documentation limited to the production of the knowledge of what and

delve into the questions of why and how. Thus, this volume encourages explorations of the

cultural, social and spiritual manifestations of Indigenous food systems, overcoming the

nature/culture dichotomy to understand the Indigenous phenomenology of ecological being, and

critically engaging with the diverse subjectivities and their diverse ways of facilitating an ethical

coexistence between human and other-than-human environments.

As part of the Peter Lang book series Environmental Humanities and Indigeneity, we invite

chapter contributions for this volume on themes including, but not limited to, the

following:

● Theorising food as an integral part of the Indigenous Knowledge System

● Decolonial methodologies and ethical approaches to food systems

● Centrality of food systems in ecological activism

● Preserving communitarian memory through food

● Sustainability and the land-language connection

● Food in Indigenous oral and literary traditions

● Sustainability and Indigenous artforms

● Digital foodscapes and sustainability

● Recipes as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

● Demonstrating Indigenous resistance, resilience and regeneration through food

● The multifaceted relevance of Food Studies in the discourse of Sustainability and well-

being.

● Foodways and Climate-change

● Food and Speculative fiction

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from related fields by early-career researchers, PhD

scholars, independent researchers, and faculty.

Submission Guidelines:

Extended abstracts (750–1000 words) should include the title, author(s), affiliation(s), and five

keywords.

Bio-notes: 100–150 words per author.

Deadlines:

Abstract submission: 31 May 2026

Notification of acceptance- 30 June 2026

Email submissions and queries to: foodwaysandsustainability@gmail.com