Food is a powerful entry point into the civic imagination—i.e., the capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions, the social process of which fosters a shared vision for collective action. As an essential material component of human life, food exists as an extremely mundane and dynamic aspect of our everyday personal and social experiences; our relationship with food is intertwined with issues of privilege, access, representation, language, ethnicity, and the materiality of culture. This forum explores diverse intersections between food and civic imagination, with topics ranging from shared memories, local (re-)imaginations, history and civic action, and private-public translations. The forum discusses how food sustains, nourishes, and connects individuals and their communities by delving into both their presence—e.g., acquiring and preparing ingredients, cooking meals, sharing or selling foods—and absence—e.g., hunger and human waste in food ecology. Articles in this collection demonstrate that the civic imagination is not only fed in dining rooms and kitchens but also in less conventionally thought-of contexts, such as digital spaces, toilets, and forums such as ours. They urge us to engage with food in new imaginative ways, fostering and bridging conversations: one cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like, and one must explore together to navigate and actualize the imaginative possibilities.
Articles by Sangita Shresthova
Sangita Shresthova is the Director of Research and Programs and Co-PI of the Civic Imagination Project based at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. She is a writer, researcher, scholar, speaker, and practitioner with expertise in mixed-methods research, media literacies, media and parenting, popular culture, civic imagination, and globalization. Her recent publications include three co-authored books: Practicing Futures: The Civic Imagination Action Handbook, Transformative Media Pedagogies, and Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: Case Studies of Creative Social Change. Sangita is one of the creators of the Digital Civics Toolkit, a collection of resources for educators and teachers to support youth learning. Her creative work has also been presented in venues around the world including the Pasadena Dance Festival, Schaubuehne (Berlin), the Other Festival (Chennai), the EBS International Documentary Festival (Seoul), and the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC). She is also a faculty member at the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change in Austria.