Season 03ish - Episode 03 (Crossover): AnthroDish
LISTEN:
In the third episode of this mini-season, "Crossover," Anar Parikh chats with Sarah Duignan, of Anthro Dish--a weekly show about the intersections between our foods, cultures, and identities. AnthroDish:
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00] Anar Parikh (AP): Anthropological Airwaves is the official podcast of the journal American Anthropologist, whose main offices are located on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Anacostan, and Piscataway peoples. The Anacostia and Potomac rivers have long been places of trade and gathering for Indigenous peoples and Washington DC is now home to diverse Indigenous people from across Turtle Island. American Anthropologist has published articles throughout its history that have taken knowledge from Indigenous peoples for a scholarly audience and has not required its authors or editors to be good relations to Indigenous peoples and communities. Acknowledging territory is only one step in repairing relationships between anthropologists and Indigenous peoples. The Editorial Collective of the journal is committed to deep listening and engagement with Indigenous scholars, peoples, and communities to explore ways to be a better relation.
[00:50] This episode of Anthropological Airwaves was recorded from the traditional territories of the Catawba, Waxhaw, Cheraw, and Sugaree peoples, and specifically in Charlotte, North Carolina—a city located on the traditional crossroads of two Indigenous trading paths: the Occaneechi Path and the Lower Cherokee Traders’ Path, which facilitated the extensive trade network of Cherokee, Catawba, Saponi, and Congaree peoples prior to colonization. While many descendants of Cheraw, Waxhaw, and Sugaree communities eventually joined the Catawba peoples, today, the Catawba Nation continues to thrive as a federally recognized tribe located less than one hour south of where this recording took place. The episode was produced on the Indigenous territory known as Lenapehoking, the traditional homelands of the Lenape also called Lenni-Lenape or Delaware Indians. These are the people who, during the 1680s, negotiated with William Penn to facilitate the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania. Their descendants today include the Delaware Tribe and Delaware Nation of Oklahoma; the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, Ramapough Lenape, and Powhatan Renape of New Jersey; and the Munsee Delaware of Ontario.
[02:00] (Intro music begins)
[02:06] AP: Hi everyone. Welcome back to Anthropological Airwaves – the official podcast of the journal American Anthropologist. This is Episode Three, Season 3-ish.
[02: 15] (Intro music ends)
[02:16] AP: My name is Anar Parikh, I’m a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Brown University and the journal’s Associate Editor – Podcast at American Anthropologist. I use she/her pronouns, and I’m also the Executive Producer of this show. I’ll often be the all-in-one producer/host/engineer of AnthroAirwaves episodes. In other words, you’ll be hearing a lot from me! But don’t worry, you’ll also be hearing from plenty of other anthropologists and scholars whose work we look forward to featuring in a variety of formats including interviews, conversations, experiments in sonic ethnography, ethnographic journalism, and other oral formats.
[02:51] AP: I have one more announcement before I introduce the episode. I want to remind y’all that Anthro Airwaves is introducing a new segment called “Anthro Help Desk,” where we’ll be answering your questions, comments, and concerns on all things anthropology. Perhaps a theoretical concept is tripping you up, you’re looking for tips and tricks to use in your anthropology classroom, or you’re trying to resolve a long-standing debate one of your colleagues! Well, Cue the dial tone because Anthro Airwaves is here to help.
[03:15] (dial tone sound effect)
[03:21] If you have a question, you’d like us to answer, please send a short recording to amanthpodcast@gmail.com with ANTHRO HELP DESK in the subject line. Detailed information about submitting a question to Anthro Help Desk and on how to pitch episodes to Anthro Airwaves is available on the Anthropological Airwaves section of the American Anthropologist website.
[03:41] AP: Alright, now on to the show. As you might remember, the theme for this mini-season is “Crossover,” and during the past couple of months Anthro Airwaves has been featuring anthropology podcasts and the people who make them! During each monthly episode I chat with the host or hosts of a different anthropology podcast about their show, why they make it, and how it connects to their broader work. After a short interview, Anthro Airwaves features an episode of the show and include information on where you can learn more about our guests and their work!
[04:10] AP: This episode is number three in this series, and I’m really excited to introduce our guest–-Sarah Duignan the mastermind behind AnthroDish, a weekly show about the intersections between our foods, cultures, and identities. Sarah is a PhD Candidate at McMaster University whose work takes a biocultural lens to understanding how people behave and interact with each other. She started AnthroDish in 2018, and as of this recording she has published over 90 episodes that feature one-on-one conversations with people about food knowledge, their relationship to food, and how food ways occupy space in our everyday day lives.
[04:26] (tape recorder sound effect)
[04:53] AP: Hey y’all, future Anar here. We just wanted to let you know that this episode is a little bit different from the others in the Crossover series. Due to unexpected circumstances we are not able to share a cross-posted episode of AnthroDish as originally planned. Still, there is a lot to enjoy about my conversation with Sarah Duignan and you should definitely check out the extensive AnthroDish archive at www.anthrodish.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Alright, back to the show!
[05:23] (tape recorder sound effect ends)
[05:27] AP: Sarah, thank you so much for agreeing to join me on Anthro Airwaves.
[05:32] Sarah Duignan (she/her): Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to connect and to be able to chat with you.
[05:36] AP: So, AnthroDish is almost three years old, can you talk a little bit about why you started it?
[05:42] SD: Yeah, I tend to be, I mean I always give a very blunt answer to this one, but I was TAing, for a long time, this like food nutrition course and I had to—there was like one particular year, where I had to like sit in the class with the students, and it was like a late Monday night, so I was already like tired it's like cold Canadian winters. at like 7pm so super dark—and I was just listening, and it was like the exact same information just regurgitated again and again, every year, the same stuff that I listened to, like you know 10 years prior in my undergrad classes. And, like I wasn't hearing the voice of like the people that were originally you know the inspiration for a lot of the work that was being talked about. And so, I just kind of got frustrated and, and really wanted to like bring voices back into the spectrum of anthropology. Especially around food because, you know, food, when you talk about it it's not, it's not just like a text right-- I mean I guess if you're looking at cookbooks it's a different story—but, but, yeah I really, I really just wanted to engage more with people who work within food in different ways, because I think, particularly for undergraduate students, they get this like very kind of sterile understanding of it and, like all the senses and flavors and textures and experiences are kind of stripped away so that it's like this very, you know, analytical text and, and I wanted more than that, so, then I just kind of started talking to a lot of people that I was working with--like I worked as a server at the time and restaurant--started connecting with people, just like having friendly conversations around my kitchen table, and then it kind of expanded as we, as we went on to other people around the world.
[07:10] AP: It's so interesting that that was your experience of this food and nutrition class because it, it reminded me of like one of my first anthro professors offhandedly, one day, mentioning how like our experience of eating food, and making food, and you know interacting with food is just so rich and vibrant, but a lot of the writing around food or a lot of the ways that food is kind of circulated in public discourse is actually quite boring.
[overlapping speech]
[07:34] SD: Yeah.
[07:34] AP: Or is not able to actually capture that richness, or that dynamism. So, like, what you're saying just like what you're saying just like totally like resonates in terms of a lot of the ways that we encounter how people talk and think about it.
[07:47] SD: Yeah, I feel like the weirdest like contrast, for me, was like the focus is around food security and like that's it right. Y ou know measuring this experience of insecurity, and then, I was working at a restaurant, so I was like having all these bizarre interactions. It was like a restaurant that served a lot of like, very rich upper class white people vegetarian food. So it was just like already the dynamic there was so interesting to observe and I was like it’s so fruitful—I guess pardon the pun—but like we're not engaging with that in a way that could be explored in a more accessible way. And I think that's also important to anthro, is like we haven't done the same amount of like public engagement, the way the other disciplines have, and so I think podcasting is one of those media or mediums that allows us to do that in a way that makes sense for like who we are, as anthropologist but also like makes it a more dynamic situation as well.
[08:37] AP: Right, and obviously I think public engagement in anthropology could be many things, but like in the hard sciences, for example, scicomm or science communications is an entire sub component of scientific research, and that I think that that is definitely not as well established in anthropology. Which is not to say that, like people aren't doing it, but it is something that anthropologists have a hard time with, in terms of how to reformulate or kind of like think about things in a way that non-practicing academic anthropologists might like want to consume or like think about.
[09:10] SD: I just love getting an anthropologist in a episode and like, like just having an organic conversation, and not having them have to like read an essay as they do like the triple AAAs. You know, like it's just so much more fun—I don't think it's necessarily fun for everyone that that comes on—but I do..I think it's great I like the imperfections of it too.
[09:29] AP: How has AnthroDish changed during the past six seasons? like what does it look like, now that it didn't look like when you started.
[09:29] SD: Oooh that's a good question. I think it's changed in two major ways. So the first one is that, I shifted as--I started to kind of expand it or as more people kind of came into it, I shifted away from like just talking to friends. I think that was a big one. So, I got to speak with people from different parts of the world and, and it was very like, Ontario/Canada focus for a while. But I think the more distinct shift that I've noticed that I've made through the six seasons, is that when I started it was really like kind of looking at how food is this common denominator, that we all have. So, it's like this unifier, for lack of a better word, and so that was kind of the approach that I took: was like we can have all these hard conversations if we if we center it around food, because it's again more digestible. I’m so sorry for all the food puns it just comes out.
[10:17] AP: that's what this medium is for [laughter]
[10:22] SD: Yeah, so that was kind of like how I had first started framing it, but then as its kind of progressed and as I've spoken with more people I really shifted the perspective to look at how food is a tool for oppression as well, and how it really disconnects people. S, I think that's kind of the lens I I’m more intrigued to explore that a bit more, because that I think is kind of like the you know the dark underbelly of talking about food, and I think, especially in foodie culture we tend to get these very like "you have to be positive, you can't be negative sorts" of approaches and I think that that's that's what I 've really wanted to challenge lately with it.
[10:53] AP: I've noticed this from some of your recent episodes that like influencer culture has really shifted—not just in food—but kind of like how we're interacting with the world. And that it, on the one hand, like elides- or at least in images and like what's put out into the world—elides all of those like really complicated questions of power and inequity and inequality, b ut they're just kind of teeming under the surface, and so I think it makes a lot of sense that that's something that's like really been coming up in how your how you and your guests are thinking about it too.
[11:28] SD: Yeah, yeah I love that point I think it's one of those things like, I kind of, sometimes feel a bit frivolous talking--especially around like influencer culture and wellness culture and stuff like that if you want to call it cultures--But I think yeah like that's the kind of stuff where you know you kind of get knocked around for talking about it because it's like :Oh well, it's just pop culture it's not you know worth kind of investigating,” but those are a lot of people, you know, their understandings of social norms and values are, like it or not, we're getting them from these sorts of platforms. So I think investigating those and putting a more critical lens on it, I don't know for me it's very cathartic because it's like after scrolling through Instagram, know you feel kind of voiceless and so it's nice to be able to have conversations with people around like the actual impact that that's having on our lives.
[12:08] AP: So, shifting a little bit. This season at Anthro Airwaves is really about featuring the dynamic podcasts that anthropologists are making and to talk about the nitty gritty details of what that entails. Like again, I mean with influencer culture, like the stuff that people don't see. I mean when you put earbuds in your ear, it can just be like “Oh, this is a recording of two people talking" but for people who make podcasts I think, you know, there's obviously a lot more to it than that so, one of the things that I think of that is an open secret about making podcasts in academia, is that it involves a lot of invisible and free and/or uncompensated labor. And for me personally that's always been through major anthropology journals where there's a particular set of issues related to compensation and labor, but making an independent podcast is a somewhat different beast. And, the reason I’m asking you, is because I know that you wrote about this recently. So, can you talk a little bit about what that has looked like for you? And that could be both a kind of long view of that, or what you're thinking about in the now.
[13:15] SD: Yeah, yeah that's a great question, I’m always happy to talk about, that is, I think it's one of those things that it's weird: like you don't talk about it in a podcast but you talk about it with podcasters. So, I think for me, i've really struggled with, I think, because I operate within a food world where it kind of straddles academia and service industry, and farmers and, like all these different kind of intersections of food, I get a lot more opportunities to do like branding and advertisement or like advertisements around certain food brands and particular food products. And so I had initially like obviously the cost of podcasting are at a pocket like, at least for independent broadcasters. And it's not like a super amount of money to keep a podcast afloat, but at the same time, like when you're working as a grad student it's not nothing. So yeah, so I had originally kind of like played around with doing like built-in ads and doing contracts with that. And it was just like…I mean it was fine, but it just felt like I had to kind of change the messages of what my show was kind of guiding towards based on who was advertising, because I was nervous that like if they listened, you know they'd hear me talking about their product and then they'd hear me like bashing the sort of New Age logic that they were approaching the world with. Or like the commodity commodification of like certain Indigenous knowledge is that were coming out in some of their products, so that was like one of those like inner morality struggles of “I need the money to keep the show going, but I don't want to feel like I can't speak to some of these issues because of of who's kind of paying to help me keep this afloat.” So yeah, so it's like I mean it's uh I haven't come up with any tangible solutions. Bu t yeah I think I have been, for me, like the best kind of—not solution—but something that I felt comfortable with was like “Oh, maybe if I write on the side, then, that can kind of like help offset the cost of it because I’m still providing something that I'm comfortable with, and people are paying for that,” because unfortunately podcasting there's not like anything set up--no apps or whatever-- where people pay to help keep it going, so yeah I don't know if that makes sense, but.
[15:03] AP: The first thought that I had as a very avid podcast listener, in the kind of like tension that you're talking about between these products or these companies that are reaching out to you to advertise their products, and like what your values are as a anthropologist or like or just what your political commitments, are is like something I listen, for all the time in podcasts in gen…I mean, I read Samantha Irby's recent book of essays and she talks about listening to these podcasts like that everyone listens to and then you're all being marketed, the same like New Age brands, but at the same time, like a lot of that a lot of the things that those folks are talking about are kind of antithetical to the things that they're advertising. And I mean ethical consumption under capitalism is like its own thing which is not to say that, like those people shouldn't be like accepting money from, from these advertisers at all, but that, like, I can imagine what that's like to have a food podcast as an anthropologist and then to kind of like be grappling with those with those questions.
[16:10] SD: Oh yeah, I was just going to say it's also like, I think one thing that I always kind of think about is like how podcasts are such an intimate form of like expression or consumption, because you have someone like literally in your ears, and this voice that you'd like come to know over however amount of time telling you about something. So you naturally like advertisers kind of know that. Like they know that you're going to trust this person in a way, that you wouldn't if you were listening on the radio or elsewhere right. So I think that's also… as an anthropologist like do you think about those sorts of things were like well “What impact is this gonna have?”
[16:40] AP: Totally. And like given what academic precarity looks like, there's not really an easy way to like figure out that's like “I can still do this thing and not ask for money from someone. Or, like, “I can still do this thing and not like take any money at all.” So it's a it's a tough it's a tough beat.
[16:59] SD: Also, just even like in the job hunt, you know “Are my podcast episodes gonna come back to haunt me and academia, that I didn't predict? You know.
[17:07] AP: Or like, I mean I went on the job market for the first time last year, and will do some version of that again, but I also found and have been thinking about it even more lately that like really capturing the things that you're doing is not---again, not just recording right, like, there's a production schedule, there’s technical stuff that's involved in producing a podcast so, recording the interview, but also the sound engineering, the producing, marketing and all of that and then there's doing production management right—but those like smaller details are not necessarily visible on a CV or in the ways that are legible in academia so figuring out how to capture that…or finding something outside of academia that like kind of speaks to skills and things that you've developed through podcasting for so long is is tough.
[17:55] SD: Yeah, yeah it's interesting seeing how people kind of tried to navigate that because I think it's done in very different ways depending on who it is. But I know, I don’t know if you're familiar with like Hannah McGregor. But they're a professor up here in Canada, I think out in Victoria, BC—I might be wrong on that one—but I know they're like they're in this process of trying to like figure out how to make podcasts like peer reviewed in a way, and they've been doing that for a number of years and so it's like you know, there are different kind of structures to approach how to make it more legible and academia. I don't necessarily, I’m not down with the peer review of podcasts, but I do think it's interesting trying to see how people can kind of like shift that or translate all of these like diverse skill sets that you build when you're creating this to to a CV that's like marketable for an academic job.
[18:42] AP: Totally yeah, and do you even want it to be the same thing that a peer review article is.
[overlapping speech]
[18:48] SD: No, no I do not. (laughter)
[18:50] AP: I mean the point is really to create different forms of knowing s, or you know, communicating information. So, thank you for talking candidly about that it's, I mean, I talked about it on the Internet all the time, but to be able to like have a conversation with someone about it is, is also like really nice, I would say. It’s like a very simple word but it’s not a thing that, like the chance comes up often to do that. So thank you for sharing that. Before we move on to the AnthroDish episode that you chose to feature for this crossover, I was wondering if you have favorite episodes of the show or maybe like a couple of favorites since I can imagine it might be hard to pick a single one from 90 episodes.
[19:32] SD: Yeah, it's funny I always kind of forgot how many have done and it says it, I'm like “oh wow yeah.” Um, yeah I think, I tend to think like in the more frequent episodes, but I think of the 90 something that I’ve done, the two that stand at the most me are: one that I did back in the day with Trina Moyles, who wrote a book called Women Who Dig, and it's about the experiences of different female farmers around the world, and then the other one that I did more recently with Tiffany Traverse who's an Indigenous farmer based out of Secwépemc. And both of those I think are special to me because those are, or one is just it's very—to be able to speak with farmers on a podcast I find is—rare, because they are often so busy like working with the land, so they don't have that much time to communicate. And it's not really perspectives that are so frequently offered up in academia. And I think, I think what makes them the most special for me is that they kind of resulted in like lasting friendships, and that might not necessarily be like the, the clean cut answer, but I think, for me it was like being in a space where I can have these sorts of conversations with people that I wouldn't normally get to interact with, and that they trusted me to tell their stories meant so much to me and we've kind of created lasting relationships from that and end like seeing how other people interact and connect with their work has been so special for me, too, so I think those are the two that I love the most.
[20:48] AP: That sounds lovely. Well, listeners will also have a chance to listen to another one of the many wonderful episodes in the AnthroDish edition archive in just a moment, but Sarah, thank you so much for agreeing to have this conversation. I'm so glad that we had a chance to chat.
[21:07] SD: Thank you so much, I really love, I love the theme of this season and I appreciate all the effort that you're putting into this, because I know it is no easy feat.
[21:15] AP: Thank you so much. I'm really excited for the series because I think there's a lot of overlap in even just the two interviews that I've done as of today.
[21:24] SD: I'm excited to I’m excited to check the other ones out too, I feel like it's a cool behind the scenes, like you know record in their basement and bedrooms and like weird spaces by themselves so…
[21:33] AP: It feels very lonely sometimes, so hopefully, this will be a way for folks who make them to feel a little less lonely too.
[21:41] (Outro music begins)
[21:42] SD: Definitely.
[21:43] AP: The interview portion of this episode was hosted, produced, and engineered by Anar Parikh, the Associate Editor – Podcast at American Anthropologist and Executive Producer of Anthropological Airwaves.
[22:02] (Outro music ends)
[22:04] AP: A closed-caption version of this episode is available on the Anthropological Airwaves YouTube channel, and a full transcription of the episode is available on the American Anthropologist website. Links to both are included in the show notes. Next month’s Crossover episode is the final one in this series and will feature Alejandra Melian-Morse, Meghan McGill, and Daniel Chiu Castillo from the Talking Culture podcast. A five-star review in particular will help other listeners find the show! We would also love to hear from you in general. If you have feedback, recommendations, or your thoughts on recent episodes, send an email to amanthpodcast@gmail.com. You can also reach out to us on our Facebook page Anthropological Airwaves or on Twitter @AmAnthPodcast. Find links to all of our contact information in the show notes and on the Anthropological Airwaves section of the American Anthropologist website.
[23:17] END OF EPISODE