Library News

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The cultural politics of food, taste, and identity : a global perspective by Steffan Igor Ayora Díaz examines the social, cultural, and political processes that shape the experience of taste. The book positions flavor as involving all the senses, and describes the multiple ways in which taste becomes tied to local, translocal, glocal, and cosmopolitan politics of identity. Global case studies are included from Japan, China, India, Belize, Chile, Guatemala, the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Spain.

Chapters examine local responses to industrialized food and the heritage industry, and look at how professional culinary practice has become foundational for local identities. The book also discusses the unfolding construction of “local taste” in the context of sociocultural developments, and addresses how cultural political divides are created between meat consumption and vegetarianism, innovation and tradition, heritage and social class, popular food and authenticity, and street and restaurant food.

In addition, contributors discuss how different food products—such as kimchi, quinoa, and Soylent—have entered the international market of industrial and heritage foods, connecting different places and shaping taste and political identities.

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February 14th, 2020, marked the 20th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which is significant for providing the first definition of open access offering guidelines to make research free and available to anyone.

To mark the anniversary, the BOAI20 Steering Committee will be releasing a new set of recommendations, reflections and resources in the coming weeks and organizing a webinar to discuss the further development of the movement.

The Declaration is "a statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment. The initiative was signed by the Budapest participants and thousands of individuals and organizations from around the world who represent researchers, universities, laboratories, libraries, foundations, journals, publishers, learned societies, and kindred open-access initiatives."

If you want to learn more about the BOAI document resealed in 2002, read the official FAQs, where you can find the background of the initiative and the supporting research.

The workshops on business topics organized by the Library are still on. Participants can register to attend in presence or online, and at the end of the session all participants will receive a certificate of attendance.

See the full calendar to register to workshops on how to do company and industry research, international business resources, and to get an overview to the Bloomberg Terminal.

For questions get in touch with referenceservices@johncabot.edu

                                                                                                                                                    Photo by Martin Leveneur

CIAO Focus highlights a particular topic in the realm of international affairs. This month the focus is on migration.

"Across the globe, people are on the move," according to a summary of research on migration at Stanford. The UN estimates that there are 65 million people forcibly displaced worldwide. Earlier this month, the interior ministers of the European Union gathered in Lithuania for a conference on border management. The summit focused on irregular migration, the right to asylum, and the issue of pushbacks. Despite the link between human rights and effective migration policy, the conference concluded with a statement emphasizing the need for "full and secure external borders," echoing similar sentiments frequently heard in the United States. This approach is contrasted to the research of scholars such as anthropologist Daniel Reichman, who argues that "regardless of the reason a migrant may end up at the border, human rights should be paramount."

For the basic ideas and concepts surrounding global migration, the organization Diplo provides a useful summary of key points from the latest research, including the different types of migration based on data from the Migration Data Portal. In addition, Oxford has a research hub dedicated to migration, which highlights material from Migration Studies and the Journal of Refugee Studies. The Princeton University Library also has a detailed guide on the topics of migration, diasporas, and refugees.

Forced migration is a particularly relevant topic for those studying the consequences of war, with the Watson Institute reporting that "37 million people have fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001." Environmental migration has also become an unavoidable issue of international importance, in what the New York Times calls "the great climate migration." The Othering and Belonging Institute at Berkeley recently produced a report that combines many of the types of migration into a single, comprehensive analysis, which focuses on the impact of "neoliberalization, securitization, and the climate crisis" on global migration trends.  

Are you curious about what's new in the Library? Check out the New Acquisitions page! Find out new books, e-books, and videos that are now available in our collections.