Melissa L. Caldwell

Digestive Politics in Russia: Feeling the Sensorium beyond the Palate

Accounts of the cultural aspects of food consumption have conventionally privileged acts of production and consumption rather than acts of disposal. In the case of eating, attention has been given to ingestion as the moment when cultural values are consumed and expressed, so that choice and taste preferences are presented as part of the act of consuming. As a result, the sensory dimensions of taste are located at the palate: flavor, aroma, texture, appearance, and sound. Yet processes of digestion move foods through and out of the bodies of consumers, thereby producing different sensory responses and cultural interpretations of those sensory responses. This article examines the sensory experiences of digestion through a discussion of how Russian consumers interpret digestive processes as means of engaging in and responding to larger cultural phenomena. Ultimately, by arguing for a politics of the gut, I show how cultural trends are deeply embedded in the most intimate bodily spaces of Russian consumers and what reorienting a study of taste to spaces beyond the palate might offer for rethinking issues such as consumer choice, autonomy, and responsibility.

Feeding the Body and Nourishing the Soul

Abstract This article explores the phenomenon of natural foods in post-Soviet Russia. Although Russian natural foods discourses and practices resonate with Western organics, Slow Foods Movements, and Food Democracy movements regarding health, safety, and small-scale agricultural production, they depart significantly in their attention to nature as the source of uniquely Russian qualities of sociability and spirituality. By drawing attention to both the actual and symbolic landscapes from which natural foods are taken, Russians invoke a model of geographic nationalism. Consequently, discourses about natural foods become reference points for discussions about the physical, social, and spiritual health of Russian society and its citizens.