Nomadic Food

Food is unquestionably a total social fact and 'we must now think of it as a social fact that is characteristic of new global lifestyles' (Rasse and Debos, 2006). The structural organization of the market and eating behaviors are undergoing great changes. Strictly speaking, this development is not really new. Every century, every major caesura in the history of humanity could illustrate a process of inventions, adaptations, and innovations which have transformed eating habits. The contemporary period, however, is different because of the extent of these major changes and the global importance of some of them. Thus, organizations such as manufacturers, retailers, and transportation companies are all highly inventive in offering individuals eating solutions which are adapted to their new lifestyles; lifestyles which are based or, at the very least, affected by increased mobility and continuous moving around. Of course, travelers have made journeys throughout history, and they have always had to deal with the issue of how to eat when away from home. Whether associated with long-distance journeys, random travels, or tourist trips, mobility has been an important factor in the creation of catering and eating solutions which range from the very simple to the elaborate. Today, this increased mobility makes us think of practices which have been described as nomadic. However, can a link be found between the nomadism of people who move around in order to find food for their herds or for themselves and the nomadic forms of eating of our mobile societies? The collection of contributions that we are proposing will try to provide answers to this. The traditional understanding of the concept of nomadism generally refers to pastoral practices which are to be found in many populations such as the Lapps, the peoples of Central Asia,or the Tuaregs. The term 'nomadism' is also used to describe the lives of hunter-gatherers and some sea nomads, such as the Bajau of Indonesia, and the Moken, the Moklen, and the Urak Lawoi of Thailand. It has also been used to refer to gypsies, or Roma, who, since a French law of 1969, have been called 'gens du voyage' (travelers). Although mobility is an invariant in these different types, it is nonetheless true that the term refers to the ways of life lead...