Start Date
26-5-2026 11:45 AM
End Date
26-5-2026 12:00 PM
Description
Drawing on experiences as a Franco-American food anthropologist and enseignant-chercheur, this paper reflects on crisis and hope through two encounters: Jenny, a novice anthropology student navigating culture shock in a Parisian café, and René, a newly retired Comté farmer learning descriptive tasting on a sensory panel, the jury terroir. Reframing crisis as a threshold – a liminal space of encounter between different systems of meaning – the paper proposes thick description as a methodology for dwelling productively within such moments. Hope, in turn, is understood not as naïve optimism, but as the opening of new perceptual and relational perspectives made possible through structured socio-sensory practice.
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Included in
“Can you describe it?”: A Teacher-Researcher’s Reflections on Crisis and Hope
Drawing on experiences as a Franco-American food anthropologist and enseignant-chercheur, this paper reflects on crisis and hope through two encounters: Jenny, a novice anthropology student navigating culture shock in a Parisian café, and René, a newly retired Comté farmer learning descriptive tasting on a sensory panel, the jury terroir. Reframing crisis as a threshold – a liminal space of encounter between different systems of meaning – the paper proposes thick description as a methodology for dwelling productively within such moments. Hope, in turn, is understood not as naïve optimism, but as the opening of new perceptual and relational perspectives made possible through structured socio-sensory practice.