A Space for “us”: Sensory Ethnography as an Embodied Method in Food Anthropology

Minority communities are vulnerable to poor health due to diet‐related diseases, a fact that food anthropologists have long discussed. This is also something that the individuals living within constrained food environments are aware of and challenge intellectually and on an embodied basis through food choices based on cultural and physical knowledge. Recognizing our interlocutors' ability to interpret their own choices and vulnerabilities, as well as their ability to do rigorous and worthwhile theory‐crafting about their own experiences, is part of recognizing alternative epistemologies and is something food anthropologists have done well. However, we may need new practices to best demonstrate and study how these experiences are manifested in ways that can't only be expressed verbally or in text. Drawing on interviews conducted in the summer of 2023 at a community‐led Farmers' Market in Dallas, Texas, I found that a traditional methodology does not capture how these communities feel and live in the space. In response, I call for scholars of food anthropology to strongly and creatively emphasize their interlocutors' experience and performance through sensory ethnography. It remains important for scholars to acknowledge how community relationships allow for survival in the face of adversity. This will enrich our scholarly understanding of the emic perspective within a foodscape and allow us to engage with our interlocutors as colleagues in the study of food and nutrition.