Dr Nicki Tarulevicz will present “Singapore: Global Pantry of the Future?”
in The Royal Society Room, 19 Davey St (entry via Dunn St Car Park) at 8.00 om on Tuesday June 2 2015.
All welcome and entry is free.
Although importing the vast majority of your food seems like particularly twenty-first-century situation, it has been the reality of the Southeast Asian island-state of Singapore since settlement in 1819. Singapore relies on imported water; it does not have, and has never had, an agricultural hinterland and this created an early reliance on the global pantry with a consequent distance from producers and the need to negotiate long supply chains. Despite the dependence on imported food, Singapore is now internationally famous as a food destination, with food doing important nation-building work. This accomplishment, however, required intensive management and regulation—another characteristic for which the city-state is well known. In this sense, Singapore anticipated the contemporary complexity of the food system as it is now playing out globally, making Singapore a surprisingly relevant place to discuss food in a global food system.
Bio-note: Dr Nicole Tarulevicz is a Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. She is a Historian and author ofEating Her Curries and Kway: A Cultural History of Food in Singapore (2013), she is currently working on a project with the working title Taste of Safety: A History of Food Quality. She was the recipient of the 2012 Association for the Study of Food Culture and Society Pedagogy Award and is a current Elected Member of the Board of the Association for the Study of Food, Culture and Society (2014-17).
