Food allergies are on the increase across the industrialized world. Allergens are something that allergic bodies (over)react to (to varying degrees), but they can also become more than that. Individuals with experience of severe food allergies tend to be attuned to the presence of their allergens in their wider environments. Through embodied memory and affective imagination, allergens become more than a substance, protein or material: they become agents that are enacted through affective meshworks (Ingold 2011). This talk looks at the ways in which people dealing with severe food allergies develop and enact an embodied skill-set, built on embodied memory, affective imagination and their surrounding environment, that is enacted to mitigate the risk of severe reactions.

Emma E. Cook is a social anthropologist with interests ranging from gender, the body, food, health, risk, emotion, and affect. Her current research cross-culturally explores the social, embodied and affective experiences of food allergies in Japan and the UK, and is funded by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C).

Cosponsored by the Science, Technology, and Society Program.