Research project Nourishing the body politic: eating, the edible, and authority in Sweden, 1650−1750
The research project is funded by the Swedish Research Council and aims to discover how food decisions and nourishing substances shaped individual bodies and the body politic in early modern Sweden. The project manager is Karin Sennefelt, Professor of History, Stockholm University.
Äggprovet, Pehr Hilleström (1732–1816). Nationalmuseum via Wikimedia Commons/public domain. Bilden är beskuren.
Critically intervening in food history, the project examines the existential, physical and social aspects of eating practices and the knowledge and power relations that underpinned them. In developing a new analytical model, nourishment regimes, it promises to challenge received notions of the strength and rise of modern bio-politics.
The project approaches food and eating in a dual way. Firstly, they are understood as fundamental ways by which humans relate to their surroundings. As such, they bring existential issues to the fore, most notably how we engage with our environment through what we eat. Secondly, we acknowledge that food and eating are at the nexus of power relations, which the concept of food sovereignty captures. This perspective enables us to study nourishment as means of exerting power, but also as means of resistance.
By stimulating conversations between food history, confessional history and medical history, the project will challenge received notions of how the early modern body functioned and how early modern societies were shaped because of that. Thus, it brings issues of resilience, adaptation, and spiritual and physical health to the fore.