Food Events and the Temporality of Innovations

Food events have become increasingly popular in recent years, bringing together diverse actors—from food professionals and entrepreneurs to scientists, policy makers, and consumers—to display renewed traditions, highlight novel practices, and share concerns and possible solutions for the future. Such events enable interactions among these actors and their diverse temporal orientations, thereby contributing to both the sustenance of traditions and the emergence of novelty. This chapter examines the temporal dynamics at food events in relation to tradition and innovation, asking: How are traditions revived and ideas for the future revealed at food events? It singles out three aspects of this temporal dynamics, namely, the shadow of the global future, the shadow of the local past, and the “spark” of the present, and illustrates these with examples from a food event that seeks to mobilize local action toward a global agenda for a better food future.