Linda Seligmann

LINDA J. SELIGMANN, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, received a grant in April 2017 to aid research on ‘Women and Quinoa Foodways: Making Soup and Super-Food in the Peruvian Andean Highlands.’ This project focused on the impact of the worldwide demand for quinoa on households in Huanoquite, a Quechua-speaking Andean highland district, located southwest of Cusco, Peru, in the province of Paruro. A central question was whether or not women’s priorities and values have served as a brake to narrowing the kinds of quinoa landraces or varieties that are cultivated and how quinoa is being prepared, processed, and marketed. Initial analysis based on interviews and participant-observation suggests that women are having an impact on how quinoa production, preparation, processing, and marketing are unfolding, which can also be contrasted with views of quinoa and its consumption in other regions, nationally and internationally; it documented ways villagers (across economic status and generation) are making sense of their aspirations in light of development that has fostered climate change and environmental degradation; it traced how villagers’ aspirations diverge from those of state agencies and NGOs, which are involved in encouraging quinoa cultivation; and it found very different patterns in how women in Huanoquite, chefs (mostly male) in Cusco restaurants, and chefs (mostly male) in U.S. restaurants attribute value to their preparation of dishes and beverages with quinoa as a component.