Conference Review

Food Hawkers: Selling in the Street from Antiquity to the Present

22-23 April 2010

This conference was funded by CRASSH, the Economic History Society and the Trevelyan Fund of the Faculty of History of the University of Cambridge. It aimed to draw together scholars from a variety of disciplines working on the selling of food in streets and at markets, generating discussion across geography and chronology. To stimulate as much discussion as possible the speakers were grouped into sessions according to the themes of their papers rather than their academic disciplines. This worked really well and allowed for a cross-disciplinary discussion throughout the conference. At the end of the conference three discussants, each with a background in a different discipline (anthropology, economic and social history, art history), reflected on the conference so as to start a broader discussion among the participants.

Due to the volcanic ash cloud, three of the speakers were not able to attend the conference, but CRASSH enabled them to present their paper via a Skype connection. As each of the absent paper givers was in a session with a paper giver who was present at the conference, it was possible for the absent speakers to listen to the other paper in their panel via Skype, and to engage in the discussion at the end of their panel. Apart from some small problems with the sound (which was due to Skype rather than the facilities in the room and did not really compromise the paper) the participation of our absent paper givers via Skype worked exceptionally well and really enhanced the conference. Without this facility we would have lost three very important papers.

Overall, the conference was a big success, both in terms of the quality of the individual papers and the extent of interdisciplinary exchanges. It was very interesting to see that during the discussion time between the panels the interaction between paper givers and audience was not confined to exchanges between people from the same discipline, but that a truly cross-disciplinary discussion took place. The reason why this worked so well is probably threefold: the set-up of the panels stimulated people to think about the topic in a comparative manner, there were key themes (marginality, public vs. private sphere, regulation) that came up in papers from different disciplines and lastly, and very importantly, the participants were open to interdisciplinary discussion.

We would like to thank CRASSH for its generosity in hosting this event and for the superb administrative help which it provided. 

Melissa Calaresu (History, University of Cambridge)
Danielle van den Heuvel (Economics, University of Cambridge)
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