Preserving perishable values: Timescapes of mobility and maturation in the case of imported cheese

Transportation and logistics today are factored as part of (and not something that follows) the production of goods. 

Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research with cheese importers and exporters, this lecture follows the work of moving perishable foods into the United States as a job of navigating border regulation and employing cold chain technology to preserve perishable values: the edibility and palatability of fragile foods as well as the commodity value of goods. 

To do so, retailers, importers and customs brokers must harmonize uneven tempos of mobility and perishability. The skilled work of importing cheese reveals the role of time — beyond more familiar elements of place — in consolidating the material qualities that are valued in specialty foods. 

About the speaker

Heather Paxson is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America  (UC Press, 2013) and the editor of Eating beside Ourselves: Thresholds of Foods and Bodies (Duke, 2023).