Chocolate, Not just for Christmas Dec 19

The holidays are upon us, and with them come rampant consumerism, an annual environmental disaster, not to mention guilt and annoyance, but also public expressions of love, giving and social responsibility.    The question is: how can we reduce the negative aspects and make the positive ones sustainable?

My friends Damian Sutton and Karen Wennell, both in Glasgow, put together NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS, an AHRC-funded project to addresses that very question.

At the final public study day, to be held in Glasgow on December 19, I will be holding a presentation, based on my recent book, on ‘The love of Chocolate’, which will look at the way in which chocolate has mediated ideas of love, giving,  and social responsibility – and also helped to obscure genuine social injustice from view.  I will look to the way in which the benevolence of chocolate is gaining new meaning through the new emphasis on origins and fair trading.