Author Archives: Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam

Ashley "Thao" Dam is a medical anthropologist and budding ethnobotanist. Their research interests reside in the overlappings of nutritional anthropology, human ecology, gastronomy, and biocultural diversity. Thao also writes, draws, photographs and speaks about food on under the name @ThaoEatWorld. They are currently a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University. Previously, they were a Lecturer in Global Health at Maastricht University in The Netherlands and Explorer for the National Geographic Society.

a.t.dam@pdx.edu | https://www.thaoeatworld.com | Assemblage Profile

Recipes of Resistance: Global Digital Gastro-solidarity for Palestine

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam  March 26, 2024

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From the North in Safad (where my father is from) and Galilee to the South East in Al-Lydd (where my mother is from) and down to Jerusalem and Gaza, the food differs but is united at the same time, through love and history… Palestinian food is found in the home. That is where it all begins. (Joudie Kalla, Palestine on a Plate, 2016) Food is the most precious part of Palestinian heritage. For Palestinian food not to go extinct, the young have to learn from the old. (Aisha Azzam, Aisha’s Story, film forthcoming 2024) Around the world, millions have taken the streets in support of a free and thriving Palestine in the face of active genocide and the continuance of settler colonial violence. Visible on the streets and all over social media feeds, scattered among flags and keffiyehs, are images of the vibrant watermelon. This trinity of nationalist symbols bear a shared honoring of an ancient yet enduring cultural intimacy with Levantine lands. A cursory search about the history of the Palestinian flag’s colors (black, white, red, and green) leads one down many possible origins and mythologies behind the green portion of the flag. These include but are not limited to representing influential Arab dynasties, peace, Islamic faith, as well as a deep love and appreciation for the olive trees which bloom across the landscape. The keffiyeh, a traditional scarf, embodies similar sentiments entangled in its design. Within its iconic weave, visual histories of Palestinian trade pathways, robust fishing culture upon the Mediterranean sea, and once again, the olive trees. Last is the watermelon, which was used as a covert placeholder for the flag during a period of occupation when the display of the flag itself was forbidden. In essence, at the core of these symbols are Palestinian foodways and culture. (read more...)

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”: Food, Cooking, and Eating in Video Games

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam  May 9, 2023

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“Are you seriously telling me that this hot mash of mushrooms and fruit is going to completely heal his wounds?” (Gilbert 2019) It is summer 2020 and I, like many others, am sequestered indoors clutching my recently acquired Nintendo Switch playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH). In wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world seemed to swarm either to their handy technological devices or towards the soothing arms of nature. Luckily for me, my technological device included encounters with some virtual greenery—the trees and flowers of my beloved tropical Animal Crossing island. (read more...)

Dining with the Diaspora: Khmerican Digital Gastrodiplomacy

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam  March 7, 2023

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During my first semester of undergrad, I began my truly independent cooking journey—a path many have taken before me, but few survive. After weeks of failing to replicate one of my mother’s simplest dishes, scrambled eggs with jasmine rice, I was devastated. Arriving home for winter break, I told her about my struggles—how I looked up many recipes online and tried making them all, adding milk, sprinkling in cheese, whisking the eggs with a particular technique. Nothing seemed to replicate the correct taste or texture. The familiar experience of the eggs was absent. She laughed at me and explained she made them “Khmer style,” to which I promptly replied, “What’s ‘Khmer Style?'” Half smirking and rolling her eyes, Ma explained that the scrambled eggs have fish sauce, green onions, and black pepper in them. “Make sure you use the good fish sauce okay? Either Three Crabs Brand or the Squid Brand. How did you not know this?” (read more...)

Netlicks and Chill: Digitalization and Food Politics in Taste the TV (TTTV) Technology

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, Antonio Oraldi  March 15, 2022

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Digital technologies have increasingly penetrated aspects of daily routines and practices — this has only been exacerbated by the conditions put forth by the COVID-19 pandemic. Technologies mediate experiences, thereby generating new forms of engagement with the world (Ihde, 1990). One arena of such digitalization and increased technological entanglement is food; over the last decades, the processes of procuring, growing, preparing, and eating foodstuffs have been inundated with new technologies (Lewis, 2018). From cooking robots and “smart” kitchen appliances to virtual online communities devoted to sharing food-related content and discussing food politics, interactions with food have transformed considerably. These transformations warrant additional inquiries into how food and surrounding processes of tasting and eating may manifest differently in accordance with such technologically-intertwined conditions. (read more...)

Roundtable: “COVID-19: Views from the Field”

 Baird Campbell, Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, Caitlyn Dye, Kristina Jacobsen, Rebekah Ciribassi, Sonia Qadir  May 20, 2020

We’re wrapping up our five-part series, “COVID-19: Views from the Field,” with a pre-recorded roundtable. This roundtable brought our authors into conversation with each other, across continents and timezones, to discuss conducting—or not conducting—fieldwork in places not understood as COVID-19 “hotspots.” Check out the video here, and follow the links below to read the whole series, also available in the language of each field site. (read more...)

Cambodia in the time of COVID-19: Conceptions, perceptions, and approaches to the novel coronavirus

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam  April 16, 2020

*អត្ថបទនេះមានជាភាសាខ្មែរ។*

Editor’s note: This post is the first in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organizer Rebekah Ciribassi. When I waved goodbye to my partner at Torino Caselle Airport in northern Italy on February 18th, 2020, I had no idea what was about to happen—people don’t tend to predict the eves of global pandemics. There were no particularly ominous signs to note, and I was heavily focused on the logistics of carrying out my PhD fieldwork in Cambodia. My research focuses on seasonal variations of the use and consumption of traditional Khmer medicinal plants during maternity by rural women living in Siem Reap Province, Cambodia. My aim is to identify medicinal plants used during different stages of pregnancy, how these medicinal plants are prepared as (or paired with) foods, and what the perceived effects of these traditional food-medicines have on treating symptoms associated with different stages of maternity. In addition to this, I’m also interested in the contemporary role and trajectory of Traditional Khmer Medicine (TKM) within rural community settings and how such traditional knowledge is shared. The overarching goal of this research was to support botanical work being done by the National Herbarium of Cambodia at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, nutrition and dietary research by the NGO Helen Keller International, as well as expand the inter-disciplinary cultural research by the Center for Khmer Studies in my role as a senior research fellow. (read more...)