ABSTRACT
An important issue for food studies in Latin America is how to describe and analyze the ways in which food becomes embodied within lived experience. This chapter focuses on the embodiment of food within lived experience by taking the case of the Mexican National Chili Cook-off competition in Ajijic, Jalisco State in Mexico, an event that incorporates bodily judgments about food and in so doing reveals wider dynamics about civic action and the public domain. Through this example, it demonstrates how a food-affect-resonance becomes apparent within "food lifeways", and provides expression to ways of being in the world that focus on the interactions between people and things through the medium of food. The concept of food lifeways places emphasis on the embodiment of food within lived experience, as it gives expression to the combination of corporality, affect, and reflexivity, entwining social and natural worlds through practices, knowledge, and technology.
