Milking it: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy

Everyone has a story to share about milk - it is a fundamentally everyday substance - relatable and familiar. Milk is also intimate; it is the first food that babies consume, coming with associations of family, childhood and home. Yet milk is also remarkably political. Changes in the way milk is globally produced, processed and consumed over the past 200 years have had an extraordinary impact on people and the environment through the industrialisation of dairy. The global history of milk is deeply entangled with colonial processes, from the taking and manipulation of land, to conceptions of economy, race and the development of scientific expertise. The legacies of these processes can be traced today through the impacts of dairy on climate change, sustainable development, and health. This project uses a creative participatory approach to understand what milk can tell us about everyday colonialism and its broader global impacts.

Assumptions made in the colonial era about milk have not been challenged but rather baked into the systems of milk that we have now. We are curious about what it means to take on those assumptions as we collate, record and engage with peoples milk diaries, do archival research & explore podcasting as participatory and public research. Using case studies from the UK and Kenya - representing two of the world's largest dairy markets and connected through an enduring colonial history - we will question milk imaginaries and realities to explore if those assumptions hold true.

This project is centred within the interdisciplinary field of Heritage Studies, and the role heritage can play as a framework for understanding how colonial legacies shape contemporary issues and impact on people's lives. Research on global dairy has tended to focus on historical analysis, production, enhancement or cultural trends, overlooking the people who have been affected by it. This innovative project will centre communities that sit at the intersection of industry, aid and government regulation to bring heritage back into the picture.

We will develop new methodologies to investigate engagements with milk through time. Recognising the importance of milk in everyday life, we will build networks and partnerships, working with milk consumers and producers in Britain and Kenya to explore the role of colonialism in driving and influencing these global shifts, and what the impacts have been. The colonial history of dairy has tended to focus on the structural impacts of colonialism; how societies were reorganised, what impacts colonial infrastructure had on local, national and global networks. This project will build on a small but growing body of research that is interested in the tangible everyday effects of the colonial project as they played out in people's daily lives.

This project is a springboard for a bigger research grant, enabling us to ask questions that are derived from those who are most impacted by the legacies of colonial diary industries. It will generate a high quality podcast series aimed at a broad non-academic audience working in partnership with a professional audio producer.