Food and Culture : A Reader

by CAROLE COUNIHAN; MILLERSVILLE

• ISBN13: 9780415977777
• ISBN10: 0415977770
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-05
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Food and Culture: A Reader , is a solidly established classroom and reference text for scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences. It has been assigned in courses in anthropology, cultural studies, folklore, food studies, history, literature, philosophy, sociology, archeology, American studies, and more. Food and Culture remains significant because it demonstrates the centrality of cultural anthropology to the study of food. It is unique in providing an interdisciplinary collection of classic and cutting-edge articles in the field of food and culture studies that combine theory with ethnographic and historical data.

Table of Contents

Food and Culture: A Reader Revised Edition Table of Contents (5/21/07) with "blurbs"

Foreword from The Gastronomical Me

Introduction to the Second Edition

The Problem of Changing Food Habits, Margaret Mead Mead's early government work explores recommendations for changing American food habits and establishes the importance of food studies

Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption, Roland Barthes French structuralists explain how food acts as a system of communication and provides a body of images that mark eating situations

The Culinary Triangle, Claude Lèvi-Strauss This classic structuralist statement, often critiqued, shows how food preparation can be analyzed as a triangular semantic field, much like language

Deciphering a Meal, Mary Douglas Hebrew dietary laws are not irrational but rather precoded messages about purity, defilement, and holiness as wholeness

The Abominable Pig, Marvin Harris Materialists like Harris reject symbolic and structuralist explanations and explain food prohibitions based on economic and ecological utility

Nourishing Arts, Michel De Certeau and Luce Giard The "practice of everyday life" includes how French women constitute tradition as they carry out daily meal preparation

The Recipe, the Prescription, and the Experiment, Jack Goody Shopping lists, menus and recipes are among the earliest and most enduring evidence of written instructions for food use, reflecting significant advances in human knowledge

Time, Sugar, and Sweetness, Sidney Mintz Colonialism made high-statues sugar produced in the Caribbean into a working class staple

Anorexia Nervosa and Its Differential Diagnosis, Hilde Bruch Renowned eating disorder psychiatrist Bruch defines true anorexia nervosa as involving distorted body image, inaccurate perception of hunger, hyperactivity, and an overwhelming sense of ineffectiveness. Gender and Consumption

Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, Caroline Bynum Medieval women used food for personal religious expression, including giving food away, exuding foods from their bodies, and undertaking fasts to gain religious and cultural power

Appetite as Voice, Joan Jacobs Brumberg The origins of anorexia nervosa can be found in the nineteenth century fasting of Victorian girls, who used control of appetite as an important form of self-expression

Anorexia Nervosa: Psychopathology as the Crystallization of Culture, Susan Bordo Anorexia nervosa can be viewed as a culturally over-determined psychological disorder resulting from longstanding cultural ideologies related to mind-body dualism, control, and gender power

Feeding Hard Bodies: Food and Masculinities in Men's Fitness Magazines, Fabio Parasecoli Men's fitness magazines define masculinity through discussions of food and body, increasingly involving men in the concerns about constructing corporeal perfection and regulating consumption to build muscle and strength

The Overcooked and the Underdone: Masculinities in Japanese Food Programming, T.J.M. Holden Cooking shows featuring male chefs preponderate on Japanese television and propagate one-dimensional definitions of masculinity based on power, authority, and ownership of consumer commodities

Japanese Mothers and Obentos: The Lunch Box as Ideological State, Apparatus Anne Allison Japanese mothers, in preparing elaborate lunch boxes for their preschool children, reproduce state ideologies of power

Conflict and Deference, Marjorie DeVault In feeding others, women sometimes reproduce their own subordination by deferring to men's preferences and thus reinforce the "naturalness" of women's service and undermine progress toward reciprocal nurturance

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