Food in Global History

by Grew,Raymond

• ISBN13: 9780813338842
• ISBN10: 0813338840
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-12-07
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Social scientists have studied foods in many different ways. Historians have most often studied the history of specific foods, and anthropologists have emphasized the role of food in religious rituals and group identities. Sociologists have looked primarily at food as an indicator of social class and a factor in social ties, and nutritionists have focused on changing patterns of consumption and applied medical knowledge to study the effects of diet on public health. Some scholars from these and other disciplines have studied the economic and political connections created around commerce in food, regionally and around the world. Now, all of these perspectives are brought together in a single volume. Fifteen specialists currently working in Canada, England, France, Guatemala, Norway, and the United States come together to apply their expert knowledge of food and food consumption in a new context, global history. In general essays and case studies, they reflect on the connections across space and time in what people eat and assess historical patterns of change in the human diet.The book begins with a consideration of the relationship between food and global history. Part One considers the global history of the ecology of food production, the contrasting impact of New World foods on India and China, the effects of global tourism, and the interaction between identity, migration, and diet. The selections in Part Two study the impact of public policy, comparing the countries of the former Soviet bloc with Scandinavia and Western Europe, analyzing the effects of international assistance on West Africa, and looking at changes in childhood nutrition in developing countries. Chapters in Part Three study nutritional change, the dietary effects of increased wealth, and the "Mad Cow" crisis in terms of global systems. Part Four investigates the relationship of global change to the ideologies and practices of the family meal, of food and cultural identity in Japan, and the American counterculture.

Author Biography

Raymond Grew is professor of history at the University of Michigan. For more than twenty years he was editor of the international quarterly Comparative Studies in Society and History.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Food and Global History	1	(32)
Raymond Grew
Part 1 The History of Food in Global Perspectives
Circles of Growing and Eating: The Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture	33	(25)
Harriet Friedmann
The Impact of New World Food Crops on the Diet and Economy of China and India, 1600-1900	58	(21)
Sucheta Mazumdar
All the World's a Restaurant: On the Global Gastronomics of Tourism and Travel	79	(13)
Rebecca L. Spang
On ``Cabbages and Kings'': The Politics of Jewish Identity in Post-Colonial French Society and Cusine	92	(17)
Joelle Bahloul
Part 2 Public Policy and Global Science
Food Policies, Nutrition Policies, and their Influence on Processes of Change: European Examples	109	(22)
Elisabet Helsing
Food Policy Research in a Global Context: The West African Sahel	131	(18)
Della McMillan
Thomas Reardon
Childhood Nutrition in Developing Countries and Its Policy Consequences	149	(22)
Noel W. Solomons
Part 3 Global Systems and Human Diet
Food System Globalization, Eating Transformations, and Nutrition Transitions	171	(23)
Jeffrey Sobal
Fat and Sugar in the Global Diet: Dietary Diversity in the Nutrition Transition	194	(13)
Adam Drewnowski
The `Mad Cow' Crisis: A Global Perspective	207	(10)
Claude Fischler
Part 4 Eating Together Globally
The Family Meal and Its Significance in Global Times	217	(23)
Alex McIntosh
We Eat Each Other's Food to Nourish our Body: The Global and the Local as Mutually Constituent Forces	240	(33)
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Food and the Counterculture: A Story of Bread and Politics	273	(20)
Warren Belasco
List of Contributors	293