1st Edition

Taking Food Public Redefining Foodways in a Changing World

Edited By Psyche Williams Forson, Carole Counihan Copyright 2012
    656 Pages
    by Routledge

    654 Pages
    by Routledge

    The field of food studies has been growing rapidly over the last thirty years and has exploded since the turn of the millennium. Scholars from an array of disciplines have trained fresh theoretical and methodological approaches onto new dimensions of the human relationship to food. This anthology capitalizes on this particular cultural moment to bring to the fore recent scholarship that focuses on innovative ways people are recasting food in public spaces to challenge hegemonic practices and meanings. Organized into five interrelated sections on food production – consumption, performance, Diasporas, and activism –  articles aim to provide new perspectives on the changing meanings and uses of food in the twenty-first century.

    1. 1. Introduction: Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways in a
    2. Changing World, Psyche Williams-Forson and Carole
    3. Counihan

    Rethinking Production

    2. Food Industrialization and Food Power: Implications for Food

    Governance, Tim Lang

    3. Women and Food Chains: The Gendered Politics of Food,

    Patricia Allen and Carolyn Sachs

    4. Can We Sustain Sustainable Agriculture? Learning from

    Small-scale Producer-suppliers in Canada and the UK

    5. Things Became Scarce: Food Availability and Accessibility in

    Santiago de Cuba Then and Now, Hanna Garth

    6. Capitalism and its Discontents: Back-to-the-Lander and

    Freegan Foodways in Rural Organ, Joan Gross

    7. Cultural Geographies in Practice: The South Central Farm:

    Dilemmas in Practicing the Public, Laura Lawson

    8. Charlas Cullinarias: Women Speaking from Their Public

    Kitchens, Meredith E. Abarca

    Rethinking Food Consumption

    9. Inequality in Obesigenic Environments: Fast Food Destiny

    in New York City, N.O.A. Kwate, Chun-Yip Yau, Ji-Meng

    Loh, and Donya Williams

    10. Physical Disabilities and Food Access Among Limited

    Resource Households, Caroline B. Webber, Jeffrey Sobal,

    and Jamie S. Dollahite

    11. Other Women Cooked for My Husband: Negotiating

    Gender, Food, and Identities in an African

    American/Ghanaian Household, Psyche Williams-Forson

    12. Going Beyond the Normative, White, "Post-racial" Vegan

    Epistemology, Amie Breeze Harper

    13. Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam, C. Rouse and J. Hoskins

    14. Gleaning from Gluttony: An Australian Youth Subculture

    Confront the Ethics of Waste, Ferne Edward and David

    Mercer

    15. If They Only Knew: Color Blindness and Universalism in

    California Alternative Food Institutions, Julie Guthmann

    Performing Food Cultures

    16. Feeding Desire: Food, Domesticity and Challenges to

    Heteropatriarchy, Anita Mannur

    17. Towards Queering Food Studies: Foodways,

    Heternormativity, and Hungry Women in Chicana Lesbian

    Writing, Julia C. Ehrhardt

    18. Metrosexuality Can Stuff It: Beef Consumption as

    (Heteromasculine) Fortification, C. Wesley Buerkle

    19. "Please Pass the Chicken Tits": Rethinking Men and

    Cooking at an Urban Firehouse, Jonathan Deutsch

    20. Magic Metabolisms: Competitive Eating and the Formation

    of an American Bodily Idea, Adrienne Johnson

    21. Vintage Breast Milk: Exploring the Discursive Limits of

    Feminine Fluids, Penny Van Esterik

    22. Do the Hands that Feed Us Hold Us Back?: Implications of

    Assisted Eating, Physical Disabilities and Food Access

    Among Limited Resource Households, G. Denise Lance

    23. Will Tweet for Food, Alison Caldwell

    24. Visualizing 21st Century Foodscapes: Using Photographs

    and New Media in Food Studies, Melissa Salazar

    Food Diasporas Taking Food Global

    25. Justice at a Price: Regulation and Alienation in the Global

    Economy, Daniel Reichman

    26. From the Bottom Up: The Global Expansion of Chinese

    Vegetable Trade for New York City Markets, Valerie

    Imbruce

    27. SPAM and Fast-food ‘Glocalization’ in the Philippines:

    Perspectives from the Provincial Philippines, Ty

    Matejowsky

    28. The Envios of San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca: Food, home,

    and transnationalism, J.I. Grieshop

    29. Consuming Interests: Water, Rum, and Coca-Colas from

    Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland

    Chiapas, June Nash

    30. Feeding the Jewish Soul in the Delta Diaspora, Marcie

    Cohen Ferris

    31. The Yoruba Body, Julie Boticello

    32. Tequila Shots, Marie Sarita Gaytan

    33. The Political Uses of Culture: Maize Production and the GM

    Corn Debates, Elizabeth Fitting 

    Food Activism

    34. Practicing Food Democracy: A Pragmatic Politics of

    Transformation, Neva Hassanein

    35. Food, Place and Authenticity: Local Food and the Sustainable Tourism Experience, Rebecca Sims

    36. Mexicans Taking Food Public: The Power of the Kitchen in the San Luis Valley, Carole Counihan

    37. A Feminist Examination of Community Kitchen in Peru and Bolivia, Kathleen Schroeder

    38. Visceral Difference: Variations in Feeling (Slow) Food, Allison Hayes-Conroy and Jessica Hayes-Conroy

    39. Expanding Access and Alternatives: Building Farmers’ Markets in Low-Income Communities, Lisa Markowitz

    40. Vegetarians: Uninvited, Uncomfortable, or Special Guests at the Table of the Alternative Food Economy, Carol Morris and James Kirwan

    41. Advocacy and Everyday Health Activism among Persons with Celiac Disease: A comparison of Eager, Reluctant, and Non-Activists, Denise Copelton

    42. The Year of Eating Politically, Chad Lavin

    43. From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: The Challenge of Social Movements, Eric Holt-Giménez

    Biography

     Psyche Wililams-Forson is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park and an affiliate faculty member of the Women's Studies and African American Studies departments and the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. She authored the award-winning book (American Folklore Society), Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (2006). Her new research explores the role of the value market as a immediate site of food acquisition and a project on class, consumption, and citizenship among African Americans by examining domestic interiors from the late nineteenth-century to the early twentieth-century.

    Carole Counihan is Professor of Anthropology at Millersville University and editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways journal. She is author of The Anthropology of Food and Body (1999), Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence (2004), and A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado (2009). She is editor of Food in the USA (2002) and, with Penny Van Esterik, of Food and Culture (1997, 2008). She has been a visiting professor at Boston University, the University of Cagliari, the University of Gastronomic Sciences (Italy), and the University of Malta. Her new research focuses on food activism in Italy.

    "If there was ever any question about food being a legitimate subject of scholarly study, Taking Food Public is the answer. These essays demonstrate beyond doubt that studying food can teach students about the most important issues facing today’s societies, not only those related to agricultural production and consumption, but also broader matters such as governance, power, immigration, gender, international relations, and, above all, democracy and social justice. This book should be an easy choice for any number of exciting courses."—Marion Nestle, Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University

    "Taking Food Public is a simply brilliant collection of carefully selected, highly accessible writings that demonstrates how a good anthology is so much more than the sum of its parts. This is a vital portal into the world of food and will be an essential addition to reading lists on food-related courses across the humanities and social sciences."—Colin Sage, Geography, University College Cork, Ireland

    "Carol Counihan and Psyche Williams-Forson organize some of the best work of the discipline of food studies into accessible teaching units that represent diverse transects of our food and nutrition systems: from production to consumption; from private and cultural identity "at home" to the implications of Diaspora; from food insecurity, junk food, and food deserts to activists demanding the democratization of economic and social policy. Taking Food Public reveals how both an academic movement and broader social movements are 'consciously shaping food in the public sphere.'"—Anne Bellows, Gender and Food/Nutrition, Universität Hohenheim, Germany