Conversations With Food (Sociology)

Conversations With Food offers readers an array of essays that reveal the power of food (and its absence) to transform relationships between the human and non-human realms; to define national, colonial, and postcolonial cultures; to help instantiate race, gender, and class relations; and to serve as the basis for policymaking and politics from one century to the next. Food functions in these contexts as items in religious or secular law, as objects with which to bargain or over which to fight, as literary trope, and as a way to achieve (or to damage) health-individual or collective. The anthology's subject matter ranges from Ancient Greece to the posthuman fairy underworld; from the codifying of French culinary heritage to strategic marketing of Nabisco 100-calorie snack packs; from the European famine following the Second World War to the lush and exotic cuisines of culinary tourism today. Anyone with an interest in discovering the disciplinary breadth and depth of food studies will find Conversations With Food an engaging and illuminating read.The anthology is ideally suited for introductory and advanced courses in food studies, as it includes essays by scholars in a range of humanities and social science disciplines: American studies, Classics, cultural anthropology, cultural history, feminist theory and gender studies, the history of science and medicine, media studies and communications, nutrition, political history, and theatre studies. A distinctive feature of Conversations With Food is the cross-disciplinary linkages each author draws between their own work and other essays in the volume. This thematic and conceptual intercalation, when read with the editors' introduction, makes the collection an exceptionally strong representation of the field of food studies. Perhaps equally important, the volume shows that food is present in almost any area of inquiry if one knows where to look.