Grounded in the work of Roland Barthes, Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault, this exciting book uses food as a lens to examine agency and the political, economic, social, and cultural power which underlies every choice of food and every act of eating.
The book is divided into three parts - National Characters; Anthropological Situations; Health – with each of the eight chapters exploring the power of food as well as the power relationships reflected and refracted through food. Featuring contributions from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars from around the world, the book offers case studies of a diverse range -from German cuisine and ethnicity in San Francisco after the Gold Rush, through Italian cuisine in Japan, to ‘ultragreasy bureks’ and teenage fast food consumption in Slovenia.
By directly engaging with questions of agency and power, the book pushes the field of food studies in new directions. An important read for students and researchers in food studies, food history, anthropology of food, and sociology of food.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Food, Power and Agency
Jürgen Martschukat, University of Erfurt, Germany, and Bryant Simon, Temple University, USA
Section One: National Characters
1. The Power of Food: Immigrant German Restaurants in San Francisco and the Formation of Ethnic Identities
Leonard Schmieding, Georgetown University, USA
2. Italian Cuisine in Japan and the Power of Networking among Cooks
Rossella Ceccarini, Independent Anthropologist, Italy, and Keiichi Sawaguchi, Taisho University, Japan
Section Two: Anthropological Situations
3. Waiters, Writers, and Power: From Dining Room Commanders to the Emotional Proletariat
Christoph Ribbat, Paderborn University, Germany
4. The Geography of Silence: Food and Tragedy in Globalizing America
Bryant Simon, Temple University, USA
Section Three: Health
5. Making Food Matter: 'Scientific Eating' and the Struggle for Healthy Selves
Nina Mackert, Erfurt University, Germany
6. 'What Diet Can Do': Running and Eating Right in 1970s America
Jürgen Martschukat, Erfurt University, Germany
7. Being too Big — As 'Objectivation of Deviance' from the Societal Order
Eva Barlösius, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany
8. When the Grease Runs Through the Paper: On the Consumption of Ultragreasy Bureks
Jernej Mlekuž, Slovenian Migration Institute, Slovenia
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Jürgen Martschukat is Professor of History at Erfurt University, Germany
Bryant Simon is Professor of History at Temple University, USA
Review :
For those interested in exploring the connections between food and power relations, Food, Power and Agency offers an invigorating and rich account.
How power and agency operate in and through food is the essence of this book, which questions ‘good’ and ‘bad’ regarding such varied issues as taste, eating habits, health, and cooks’ work. The book exposes the omnipresence of power relations in mundane and special occasions, and makes indispensable reading for interpreting past and present foodways
With startling clarity and impressive breadth, this concise but powerful collection of essays from around the world provides new insights into the subtle way that power and agency operate through the mundane realm of eating, food systems, and norms of dietary health. This is essential reading for anyone interested in food OR power – but its great contribution is to show how those interests must, inevitably, intersect.
From the subjugation of workers in a chicken processing plant to the unstable potency of cuisine and identity, Food, Power, and Agency reminds us that food is far from a mundane subject. Framed by an illuminating introduction, the collection demonstrates in fresh detail that food is the ideal medium though which to understand the complexity of agency, the vicissitudes of power, and the significance of symbols.
