Making Milk: The Past, Present and Future of Our Primary Food

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

What is milk Who is it for, and what work does it do This collection of articles bring together an exciting group of the world's leading scholars from different disciplines to provide commentaries on multiple facets of the production, consumption, understanding and impact of milk on society. The book frames the emerging global discussion around philosophical and critical theoretical engagements with milk. In so doing, various chapters bring into consideration an awareness of animals, an aspect which has not yet been incorporated in these debates within these disciplines so far. This brand new research from scholars includes writing from an array of perspectives, including jurisprudence, food law, history, geography, art theory, and gender studies. It will be of use to professionals and researchers in such disciplines as anthropology, visual culture, cultural studies, development studies, food studies, environment studies, critical animal studies, and gender studies.

Reviews

Making Milk proves through its carefully researched and detail-oriented descriptions to be a helpful resource to those wanting an understanding of what milk has been over time and place, for whom it is intended, the problematic issues behind how it functions symbolically in modern societies, and finally, suggestions on how to view milk going forward. * FoodAnthropology *
Making Milk is an ambitious, fascinating, and often disturbing read It is also a hopeful read, one that offers readers a glimpse beyond the world we currently live in, beyond the Gilead of our past and of our present, and into a future beyond patriarchy, exploitation, and oppression, a future where new ways of relating with each other--men and women, humans and other animals--are possible, if we only dare to create them. * Hypatia *
Editors Mathilde Cohen and Yoriko Otomo assemble a provocative collection of strong interdisciplinary scholarship to explore milks material, affective, historical, semantic, symbolic and economic relations. * LSE Review of Books *
This book will introduce you to some of todays most exciting and creative food studies scholars as they take on the topic of milk. Each chapter approaches the topic from a different theoretical lens. The results are a series of deep and multifaceted looks at this endlessly fascinating and complex food. * E. Melanie DuPuis, Pace University, USA, and author of Nature's Perfect Food (2002) *
Milk is a political issue. These eloquent essays reveal the contentious cultural, economic, and symbolic meanings of milk from the middle ages to the posthuman world. They are a riveting account of a fluid that many of us take for granted. I was enchanted, shocked, and intrigued. * Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London, UK. *
Of the many foods ingested by humans, milk is the most laden with significance, as well as the most biochemically complex. This collection explores these layers of meaning from political, economic, environmental, symbolic and spiritual perspectives encompassing the milk of humans, other animals, and plants. Each essay is a thoughtful provocation which reframes our understanding of this profoundly relational substance and increases our respect for those who produce it. * Fiona Giles, University of Sydney, Australia, and author of Fresh Milk: The Secret Life of Breasts (2003) *
A welcome addition to strong cultural scholarship of milk. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. -- J. M. Deutsch, Drexel University * CHOICE *

Author Bio

Mathilde Cohen is Professor of Law and the Robert D. Glass Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut, USA. Cohen is a Research Fellow at the CNRS, France. Yoriko Otomo is Senior Lecturer in Law at SOAS, University of London, UK. She was recently a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Global History, University of Oxford, UK and a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Australia.