Food, Power, and Agency

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Description

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.

Reviews

For those interested in exploring the connections between food and power relations, Food, Power and Agency offers an invigorating and rich account. * LSE Review of Books *
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 * Peter Scholliers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium *
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. * Charlotte Biltekoff, UC Davis, USA *
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. * Amy Bentley, New York University, USA *

Author Bio

Jrgen Martschukat is Professor of History at Erfurt University, Germany Bryant Simon is Professor of History at Temple University, USA