Conversations With Food - (Sociology) by Dorothy Chansky & Sarah W Tracy (Paperback)

About the Book

"Conversations With Food offers readers an array of essays revealing 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. 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 improve or harm health--individual or collective. The anthology ranges from Ancient Greece to the posthuman fairy underworld; from the codifying of French culinary heritage to the strategic marketing of 100-calorie snacks; from the European famine after the Second World War to the lush and exotic cuisines of culinary tourism today. Conversations With Food will engage anyone interested in discovering the disciplinary breadth and depth of food studies. The anthology is ideally suited for introductory and advanced courses in food studies, as it includes essays in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, and each author draws cross-disciplinary linkages 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." -- Amazon.

Book Synopsis

Conversations With Food offers readers an array of essays revealing 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. 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 improve or harm health--individual or collective. The anthology ranges from Ancient Greece to the posthuman fairy underworld; from the codifying of French culinary heritage to the strategic marketing of 100-calorie snacks; from the European famine after the Second World War to the lush and exotic cuisines of culinary tourism today. Conversations With Food will engage anyone interested in discovering the disciplinary breadth and depth of food studies. The anthology is ideally suited for introductory and advanced courses in food studies, as it includes essays in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, and each author draws cross-disciplinary linkages 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.

Review Quotes

"Conversations With Food is an edited volume like no other. . . . [T]hese thirteen chapters comprise a choose-your-own-adventure for food studies, as the editors invite readers to mix and match chapters to tease out unexpected, synergistic connections. Authors, too, link their own chapters to others in the volume, providing multiple routes through the text. Such an arrangement illuminates the bonds between seemingly disparate phenomena. Readers can discover the relationships between hotdogs in Houston and the globalization of French cuisine, the role of race in Ancel Keys's starvation experiments and U.S. permaculture, or how notions of impurity guide both the theorization of fermentation and early twentieth-century food manufacturing practices. . . . [T]his volume showcases food studies at its best, its most inclusive, and its most exciting: as a truly interdisciplinary home for conversations with and about food."

Emily J.H. Contois, University of Tulsa
Author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture

"Like a test kitchen for food studies scholarship, Conversations With Food invites readers to sample its eclectic offerings, to explore novel fusions of diverse scholarly perspectives, to mix and remix and become pleasantly overwhelmed by the seemingly endless variations on "food and . . . ". This collection of essays from historians, epidemiologists, literary scholars, nutritionists, anthropologists, and others explores food and nutrition from microbial interactions to international politics, tackling contexts as diverse as ballpark franks, posthuman dietetics, culinary tourism, and voluntary starvation (for science). Readers new to food studies are sure to find morsels that whet their appetites, and scholars in the field will have plenty to sink their teeth into as well."

Andrew R. Ruis, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Author of Eating to Learn, Learning to Eat: The Origins of School Lunch in the United States

"Sweeping in scope and diverse in approaches, the essays in this transhistorical, global, transdisciplinary collection vividly articulate the many, complex, and fascinating dimensions of food. Imaginative curation of essays renders Conversations With Food a standout among many recent food studies anthologies. . . . It is almost as if the reader is listening to lively exchanges among these scholars - about laboratories and ballparks, microbes and monoculture, heritage cuisine and single-serve packaging, or diplomatic feasts and food stamps - through which they discover unexpected relationships and resonances between seemingly disparate subjects."

Ann Folino White, Michigan State University
Author of Plowed Under: Food Policy Protests and Performance in New Deal America;
Co-editor of Food and Theatre on the World Stage