Research Topic Starters

Confronting the role of foodie culture in gentrification Having "discovered" the flavors of barbacoa, bibimbap, bánh mi, sambusas, and pupusas, white middle-class eaters are increasingly venturing into historically segregated neighborhoods in search of "authentic" eateries run by--and for--immigrants and people of color. Fueled by media attention and capitalized on by developers, this interest in "ethnic" food and places contributes to gentrification, and the very people who produced these vibrant foodscapes are increasingly excluded from them. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, geographer Pascale Joassart-Marcelli traces the transformation of three urban San Diego neighborhoods whose foodscapes are shifting from serving the needs of longtime minoritized residents who face limited food access to pleasing the tastes of wealthier and whiter newcomers. The $16 Taco illustrates how food can both emplace and displace immigrants, shedding light on the larger process of gentrification and the emotional, cultural, economic, and physical displacement it produces. It also highlights the contested food geographies of immigrants and people of color by documenting their contributions to the cultural food economy and everyday struggles to reclaim ethnic foodscapes and lead flourishing and hunger-free lives. Joassart-Marcelli offers valuable lessons for cities where food-related development projects transform neighborhoods at the expense of the communities they claim to celebrate.

Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald's have long symbolized capitalism's villainous effects on our nation's most vulnerable communities. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who--in the troubled years after King's assassination--believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. Synthesizing years of research, Franchise tells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to whither.

The phrase dude food likely brings to mind a range of images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal; crazed sports fans demolishing plates of radioactively hot wings; barbecued or bacon-wrapped . . . anything. But there is much more to the phenomenon of dude food than what's on the plate. Emily J. H. Contois's provocative book begins with the dude himself--a man who retains a degree of masculine privilege but doesn't meet traditional standards of economic and social success or manly self-control. In the Great Recession's aftermath, dude masculinity collided with food producers and marketers desperate to find new customers. The result was a wave of new diet sodas and yogurts marketed with dude-friendly stereotypes, a transformation of food media, and weight loss programs just for guys. In a work brimming with fresh insights about contemporary American food media and culture, Contois shows how the gendered world of food production and consumption has influenced the way we eat and how food itself is central to the contest over our identities.

Food Ethics: The Basics is a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the ethical dimensions of the production and consumption of food. It offers an impartial exploration of the most prominent ethical questions relating to food and agriculture, including: Should we eat animals? Are locally produced foods ethically superior to globally sourced foods? Do people in affluent nations have a responsibility to help reduce global hunger? Should we embrace bioengineered foods? What should be the role of government in promoting food safety and public health? This second edition has been revised and updated throughout, not only to take in the latest empirical and policy information, but also to address the impact of major issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, AI and machine learning, and the rapid growth of the "gig economy." Using extensive data and real-world examples, as well as providing suggestions for further reading, Food Ethics: The Basics is an ideal introduction for anyone interested in the ethics of food.

From the author of Ten Restaurants That Changed America, an exploration of food's cultural importance and its crucial role throughout human history "A rich and fascinating narrative that reaches deep into the historical and cultural larder of societal experience, powerfully illustrating the myriad ways that food matters as an essential condiment for humanity."--Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack Why does food matter? Historically, food has not always been considered a serious subject on par with, for instance, a performance art like opera or a humanities discipline like philosophy. Necessity, ubiquity, and repetition contribute to the apparent banality of food, but these attributes don't capture food's emotional and cultural range, from the quotidian to the exquisite.   In this short, passionate book, Paul Freedman makes the case for food's vital importance, stressing its crucial role in the evolution of human identity and human civilizations. Freedman presents a highly readable and illuminating account of food's unique role in our lives. It is a way to express community and celebration, but it can also be divisive. This wide-ranging book is a must-read for food lovers and all those interested in how cultures and identities are formed and maintained.

In Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History, Michael D. Wise confronts four common myths about Indigenous food history: that most Native communities did not practice agriculture; that Native people were primarily hunters; that Native people were usually hungry; and that Native people never developed taste or cuisine. Wise argues that colonial expectations of food and agriculture have long structured ways of seeing (and of not seeing) Native land and labor. Combining original historical research with interdisciplinary perspectives and informed by the work of Indigenous food sovereignty advocates and activists, this study sheds new light on the historical roles of Native American cuisine in American history and the significance of ongoing colonial processes in present-day discussions about the place of Native foods and Native history in our evolving worlds of taste, justice, and politics.  

What we learn when an anthropologist and a historian talk about food.   From the origins of agriculture to contemporary debates over culinary authenticity, Ways of Eating introduces readers to world food history and food anthropology. Through engaging stories and historical deep dives, Benjamin A. Wurgaft and Merry I. White offer new ways to understand food in relation to its natural and cultural histories and the social rules that shape our meals.   Wurgaft and White use vivid storytelling to bring food practices to life, weaving stories of Panamanian coffee growers, medieval women beer makers, and Japanese knife forgers. From the Venetian spice trade to the Columbian Exchange, from Roman garum to Vietnamese nớc chấm, Ways of Eating provides an absorbing account of world food history and anthropology. Migration, politics, and the dynamics of group identity all shape what we eat, and we can learn to trace these social forces from the plate to the kitchen, the factory, and the field.

Exposes and explores the prevalence of racist restaurant branding in the United States  Aunt Jemima is the face of pancake mix. Uncle Ben sells rice. Chef Rastus shills for Cream of Wheat. Stereotyped Black faces and bodies have long promoted retail food products that are household names. Much less visible to the public are the numerous restaurants that deploy unapologetically racist logos, themes, and architecture. These marketing concepts, which center nostalgia for a racist past and commemoration of our racist present, reveal the deeply entrenched American investment in anti-blackness. Drawing on wide-ranging sources from the late 1800s to the present, Burgers in Blackface gives a powerful account, and rebuke, of historical and contemporary racism in restaurant branding. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Available for the first time in English, Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra's magisterial history of the foods and eating habits of Puerto Rico unfolds into an examination of Puerto Rican society from the Spanish conquest to the present. Each chapter is centered on an iconic Puerto Rican foodstuff, from rice and cornmeal to beans, roots, herbs, fish, and meat. Ortíz shows how their production and consumption connects with race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and cultural appropriation in Puerto Rico. Using a multidisciplinary approach and a sweeping array of sources, Ortíz asks whether Puerto Ricans really still are what they ate. Whether judging by a host of social and economic factors -- or by the foods once eaten that have now disappeared -- Ortíz concludes that the nature of daily life in Puerto Rico has experienced a sea change.

Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction is the prominent broadcaster's pathbreaking tour of the world's vanishing foods and his argument for why they matter now more than ever. Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these--rice, wheat, and corn--provide 50 percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still: 95 percent of milk consumed in the United States comes from a single breed of cow, while one in four beers drunk around the world is the product of one brewer. In Eating to Extinction, the distinguished BBC food journalist Dan Saladino travels the world to experience and document our most at-risk foods before it's too late. From an Indigenous American chef refining precolonial recipes to farmers tending Geechee red peas on the Sea Islands of Georgia, the individuals profiled in Eating to Extinction are essential guides to treasured foods the rest of us have forgotten or didn't know existed.

A fascinating exploration of beer, ancient and contemporary, and its role in shaping human societyBeer is and has always been more than an intoxicating beverage. Ancient beer produced in the Near East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas was a food that had a remarkable role in shaping the development of agriculture and some of the earliest state-level societies. Its invention 13,000 years ago was one of the fundamental motivations for the domestication of grains around the world. In early states, the control over the technological knowledge and resources to produce beer contributed to social hierarchies. Beer even likely provided the capital to motivate laborers to construct the ancient pyramids and other large-scale public works. The fermentation of beer also provided a healthy and safe alternative to the contaminated drinking water in early states and it continues to do so among rural Indigenous populations today. Beer is a social lubricant that brings people together and, in many Indigenous societies both past and present, is a gift connecting people to their ancestors. The same innovations pioneered by ancient brewers are transforming the types of ingredients and flavors produced by the global craft beer industry.In Beer, archaeologist John W. Arthur takes readers on an exciting global journey to explore the origins, development, and recipes of ancient beer. This unique book focuses on past and present non-industrial beers, highlighting their significance in peoples' lives through four themes: innovating new technologies, ensuring health and well-being, building economic and political statuses, and imbuing life with ritual and religious connections. As this book amply illustrates, beer has shaped our world in remarkable ways for the past 13,000 years.

Inequality in America manifests in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in how we eat. From her years of field research, sociologist and ethnographer Priya Fielding-Singh brings us into the kitchens of dozens of families from varied educational, economic, and ethnoracial backgrounds to explore how--and why--we eat the way we do. We get to know four families intimately: the Bakers, a Black family living below the federal poverty line; the Williamses, a working-class white family just above it; the Ortegas, a middle-class Latinx family; and the Cains, an affluent white family. Whether it's worrying about how far pantry provisions can stretch or whether there's enough time to get dinner on the table before soccer practice, all families have unique experiences that reveal their particular dietary constraints and challenges. By diving into the nuances of these families' lives, Fielding-Singh lays bare the limits of efforts narrowly focused on improving families' food access. Instead, she reveals how being rich or poor in America impacts something even more fundamental than the food families can afford: these experiences impact the very meaning of food itself.

A timely self-examination of the "mixed" American experience featuring exclusive recipes and photographs from the author's multicultural family. As citizens continue to evolve and diversify within the United States, the ingredients that make up each flavorful household are waiting to be discovered and devoured. In Colorful Palate, author Raj Tawney shares his coming-of-age memoir as a young man born into an Indian, Puerto Rican, and Italian-American family, his struggles with understanding his own identity, and the mouthwatering flavors of the melting pot from within his own childhood kitchen. While the world outside can be cruel and unforgiving, it's even more complicated for a mixed-race kid, unsure of his place in the world. Turning to his mother and grandmother for guidance, Tawney assists in the kitchen, providing intimate moments and candor as he listened to the tales behind each culinary delicacy and the women who perfected it. Each lovingly prepared meal offered another opportunity to learn more about his extraordinary heritage. The ability to create delicious fare with his family wasn't just a duty for the grand ladies who raised him; it was a survival tactic for navigating new and unknown cultures, not always willing to accept them at first or even a hundredth glance. As Tawney examines both himself and his loved ones through the formative stages of his life, from boyhood through adulthood, he begins to realize, through all of the chaos and confusion, just how "American" he actually was.

Traditional food studies textbooks tend to emphasize theoretical concepts and text-based approaches. Yet food is sensory, tactile, and experiential. Food Studies: A Hands-on Guide is the first book to provide a practical introduction to food studies. Offering a unique, innovative approach to learning and teaching, Willa Zhen presents creative hands-on activities that can easily be done in a traditional classroom - without the need for a student kitchen. Major theories and key concepts in food studies are covered in an engaging, tangible way, alongside topics such as food production, consumption, technology, identity and culture, and globalization. A fantastic resource for supporting student engagement and learning, the book features: - practical activities, such as grinding grains to learn about the importance of food technology; working with restaurant menus to understand changes in food trends, tastes, and ingredients; writing food poetry; and many more - pedagogical features such as learning objectives, discussion questions, suggested readings, and a glossary - a companion website offering lesson plans, worksheets, and links to additional resources, found here: https://onlineresources.bloomsbury.com/cw/food-studies/. This is the perfect introduction for students of food studies, anthropology of food, food geography, food hospitality, sociology of food, food history, and gastronomy.

An "all-you-can-eat" tour of American life in the postwar period, told through the foods we loved. Silver Winner of the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Popular Culture category Casseroles, Can Openers, and Jell-O provides insight on how American food culture developed during the early years of the Cold War. Highlighting gender roles, the promotion of democracy and capitalism, and the impact of mass market advertising, the book draws on cookbooks, popular magazines, television advertisements, government publications, and industry pamphlets to paint a vivid picture of what Americans ate and how food was enlisted as a symbol of America's postwar dominance. Featuring eighty recipes, the book shows how the food industry promoted new processed foods to an increasingly industrialized nation. For anyone wanting to better understand how America's food culture developed during the mid-twentieth century and for those who were raised on TV dinners and Campbell's soup, the book offers an engaging and evocative look at the story of American cuisine during the early years of the Cold War.

An indispensable resource for exploring food and faith, this two-volume set offers information on food-related religious beliefs, customs, and practices from around the world. Why do Catholics eat fish on Fridays? Why are there retirement homes for aged cows in India? What culture holds ceremonies to welcome the first salmon? More than five billion people worldwide claim a religious identity that shapes the way they think about themselves, how they act, and what they eat. Food, Feasts, and Faith: An Encyclopedia of Food Culture in World Religions explores how the food we eat every day often serves purposes other than to keep us healthy and stay alive: we eat to express our faith and to adhere to ethnic or cultural traditions that are part of who we are. This book provides readers with an understanding of the rich world of food and faith. It contains more than 200 alphabetically arranged entries that describe the beliefs and customs of well-established major world religions and sects as well as those of smaller faith communities and new religious movements. The entries cover topics such as religious food rules, religious festivals and symbolic foods, and vegetarianism and veganism, as well as general themes such as rites of passage, social justice, hospitality, and compassion. Each entry on religion explains what the religious dietary laws and guidelines are and how these were interpreted and put into practice historically and in modern settings. The coverage also includes important festivals and feast days as well as significant religious figures and organizations. Additionally, some 160 sidebars provide examples and more detailed information as well as fun facts.

Winner of the 2018 First Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Food and Society For the past four decades, increasing numbers of Americans have started paying greater attention to the food they eat, buying organic vegetables, drinking fine wines, and seeking out exotic cuisines. Yet they are often equally passionate about the items they refuse to eat: processed foods, generic brands, high-carb meals. While they may care deeply about issues like nutrition and sustainable agriculture, these discriminating diners also seek to differentiate themselves from the unrefined eater, the common person who lives on junk food. Discriminating Taste argues that the rise of gourmet, ethnic, diet, and organic foods must be understood in tandem with the ever-widening income inequality gap. Offering an illuminating historical perspective on our current food trends, S. Margot Finn draws numerous parallels with the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, an era infamous for its class divisions, when gourmet dinners, international cuisines, slimming diets, and pure foods first became fads. Examining a diverse set of cultural touchstones ranging from Ratatouille to The Biggest Loser, Finn identifies the key ways that "good food" has become conflated with high status. She also considers how these taste hierarchies serve as a distraction, leading middle-class professionals to focus on small acts of glamorous and virtuous consumption while ignoring their class's larger economic stagnation. A provocative look at the ideology of contemporary food culture, Discriminating Taste teaches us to question the maxim that you are what you eat.  

Ethnic American Food Today introduces readers to the myriad ethnic food cultures in the U.S. today. Entries are organized alphabetically by nation and present the background and history of each food culture along with explorations of the place of that food in mainstream American society today. Many of the entries draw upon ethnographic research and personal experience, giving insights into the meanings of various ethnic food traditions as well as into what, how, and why people of different ethnicities are actually eating today. The entries look at foodways--the network of activities surrounding food itself--as well as the beliefs and aesthetics surrounding that food, and the changes that have occurred over time and place. They also address stereotypes of that food culture and the culture's influence on American eating habits and menus, describing foodways practices in both private and public contexts, such as restaurants, groceries, social organizations, and the contemporary world of culinary arts. Recipes of representative or iconic dishes are included. This timely two-volume encyclopedia addresses the complexity--and richness--of both ethnicity and food in America today.

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015-2016 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, Adult Non-Fiction category Finalist in the Culinary History category of the 2016 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards​ From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express takes readers on a compelling journey from the California Gold Rush to the present, letting readers witness both the profusion of Chinese restaurants across the United States and the evolution of many distinct American-Chinese iconic dishes from chop suey to General Tso's chicken. Along the way, historian Haiming Liu explains how the immigrants adapted their traditional food to suit local palates, and gives readers a taste of Chinese cuisine embedded in the bittersweet story of Chinese Americans.   Treating food as a social history, Liu explores why Chinese food changed and how it has influenced American culinary culture, and how Chinese restaurants have become places where shared ethnic identity is affirmed--not only for Chinese immigrants but also for American Jews. The book also includes a look at national chains like P. F. Chang's and a consideration of how Chinese food culture continues to spread around the globe.    Drawing from hundreds of historical and contemporary newspaper reports, journal articles, and writings on food in both English and Chinese, From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express represents a groundbreaking piece of scholarly research. It can be enjoyed equally as a fascinating set of stories about Chinese migration, cultural negotiation, race and ethnicity, diverse flavored Chinese cuisine and its share in American food market today.

Today, more than ever, talking about food improves the eating of it. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson argues that conversation can even trump consumption. Where many works look at the production, preparation, and consumption of food, Word of Mouth captures the language that explains culinary practices. Explanation is more than an elaboration here: how we talk about food says a great deal about the world around us and our place in it.  What does it mean, Ferguson asks, to cook and consume in a globalized culinary world subject to vertiginous change?  Answers to this question demand a mastery of food talk in all its forms and applications. To prove its case, Word of Mouth draws on a broad range of cultural documents from interviews, cookbooks, and novels to comic strips, essays, and films. Although the United States supplies the primary focus of Ferguson's explorations, the French connection remains vital. American food culture comes of age in dialogue with French cuisine even as it strikes out on its own. In the twenty-first century, culinary modernity sets haute food against haute cuisine, creativity against convention, and the individual dish over the communal meal. Ferguson finds a new level of sophistication in what we thought that we already knew: the real pleasure in eating comes through knowing how to talk about it.

Available for the first time in English, Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra's magisterial history of the foods and eating habits of Puerto Rico unfolds into an examination of Puerto Rican society from the Spanish conquest to the present. Each chapter is centered on an iconic Puerto Rican foodstuff, from rice and cornmeal to beans, roots, herbs, fish, and meat. Ortíz shows how their production and consumption connects with race, ethnicity, gender, social class, and cultural appropriation in Puerto Rico. Using a multidisciplinary approach and a sweeping array of sources, Ortíz asks whether Puerto Ricans really still are what they ate. Whether judging by a host of social and economic factors -- or by the foods once eaten that have now disappeared -- Ortíz concludes that the nature of daily life in Puerto Rico has experienced a sea change.

"What's for dinner?" has always been a complicated question. The locavore movement has politicized food and challenged us to rethink the answer in new and radical ways. These days, questions about where our food comes from have moved beyond 100-mile-dieters into the mainstream. Celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters, alternative food gurus such as Michael Pollan, and numerous other popular and academic commentators have all talked about the importance of understanding the sources and transformation of food on a human scale. In The Politics of the Pantry, Michael Mikulak interrogates these narratives - what he calls "storied food" - in food culture. As with any story, however, it is important to ask: who is telling it? Who is the audience? What assumptions are being made? Mikulak examines competing narratives of food, pleasure, sustainability, and value that have emerged from the growing sustainable food movement as well as food's past and present relationship to environmentalism in order to understand the potential and the limits of food politics. He also considers whether or not sustainable food practices can address questions about health, environmental sustainability, and local economic development, while at the same time articulating an ethical globalization. An innovative blend of academic analysis, poetic celebration, and autobiography, The Politics of the Pantry provides anyone interested in the future of food and the emergence of a green economy with a better understanding of how what we eat is transforming the world.

Known for his entertaining investigations into culinary practice, Massimo Montanari turns his hungry eye to the phenomenon of food culture, food lore, cooking methods, and eating habits throughout history. An irresistible buffet of one hundred concise and engaging essays, this collection provides stimulating food for thought for those curious about one of life's most fundamental pleasures. Focusing on the selection, preparation, and mythology of food, Montanari traverses such subjects as the status of the pantry over the centuries, the various strategies of cooking over time, the gastronomy of famine, the science of flavors, the changing characteristics of convivial rituals, the customs of the table, and the ever-evolving identity of food. He shows that cooking not only is a decisive part of our cultural heritage but also communicates essential information about our material and intellectual well-being. From the invention of basic bread making to chocolate's reputation for decadence, Montanari positions food culture as a lens through which we can plot changes in historical values and social and economic trends. Even the biblical tale of Jacob buying Esau's birthright for a bowl of lentils is a text full of essential meaning, representing civilization's important shift from a hunting to an agrarian society. Readers of all backgrounds will enjoy these delectable insights and their easy consumption in one companionable volume.

Beyond Hummus and Falafel is the story of how food has come to play a central role in how Palestinian citizens of Israel negotiate life and a shared cultural identity within a tense political context. At the household level, Palestinian women govern food culture in the home, replicating tradition and acting as agents of change and modernization, carefully adopting and adapting mainstream Jewish culinary practices and technologies in the kitchen. Food is at the center of how Arab culture minorities define and shape the boundaries and substance of their identity within Israel.

Contributors explore the relationship between food and the production of ideology. Edible Ideologies argues that representations of food-in literature and popular fiction, cookbooks and travel guides, war propaganda, women's magazines, television and print advertisements-are not just about nourishment or pleasure. Contributors explore how these various modes of representation, reflecting prevailing attitudes and assumptions about food and food practices, function instead to circulate and transgress dominant cultural ideologies. Addressing questions concerning whose interests are served by a particular food practice or habit and what political ends are fulfilled by the historical changes that lead from one practice to another in Western culture, the essays offer a rich historical narrative that moves from the construction of the nineteenth-century English gentleman to the creation of two of today's iconic figures in food culture, Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Along the way, readers will encounter World War I propaganda, holocaust and Sephardic cookbooks, the Rosenbergs, German tour guides, fast food advertising, food packaging, and chocolate, and will find food for thought on the meanings of everything from camembert to Velveeta, from salads to burgers, and from tikka masala to Campbell's soup.