Food and Culture: A Reader [Paperback]

Carole Counihan (Author), Penny Van Esterik (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415917107 | ISBN-13: 978-0415917100 | Publication Date: August 7, 1997 | Edition: annotated edition

Food touches everything important to people: it marks social differences and strengthens social bonds. Common to all peoples, yet it can signify very different things from table to table.
Food and Culture takes a global look at the social, symbolic and political-economic role of food. The stellar contributors to this reader examine some of the meanings of food and eating across cultures, with particular attention to how men and women define themselves differently through their foodways. Articles reveal how food habits and beliefs both present a microcosm of any culture and also contribute to our understanding of human behavior. Crossing many disciplinary boundaries, this reader includes the perspectives of anthropology, history, psychology, philosophy, and sociology.
The reader starts out by illustrating food's ability to convey symbolic meaning and communicates about a wide range of subjects. Next, the articles draw attention to how the practices of giving, receiving and refusing food initiate, solidify or rupture social bonds. Essays exploring the relation between body image, eating and sexuality in different societies give particular attention to the special and contradictory relation between women and food. Also demonstrated is the relation between the commodification of food, food industries, political power and colonial dominance.
Contributors include: Roland Barthes, Susan Bordo, Carolyn Walker Bynum, M.F.K. Fisher, Anna Freud, Jack Goody, Claude Levi-Strauss, Margaret Mead, and Elisa J. Sobo.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The editors of this Reader have compiled an excellent group of papers.
–Sara A. Quandt, Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Food and Culture: A Reader, a collection of essays about what and how we eat... is in spots a delicious treat.
Reading About Eating
–Times (Bay City, MI), Jan. 20, 1998

The reader should read more than one or two pieces before passing judgement; subject matter and clarity vary greatly. But certainly everyone can find something to eat on this literary smorgasbord... most will find interesting the chapter on Industrial Foods.
The Culinary Bookshelf
–Culinary Historians of New York, Winter 1998 Vol.11 No.2

. . . a delicious treat . . . It's scholarly, annotated and dense, and fun reading.
–Kalamazoo Gazette, 20 January 1998

. . . a delicious treat . . . It's scholarly, annotated and dense, and fun reading.
–New Orleans Times-Picayune, 10 December 1997

About the Author

Carole Counihan is Professor of Anthropology at Millersville University in Pennsylvania and co-editor-in-chief of Food and Foodways. Her earlier books include Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in Twentieth-Century Florence, Food in the USA, and The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power.

Penny Van Esterik is Professor of Anthropology at York University in Toronto, Canada where she teaches nutritional anthropology, in addition to doing research on food and globalization in Southeast Asia. She is a founding member of WABA (World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action)and writes on infant and young child feeding, including her earlier book, Beyond the Breast-Bottle Controversy.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; annotated edition edition (August 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415917107
• ISBN-13: 978-0415917100
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Carole M. Counihan is Professor of Anthropology at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she earned a BA in history cum laude from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts. Counihan's research centers on food, culture, gender, and identity in the United States and Italy. She conducted fieldwork in Bosa (Sardinia) and Florence (Tuscany), Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, and published "Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family and Gender in Twentieth Century Florence" in 2004. Long fascinated with women's complex relationship with food and body, she explored gender, food, body, reproduction, and culture in her book "The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power" (Routledge, 1999). She is editor of "Food in the USA: A Reader" (Routledge 2002) and, with Penny Van Esterik, of "Food and Culture: A Reader" (Routledge 2008). She conducted fieldwork from 1996-2006 in a Hispanic community in Colorado, collecting food-centered life histories from nineteen women. Based on this research and supported by a 2005-2006 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, she authored "A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado" (University of Texas Press, 2009). She is editor of the scholarly journal "Food and Foodways." Counihan was a visiting professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences Masters Program in Colorno (Parma), Italy, during Spring 2009 where she began a new ethnographic research project on food activism in local chapters of the Slow Food movement.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting collection., October 27, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Food and Culture: A Reader (Paperback)

Food and culture are examined in 28 essays by noted anthropologists and other social scientists in this uneven but valuable survey.
Reading some of the academese is like treading molasses, but the collection is redeemed by such gems as Brumberg's examination of the Victorian roots of anorexia nervosa, Sobo's study of the social meanings of obesity in Jamaica, and Harris' "The Abominable Pig". Other writers explore such issues as breast-feeding, "industrial food", and hunger.
Very interesting and worthwhile for those interested in the deeper meanings of food and eating.

(The numerical rating above is an ineradicable feature of this page. This reviewer does nor employ numerical ratings.)

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very solid contribution!, October 30, 2002

By 

Quickhappy "quickhappy" (Big city, big country) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Food and Culture: A Reader (Paperback)

Rarely does one edited volume do such a good job of covering the essential essays about a topic. Counihan and Van Esterik do just that in their well-wrought _Food and Culture_. They skillfully offer food in an anthropological and historical perspective, giving attention to feminist, structuralist, semiotic, and other approaches. The essays themselves are effectively trimmed down by the editors, and the resulting book is consistently rewarding.

The book is weak on vegetarianism, meat as meaning, post-structuralism, and fast food, and could use a bit of help on "ethnic" uses of food. The addition of Doris Witt, Eric Schlosser, and Judith Farquhar would be helpful. It also lacks Peter Singer's new classic, "The Singer Solution to World Poverty." A second edition with these modifications would be welcome!

This book can rival, supplant, or supplement most any professor's undergraduate reading packet on the anthropology of food. Truly well-done. Probably a staple meal on campuses for years to come.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Inside view" of book deceiving!, April 22, 2011

By 

food justice student - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Food and Culture: A Reader (Paperback)

BEWARE false advertising! I designed a college course/independent study for myself using this book and several others as the basis for the curriculum. Because the course description and bibliography were due before the book was scheduled to arrive, I used Amazon's "Look Inside" tool to check out the Table of Contents and get specifics on the book. The book arrived today, and the essays contained within it are very much different from the ones listed in the Table of Contents that I viewed. When you view the table of contents via "Look Inside", there is a warning that says: "Just so you know...This view is of the Hardcover edition (1997) from Routledge. The Paperback edition (2007) from Routledge that you originally viewed is the one you'll receive if you click the Add to Cart button at left." What the warning doesn't specify is that the paperback version you will receive actually contains some of the same but mostly many different essays than the ones shown in the "Look Inside." There are many essays I had planned to use in my studies that are not included in the version I received at all. Sorry Amazon, but I'm really disappointed in you on this one. It sounded like the only difference was that I'd be receiving the 2007 paperback version instead of the 1997 hardcover version. If the content of the book is different, I call it false advertising not to inform the customer of that very important detail prior to ordering.