Food in the USA [Paperback]

Carole M. Counihan (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415932327 | ISBN-13: 978-0415932325 | Publication Date: July 15, 2002 | Edition: 1st

From Thanksgiving to fast food to the Passover seder, Food in the USA brings together the essential readings on these topics and is the only substantial collection of essays on food and culture in the United States. Essay topics include the globalization of U.S. food; the dangers of the meatpacking industry; the rise of Italian-American food; the meaning of Soul food; the anorexia epidemic; the omnipotence of Coca-Cola; and the invention of Thanksgiving. Together, the collection provides a fascinating look at how and why we Americans are what we eat.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For anyone who has wondered just what food means to Americans, this volume is indispensable. Carole M. Counihan has compiled an important collection of articles that explores American food in all its diversity and examines its larger meanings in U.S. society and beyond. Both those who decry and those who celebrate American foodways will find much of value in this volume, which convincingly demonstrates the importance of food studies to any understanding of national culture.
–Darra Goldstein, Editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture

Food in the USA includes cutting-edge essays on a variety of topics.. Among the recent collections of readings on food and society, this is the most extensive.
–William Whit, author of Food and Society: A Sociological Approach

An exceptionally strong collection.I'd like to place my order now!.
–Warren Belasco, editor of Food Nations

The U.S. is so extraordinary in its food habits, food industries and overarching global power that one can hardly overdo this subject....A useful and popular reader.
–Sydney Mintz, author of Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom

About the Author

Carole Counihan is a Professor o Anthropology and the Director of Women's Studies at Millersville University in Millersville, PA. She is currently senior editor of Food and Foodways journal. Her previous books include Food and Culture: A Reader and The Anthropology of Food and Body, both published by Routledge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415932327
• ISBN-13: 978-0415932325
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 7.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,571 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.