The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader - Paperback

by James L. Watson (Editor), Melissa L. Caldwell (Editor)

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating offers an ethnographically informed perspective on the ways in which people use food to make sense of life in an increasingly interconnected world.

• Uses food as a central idiom for teaching about culture and addresses broad themes such as globalization, capitalism, market economies, and consumption practices
  
• Spanning 5 continents, features studies from 11 countries--Japan, China, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, France, Burkina Faso, Chile, Trinidad, Mexico, and the United States
  
• Offers discussion of such hot topics as sushi, fast food, gourmet foods, and food scares and contamination

Back Jacket

Food is an important and endlessly fascinating lens for social and cultural analysis -not only for anthropologists, but also for scholars of history, literature, cultural studies, political economy, and public policy. The subject is a central idiom for understanding cultural practices and for teaching about culture on many levels. The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating is a collection of readings that uses the study of food as a vehicle for addressing broad themes that are emerging in social anthropology: globalization, capitalism, market economies, and consumption practices.

The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating offers an ethnographically informed perspective on the ways in which people use food to make sense of life in an increasingly interconnected world. It includes studies from eleven countries across five continents on such hot topics as sushi, fast food, gourmet foods, and food scares and contamination.

Author Biography

James L. Watson is Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. His books include Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia(edited 1998), Village Life in Hong Kong (with Rubie Watson, 2004), and Between Two Cultures (edited, Blackwell, 1977).

Melissa L. Caldwell is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Not by Bread Alone: Social Support in the New Russia (2004).