Eating Culture
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Explores the relationship between eating and culture from a variety of perspectives, including anthropology, sociology, philosophy, gender studies, race studies, architecture, and AIDS discourse.
Description
Eating has never been simple, and contemporary eating practices seem more complicated than ever, demanding a multidimensional analysis that strives not for a reductive overview but for a complex understanding. Eating Culture offers a number of diverse outlooks on some of the prominent practices and issues associated with the domain of eating in contemporary culture. Lavishly illustrated with nineteen photographs and eleven historical postcards, the book brings to bear contemporary, interdisciplinary thinking on a topic that has been widely but not critically discussed in the media.
[Contributors include Carol Adams, Marianna Beck, Susan Bordo, Priscilla Ferguson, Joanne Finkelstein, Dianna Fuss, Deborah R. Geis, bell hooks, David F. Krell, Steven F. Kruger, Alfonso Lingis, Mary Lukanuski, Gary Paul Nabhan, Ed Schiffer, Stephen Steinberg, Jeff Weinstein, Allen S. Weiss, Doris S. Witt, and Sharon Zukin. ]
Ron Scapp is Director of the Graduate Program in Urban and Multicultural Education at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, The Bronx, where he teaches education and philosophy. Brian Seitz teaches philosophy at Babson College, and is the author of The Trace of Political Representation, also published by SUNY Press.
Reviews
"The probing and finely detailed analyses of contemporary eating practices provided by Eating Culture make it an important contribution to contemporary cultural studies. Although the book takes as its subject a topic of obvious significance both to the general public and to specialists, I am aware of no comparable study of eating practices. (The related studies in existence are, by comparison, dated. ) Eating Culture breaks new ground in approaching a central aspect of contemporary life with exemplary sophistication, subtlety, and wit. One of the collection's chief merits is its inclusiveness: the selections approach the general topic from widely divergent political and philosophical perspectives. Eating Culture is a fascinating read. " — Kathleen Brogan, Wellesley College
"I am tempted to call this volume a real smorgasbord of reflection on the question of the relationship between eating and culture, but as I've learned from reading these essays, there are probably all sorts of racist, sexist, and classist assumptions informing this seemingly innocent analogy, so I'll simply say that this volume presents some of the most thoughtful and savory work I've ever read on the subject. This volume has made me reflect upon the everyday act of eating in truly unexpected ways; one doesn't eat out, or even at home, in exactly the same way after reading Eating Culture. "—Michael Naas, DePaul University