You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
"Significant Food is a collaborative work of textual analysis and criticism that chews on the role and prominence of food in American literature. The volume offers close readings of many well-known, and some less well-known, examples of American writing, as studied through the food culture sensibilities of a well-stocked cupboard of contributors who offer their analyses for public consumption. Editors Jeff Birkenstein and Robert C. Hauhart find that literary criticism has focused on the role food plays in literary production to a greater extent than recognized at first glance and that its role has become increasingly common only in the last two decades. Still, while there is critical comment...
The debate over genetically modified organisms: health and safety concerns, environmental impact, and scientific opinions. Since they were introduced to the market in the late 1990s, GMOs (genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops), have been subject to a barrage of criticism. Agriculture has welcomed this new technology, but public opposition has been loud and scientific opinion mixed. In GMOs Decoded, Sheldon Krimsky examines the controversies over GMOs—health and safety concerns, environmental issues, the implications for world hunger, and the scientific consensus (or lack of one). He explores the viewpoints of a range of GMO skeptics, from public advocacy gro...
"New and exciting forms of food activism are emerging as supporters of sustainable agriculture increasingly recognize the need for a broader, more strategic and more politicized food politics that engages with questions of social, racial, and economic justice. This book highlights examples of campaigns to restrict industrial agriculture's use of pesticides and other harmful technologies, struggles to improve the pay and conditions of workers throughout the food system, and alternative projects that seek to de-emphasize notions of individualism and private ownership. Grounded in over a decade of scholarly critique of food activism, this volume seeks to answer the question of "what next," inspiring scholars, students, and activists toward collective, cooperative, and oppositional struggles for change."--Provided by publisher.
How lawsuits around intellectual property in Brazil and India are impacting the patentability of plants and seeds, farmers’ rights, and the public interest. Over the past decade, legal challenges have arisen in the Global South over patents on genetically modified crops. In this ethnographic study, Karine E. Peschard explores the effects of these disputes on people’s lives, while uncovering the role of power—material, institutional, and discursive—in shaping laws and legal systems. The expansion of corporate intellectual property (IP), she shows, negatively impacts farmers’ rights and, by extension, the right to food, since small farms produce the bulk of food for domestic consumpt...
How food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivity rather than food justice and equity. The United States has one of the highest rates of hunger and food insecurity in the industrialized world, with poor households, single parents, and communities of color disproportionately affected. Food pantries—run by charitable and faith-based organizations—rather than legal entitlements have become a cornerstone of the government's efforts to end hunger. In Feeding the Other, Rebecca de Souza argues that food pantries stigmatize their clients through a discourse that emphasizes hard work, self help, and economic productivit...
Culinary Man and the Kitchen Brigade offers an exploration of the field of normative subjectivity circulated within western fine dining traditions, presenting a theoretical analysis of the governing relationship between the chef, who embodies the Culinary Man, and the fine dining brigade. The book offers a unique treatment of western haute cuisine’s interlocking regime of labor and aesthetics and theorizes the underexplored kitchen brigade as a model of disciplinary formation. It deploys a heterogeneous set of disciplinary discourses and practices which have the effect of consolidating monopolies on epistemic authority and governance. Each position within the brigade’s hierarchy is subje...
How modern food helped make modern society between 1870 and 1930: stories of power and food, from bananas and beer to bread and fake meat. The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers trace our eating habits to World War II, but this book shows that our current food system began to coalesce much earlier. Modern food came from and helped to create a society based on racial hierarchies, colonization, and global integration. Acquired Tastes explores these themes through a series of moments in food history—stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more—that shaped how we think about food today. Contributors consider the displacement of native peoples for agricultural development; the invention of Pilsner, the first international beer style; the “long con” of gilded sugar and corn syrup; Josephine Baker’s banana skirt and the rise of celebrity tastemakers; and faith in institutions and experts who produced, among other things, food rankings and fake meat.
Ethnopolitical Entrepreneurs presents the story of the Armenians of Glendale, California. Coming from Argentina, Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, and many other countries, this group is internally fragmented and often has limited experience with the American political system. Nonetheless, Glendale's Armenians have rapidly mobilized and remade an American suburban space in their own likeness. In telling their story, Daniel Fittante expands our understanding of US political history. From the late nineteenth-century onward, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and several other immigrant populations in large American cities began changing the country's political reality. The author shows how Glendale's Armenians—as well as many other immigrants—are now changing the country's political reality within its dynamic, multiethnic suburbs. The processes look different in various suburban contexts, but the underlying narrative holds: immigrant populations converge on suburban areas and ambitious political actors develop careers by driving coethnics' political incorporation.
Mobilizing Food Vending investigates the gourmet food truck movement in the United States and provides a clearer understanding of the social and economic factors that shape vendor autonomy and industry growth. The book features case studies in a variety of American cities and uses top-down and bottom-up urban theory to frame a discussion of food trucks’ rights, displacement, and resiliency. Using ethnographic and archival research collected from industry experts, the book examines vendors’ operational strategies, their regulatory challenges when navigating the city, and their economic, cultural, and political roles in shaping urban space. Mobilizing Food Vending argues that food truck vendors are critical actors that support local economies and contribute to the public realm while shaping regulatory policy from the bottom up. This book will appeal to urban scholars studying the contemporary neoliberal city, the public realm, and communication technology and mobility, as well as to urban planners seeking to understand how vendors shape city plans and policies.