Food, power, and agency

Grounded in the work of Roland Barthes, Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault, this exciting book uses food as a lens to examine agency and the political, economic, social, and cultural power which underlies every choice of food and every act of eating. The book is divided into three parts--National Characters; Anthropological Situations; Health--with each of the eight chapters exploring the power of food as well as the power relationships reflected and refracted through food. Featuring contributions from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars from around the world, the book offers case studies of a diverse range--from German cuisine and ethnicity in San Francisco after the Gold Rush, through Italian cuisine in Japan, to 'ultragreasy bureks' and teenage fast food consumption in Slovenia. By directly engaging with questions of agency and power, the book pushes the field of food studies in new directions. An important read for students and researchers in food studies, food history, anthropology of food, and sociology of food.

The power of food: immigrant German restaurants in San Francisco and the formation of ethnic identities / Leonard Schmieding -- Italian cuisine in Japan and the power of networking among cooks / Rossella Ceccarini and Keiichi Sawaguchi -- Waiters, writers, and power: from dining room commanders to the emotional proletariat / Christoph Ribbat -- The geography of silence: food and tragedy in globalizing America / Bryant Simon -- Making food matter: "scientific eating" and the struggle for healthy selves / Nina Mackert -- "What diet can do": running and eating right in 1970s America / Jürgen Martschukat -- Being too big: as deviance from the societal order / Eva Barlösius -- When the grease runs through the paper: on the consumption of ultragreasy bureks / Jernej Mlekuž.