The Life of Cheese

This fascinating anthropological study of American artisan cheese and cheesemakers tells the story of how craftwork has become a new source of cultural and economic value within American landscapes of production and consumption. Heather Paxson's innovative and beautifully written study shows how dairy farmers and artisans inhabit a world in which their colleagues and collaborators are a wild cast of characters, including plants, animals, microorganisms, family members, employees, and customers. Cheese is alive with meaning, but it is also alive with the activity of organisms large and small. As "unfinished" commodities, living products whose qualities are not fully settled, handmade cheeses embody a mix of new and old ideas about taste and value. Artisan cheese thus offers a unique object through which to rethink the politics of food, land, and labor today.