Food, Power, and Agency

This exciting book explores fundamental questions about the operation of power and agency in modern societies. Grounded in the work of Bruno Latour, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault, it 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 perspectives from a variety of disciplines and time periods. Case studies range from waiters in 20th century Europe and the United States, to German cuisine and ethnicity in San Francisco after the Gold Rush, Italian cuisine in Japan, and '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.

Jürgen Martschukat is Professor of History at Erfurt University, Germany
Bryant Simon is Professor of History at Temple University, USA

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Food, Power and Agency
Jürgen Martschukat, University of Erfurt, Germany, and Bryant Simon, Temple University, USA

Section One: National Characters

1. The Power of Food: Immigrant German Restaurants in San Francisco and the Formation of Ethnic Identities
Leonard Schmieding, Georgetown University, USA

2. Italian Cuisine in Japan and the Power of Networking among Cooks
Rossella Ceccarini, Independent Anthropologist, Italy, and Keiichi Sawaguchi, Taisho University, Japan

Section Two: Anthropological Situations

3. Waiters, Writers, and Power: From Dining Room Commanders to the Emotional Proletariat
Christoph Ribbat, Paderborn University, Germany

4. The Geography of Silence: Food and Tragedy in Globalizing America
Bryant Simon, Temple University, USA

Section Three: Health

5. Making Food Matter: 'Scientific Eating' and the Struggle for Healthy Selves
Nina Mackert, Erfurt University, Germany

6. 'What Diet Can Do': Running and Eating Right in 1970s America
Jürgen Martschukat, Erfurt University, Germany

7. Being too Big - As 'Objectivation of Deviance' from the Societal Order
Eva Barlösius, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

8. When the Grease Runs Through the Paper: On the Consumption of Ultragreasy Bureks
Jernej Mlekuž, Slovenian Migration Institute, Slovenia

Notes on Contributors
Index

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