The Oxford Handbook of Food History

Food matters, not only as a subject of study in its own right, but also as a medium for conveying critical messages about capitalism, the environment, and social inequality to diverse audiences. Recent scholarship on the subject draws from both a pathbreaking body of secondary literature and an inexhaustible wealth of primary sources--from ancient Chinese philosophical tracts to McDonald's menus--contributing new perspectives to the historical study of food, culture, and society, and challenging the limits of history itself. The Oxford Handbook of Food History places existing works in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological, and geographic boundaries while also suggesting new routes for future research. The twenty-seven essays in this book are organized into five sections: historiography, disciplinary approaches, production, circulation, and consumption of food. The first two sections examine the foundations of food history, not only in relation to key developments in the discipline of history itself--such as the French Annales school and the cultural turn--but also in anthropology, sociology, geography, pedagogy, and the emerging Critical Nutrition Studies. The following three sections sketch various trajectories of food as it travels from farm to table, factory to eatery, nature to society. Each section balances material, cultural, and intellectual concerns, whether juxtaposing questions of agriculture and the environment with the notion of cookbooks as historical documents; early human migrations with modern culinary tourism; or religious customs with social activism. In its vast, interdisciplinary scope, this handbook brings students and scholars an authoritative guide to a field with fresh insights into one of the most fundamental human concerns.

Jeffrey M. Pilcher is Professor of Food History at the University of Toronto Scarborough. His books include The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917; Food in World History; and Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity, which won the Thomas F. McGann Memorial Prize.

Introduction
Jeffrey M. Pilcher

Part I. Food Histories
1. Food and the Annales School, Sydney Watts
2. Political Histories of Food, Enrique Ochoa
3. Cultural Histories of Food, Jeffrey M. Pilcher
4. Labor Histories of Food, Tracey Deutsch
5. Public Histories of Food, Rayna Green

Part II. Food Studies
6. Gendering Food, Carole Counihan
7. Anthropology of Food, R. Kenji Tierney and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
8. Sociology of Food, Sierra Burnett Clark and Krishnendu Ray
9. Geography of Food, Bertie Mandelblatt
10. Critical Nutrition Studies, Charlotte Biltekoff
11. Teaching with Food, Jonathan Deutsch and Jeffrey Miller

Part III. The Means of Production
12. Agricultural Production and Environmental History, Sterling Evans
13. Cookbooks as Historical Documents, Ken Albala
14. Empires of Food, Jayeeta Sharma
15. Industrial Food, Gabriella M. Petrick
16. Fast Food, Steve Penfold

Part IV. The Circulation of Food
17. Food, Mobility, and World History, Donna R. Gabaccia
18. The Medieval Spice Trade, Paul Freedman
19. The Columbian Exchange, Rebecca Earle
20. Food, Time, and History, Elias Mandala
21. Food Regimes, André Magnan
22. Culinary Tourism, Lucy M. Long

Part V. Communities of Consumption
23. Food and Religion, Corrie E. Norman
24. Food, Race, and Ethnicity, Yong Chen
25. National Cuisines, Alison K. Smith
26. Food and Ethical Consumption, Rachel Ankeny
27. Food and Social Movements, Warren Belasco