Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects, representations, and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars, professionals, and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks, concepts, and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice?
This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local), but also global, as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food, its material environments and “stuff,” and its representations in media, museums, and marketing, while following food through cycles of production, circulation, and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore, food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues, but also actively produce, preserve, and disrupt identities, communities, economic systems, and everyday social practices.
The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars, museum and information professionals, and chefs who represent diverse disciplines, such as communication studies, anthropology, history, American studies, folklore, and food studies.
List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: Food and Material Cultures Irina D. Mihalache, University of Toronto, Canada and Elizabeth Zanoni, Old Dominion University, USA PART I: FOOD 2. My Mother’s Aebleskiver Pan, Lena Mortensen, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada 3. Shaping the Material: Turning the Food Studies Lens on Itself in Pursuit of ‘Better’ Food, Jonathan Deutsch, Drexel University, USA 4. Slices and Fillings: The Material Culture of Sandwiches, Megan Elias, Boston University, USA 5. While Supplies Lasts: The Materialism and Symbolism of Limited Edition Packaged Foods, Emily Truman, University of Calgary, Canada 6. Creating and Re-creating a Dish: On Craftsmanship, Cooking, and Food as Material Culture, Susanne Højlund, Aarhus University, Denmark and Claudia Squarzon, Copenhagen University, Denmark PART II: ENVIRONMENTS 7.“My life is on those Shelves…”: Ingesting Culinary Cultures in a Mediterranean Port City Jean Duruz, University of South Australia, Australia 8. Materializing Cold: Refrigeration and Food Infrastructure in Argentina during the Twentieth Century, John Soluri, Carnegie Mellon University, USA 9. Kitchens, Tools, Organization, and the Struggled of Everyday Home Cooks, Amy Trubek, University of Vermont, USA 10. Teaching with Food, Daniel Bender, University of Toronto, Canada and Lisa Haushofer, University of Toronto, Canada 11. “When the Numbers Prosper, the People Suffer”: Robust Food Cultures, Tacit Knowledge and the Abstractions of Contemporary Neoliberal Culture, David Sutton, Southern Illinois University, USA and Leonidas Vournelis, Baruch College, USA PART III: REPRESENTATIONS 12. In Conversation with Michelle Moon, Michelle Moon with Irina D. Mihalache, University of Toronto, Canada 13. Exhibiting the Mediterranean Diet in a French museum: The Case of Le Grand Mezzé at the Mucem, Julie Deramond, Avignon University, France and Nolwenn Pianezza, Avignon University, France 14. Who We Eat is What We Are: American Culinary History and Material Culture at Two Museums, Delores Phillips, James Madison University, USA 15. Working Around the Recipe: Cookbooks and Culinary Ephemera in Special Collections, Elizabeth Ridolfo, University of Toronto, Canada 16. Fun in the Produce Aisle: On the Marketing (and Materiality) of Unprocessed Foods to Children, Charlene Elliott, University of Calgary, Canada CONCLUSIONS: In Conversation with Food Visionaries 17. Tawnya Brant 18. Ozoz Sokoh 19. Vanessa Ling Yu Index
Irina D. Mihalache is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is co-editor of Food and Museums (Bloomsbury, 2016). Elizabeth Zanoni is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Old Dominion University, USA. She is the author of Migrant Marketplaces: Food and Italians in North and South America (2018).
Reviews for The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Material Cultures
"""From gender to nation, bananas to dog bowls, tea sandwiches to packaged foods, and much, much more, Mihalache and Zanoni provide a nuanced look at our material lives through the lenses of food, environments, and representations. The volume celebrates the interdisciplinarity of two rich fields of study-material culture and food-and it champions how we look at our everyday lives through the plates, bowls, and cups we take for granted. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Material Culture puts into conversation university classrooms, with private and professional kitchens and labs, scholars with visionaries to uncover how and why ""food's matter matters."" We are treated to a new set of thoughts and voices that take us into the complex world of food and human lives, challenging us to see and understand its complex intersections even as we relish and savor our food tastes, about which we seldom give a second thought."" --Psyche Williams-Forson, Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies, University of Maryland College Park, USA ""This handbook brings together the innovative and exciting research areas of food studies and material culture. It will expand the intellectual horizons of specialists in both areas and provide an easy entry for both scholars and activists who are new to these topics."" --Richard Wilk, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Indiana University, USA"
