Edible Histories Cultural Politics

Download or read book Edible Histories, Cultural Politics written by Franca Iacovetta and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-11-07 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as the Canada's rich past resists any singular narrative, there is no such thing as a singular Canadian food tradition. This new book explores Canada's diverse food cultures and the varied relationships that Canadians have had historically with food practices in the context of community, region, nation and beyond. Based on findings from menus, cookbooks, government documents, advertisements, media sources, oral histories, memoirs, and archival collections, Edible Histories offers a veritable feast of original research on Canada's food history and its relationship to culture and politics. This exciting collection explores a wide variety of topics, including urban restaurant culture, ethnic cuisines, and the controversial history of margarine in Canada. It also covers a broad time-span, from early contact between European settlers and First Nations through the end of the twentieth century. Edible Histories intertwines information of Canada's 'foodways' – the practices and traditions associated with food and food preparation – and stories of immigration, politics, gender, economics, science, medicine and religion. Sophisticated, culturally sensitive, and accessible, Edible Histories will appeal to students, historians, and foodies alike.

Download or read book Edible Histories, Cultural Politics written by Franca Iacovetta and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on findings from menus, cookbooks, government documents, advertisements, media sources, oral histories, memoirs, and archival collections, Edible Histories offers a veritable feast of original research on Canada's food history and its relationship to culture and politics. This exciting collection explores a wide variety of topics, including urban restaurant culture, ethnic cuisines, and the controversial history of margarine in Canada. It also covers a broad time-span, from early contact between European settlers and First Nations through the end of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Food is Culture written by Massimo Montanari and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food--its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption--represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions. Massimo Montanari begins with the "invention" of cooking which allowed humans to transform natural, edible objects into cuisine. Cooking led to the creation of the kitchen, the adaptation of raw materials into utensils, and the birth of written and oral guidelines to formalize cooking techniques like roasting, broiling, and frying. The transmission of recipes allowed food to acquire its own language and grow into a complex cultural product shaped by climate, geography, the pursuit of pleasure, and later, the desire for health. In his history, Montanari touches on the spice trade, the first agrarian societies, Renaissance dishes that synthesized different tastes, and the analytical attitude of the Enlightenment, which insisted on the separation of flavors. Brilliantly researched and analyzed, he shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity. Whether he is musing on the origins of the fork, the symbolic power of meat, cultural attitudes toward hot and cold foods, the connection between cuisine and class, the symbolic significance of certain foods, or the economical consequences of religious holidays, Montanari's concise yet intellectually rich reflections add another dimension to the history of human civilization. Entertaining and surprising, Food Is Culture is a fascinating look at how food is the ultimate embodiment of our continuing attempts to tame, transform, and reinterpret nature.

Download or read book Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage written by Ronda L. Brulotte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food - its cultivation, preparation and communal consumption - has long been considered a form of cultural heritage. A dynamic, living product, food creates social bonds as it simultaneously marks off and maintains cultural difference. In bringing together anthropologists, historians and other scholars of food and heritage, this volume closely examines the ways in which the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of food is used to create identity claims of 'cultural heritage' on local, regional, national and international scales. Contributors explore a range of themes, including how food is used to mark insiders and outsiders within an ethnic group; how the same food's meanings change within a particular society based on class, gender or taste; and how traditions are 'invented' for the revitalization of a community during periods of cultural pressure. Featuring case studies from Europe, Asia and the Americas, this timely volume also addresses the complex processes of classifying, designating, and valorizing food as 'terroir,' 'slow food,' or as intangible cultural heritage through UNESCO. By effectively analyzing food and foodways through the perspectives of critical heritage studies, this collection productively brings two overlapping but frequently separate theoretical frameworks into conversation.

Download or read book The Cooking Gene written by Michael W. Twitty and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together. Illustrations by Stephen Crotts

Download or read book Food, Social Politics and the Order of Nature in Renaissance Italy written by Allen J. Grieco and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book An Edible History of Humanity written by Tom Standage and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-05-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lighthearted chronicle of how foods have transformed human culture throughout the ages traces the barley- and wheat-driven early civilizations of the near East through the corn and potato industries in America.