Food and Everyday Life

Contributions by J. Nikol Beckham, Hui-tun Chuang, Matthew Day, Stephanie Greene, Joanna Henryks, Stacy M. Jameson, Marianne LeGreco, David Livert, Irina D. Mihalache, Roblyn Rawlins, Zachary Schrank, Klara Seddon, Amy Singer, Derek B. Shaw, Bethaney Turner, Talia Welsh Edited by Thomas M. Conroy

Publication date:

18 February 2014

Length of book:

290 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739173107

Food and Everyday Life provides a qualitative, interpretive, and interdisciplinary examination of food and food practices and their meanings in the modern world. Edited by Thomas M. Conroy, the book offers a number of complementary approaches and topics around the parameters of the “ordinary, everyday” perspective on food. These studies highlight aspects of food production, distribution, and consumption, as well as the discourse on food. Chapters discuss examples ranging from the cultural meanings of food as represented on television, to the practices of food budgeting, to the cultural politics of such practices as sustainable brewing and developing new forms of urban agriculture. A number of the studies focus on the relationships between food, eating practices, and the body. Each chapter examines a particular (and in many instances, highly unique) food practice, and each includes some key details of that practice. Taken together, the chapters show us how the everyday practices of food are both familiar and, yet at the same time, ripe for further discovery.

Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Food Meanings and Representations
Chapter 1: Gagging on the Other: Television’s Gross Food Challenge
Chapter 2: From Bento to Blog: The Digital Culture of an Everyday Japanese Meal
Chapter 3: Museums, Consumption and the Everyday: Encountering the Colonial “Other” through Food
Chapter 4: From Smack to Cuisine: The Spatialization of Taiwanese Foods
Chapter 5: Drinking Local: Sustainable Brewing, Alternative Food Networks, and the Politics of Valuation
Part 2: Food Practice Case Studies
Chapter 6: Both Luxurious and Ordinary: Everyday Consumption and the Marketing of Indonesian Food Products in America
Chapter 7: Cultivating Localization through Commodity De-Fetishism: Contours of Authenticity and the Pursuit of Transparency in the Local Organic Agrarian Food Market
Chapter 8: Embodied Connections: A New Wave of Urban Agriculture
Chapter 9: The Dilemma of Dinner: The Practice of Home Cooking in Everyday Life
Part 3: Food Consumption Practices and The Body
Chapter 10: The Phenomenology of Food Consumption: A Developmental View
Chapter 11: Healthy Eating on a Budget: Negotiating Tensions Between Two Discourses
Chapter 12: Fat Eats: A Phenomenology of Decadence, Food, and Health
Index
About the Contributors

The study of foodways is a fascinating one. Following the cultural turn in the social sciences and the emergence of the field of cultural studies, scholars have turned to a focus on cultural practices, including everyday life practices. One of such practice is the practice of food. Food for humans remains a means and a rich expression of culture. A an everyday life practice, food can be examined in a wide variety of ways. This book examines food and food practices and their meanings in the contemporary world. It includes a number of approaches and topics and highlights aspects of food production, distribution, consumption and the discourse on food. Written by experts in the field, this book shows the everyday practices of food and focuses on the relationships between body, eating practices and food.