New Books in Food

Everybody eats. We may even consider ourselves experts on the topic, or at least Instagram experts. But are we aware that the shrimp in our freezer may be farmed and frozen in Vietnam, the grapes in our fruit bowl shipped from Chile, and the coffee in our coffee maker grown in Nicaragua, roasted in Germany, and distributed in Canada? Whether we know it or not, every time we shop for food, cook, and eat, we connect ourselves to complex supply networks, institutions, and organizations that enable our food choices. Even locavores may not know the whole story of the produce they buy at the farmers market. In Food, a contribution to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, food writer and scholar Fabio Parasecoli offers a consumer's guide to the food system, from local to global.Parasecoli describes a system made up of open-ended, shifting, and unstable networks rather than well-defined chains; considers healthy food and the contradictory advice about it consumers receive; discusses food waste and the implications for sustainability; explores food technologies (and “culinary luddism”); and examines hunger and food insecurity in both developing and developed countries. Parasecoli reminds us that we are not only consumers but also citizens, and as citizens we have more power to improve the food system than we do by our individual food choices.Fabio Parasecoli is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, The New York University Steinhardt. His research explores the cultural politics of food, particularly in media, design, and heritage. His books include Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy, Feasting Our Eyes: Food, Film, and Cultural Citizenship in the US, Knowing Where It Comes From: Labeling Traditional Foods to Compete in a Global Market, and Global Brooklyn: Designing Food Experiences in World Cities. Website: https://fabioparasecoli.com/ Twitter: @FParasecoliAmir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Research Methods in Digital Food Studies (Routledge, 2021) offers the first methodological synthesis of digital food studies. It brings together contributions from leading scholars in food and media studies and explores research methods from textual analysis to digital ethnography and action research.In recent times, digital media has transformed our relationship with food which has become one of the central topics in digital and social media. This spatiotemporal shift in food cultures has led us to reimagine how we engage in different practices related to food as consumers. The book examines the opportunities and challenges that the new digital era of food studies presents and what methodologies are employed to study the changed dynamics in this field. These methodologies provide insights into how restaurant reviews, celebrity webpages, the blogosphere and YouTube are explored, as well as how to analyse digital archives, digital soundscapes and digital food activism and a series of approaches to digital ethnography in food studies. The book presents straightforward ideas and suggestions for how to get started on one's own research in the field through well-structured chapters that include several pedagogical features.Written in an accessible style, the book will serve as a vital point of reference for both experienced researchers and beginners in the digital food studies field, health studies, leisure studies, anthropology, sociology, food sciences, and media and communication studies.Jonatan Leer is head of food and tourism research at the University College Absalon and has published widely on food culture including Food and Age and Alternative Food Politics, and previously edited the anthology Food and Media. He is visiting lecturer at the University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo, Italy.Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark. She has published on food, gender and methodologies in multiple venues including Routledge’s Critical Food Studies, and she is also Editor-in-Chief at the Nordic Journal, MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research. Twitter: @stinnegunderAmir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Getting Something to Eat in Jackson (Princeton Press, 2021) uses food—what people eat and how—to explore the interaction of race and class in the lives of African Americans in the contemporary urban South. Dr. Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. examines how “foodways”—food availability, choice, and consumption—vary greatly between classes of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi, and how this reflects and shapes their very different experiences of a shared racial identity.Ewoodzie spent more than a year following a group of socioeconomically diverse African Americans—from upper-middle-class patrons of the city’s fine-dining restaurants to men experiencing homelessness who must organize their days around the schedules of soup kitchens. Ewoodzie goes food shopping, cooks, and eats with a young mother living in poverty and a grandmother working two jobs. He works in a Black-owned BBQ restaurant, and he meets a man who decides to become a vegan for health reasons but who must drive across town to get tofu and quinoa. Ewoodzie also learns about how soul food is changing and why it is no longer a staple survival food. Throughout, he shows how food choices influence, and are influenced by, the racial and class identities of Black Jacksonians.By tracing these contemporary African American foodways, Getting Something to Eat in Jackson offers new insights into the lives of Black Southerners and helps challenge the persistent homogenization of blackness in American life.Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

White middle-class eaters are increasingly venturing into historically segregated urban neighborhoods in search of "authentic" eating in restaurants run by-and originally catering to-immigrants and people of color. What does a growing white interest in these foods mean for historically immigrant neighborhoods and communities of color? What role does foodie culture play in gentrification? In The Sixteen-Dollar Taco: Contested Geographies of Food, Ethnicity, and Gentrification (U Washington Press, 2021), Pascale Joassart-Marcelli sheds light on food gentrification and the emotional, cultural, economic, and physical displacement it produces. She explores three neighborhoods of San Diego, California where "authentic" ethnic food attracts growing numbers of affluent white consumers, while the black and brown people who make this food continue to struggle with economic insecurity and food apartheid. Drawing on rich interviews with the locals who work, live, cook, and eat in these contested landscapes, Joassart-Marcelli maps the shift of foodscapes from serving the needs of long-time minoritized residents to pleasing the tastes of younger, wealthier, and whiter newcomers. She also shows how food becomes a powerful force behind gastrodevelopment, an urban development strategy built around food gentrification. Joassart-Marcelli highlights the ways in which immigrants and people of color are resisting gentrification and simultaneously fighting for food sovereignty. Ultimately, the work offers valuable lessons for cities all over the country where food projects are transforming neighborhoods at the expense of the communities they claim to uplift and celebrate. The book reveals the negative consequences of foodies' contemporary love affair with ethnic and presumably authentic food on the urban neighborhoods where such food has long been a source of livelihood, sustenance, resistance, and belonging. Doing so, it engages critically with the concept of cosmopolitanism and points out the limitations of consumer-centered food-based cross-cultural encounters that celebrate racial and ethnic difference without acknowledging the material consequences of historical and ongoing exclusion, dispossession, and displacement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Whether grainy or smooth, spicy or sweet, Dijon, American, or English, mustard accompanies our food and flavors our life around the globe. It has been a source of pleasure, health, and myth from ancient times to the present day, its tiny seed a symbol of faith and its pungent flavor a testimony to refined taste. There are stories of mustard plasters used to treat melancholy, runners eating mustard to prevent cramps, and Christians spreading mustard seeds along pilgrimage trails.Mustard: A Global History is part of the Edible Series published by Reaktion Books. It is a revolutionary series of books on food and drink which explores the rich history of man’s consumption. Each book provides an outline for one type of food or drink, revealing its history and culture on a global scale. 50 striking illustrations, with approximately 25 in colour, accompany these engaging and accessible texts, and offer intriguing new insights into their subject. Key recipes as well as reference material accompany each title. Also available through The University of Chicago Press.See our other episodes on Edible Series:See our other episodes on Edible Series: Avocado by Jeff Miller Coffee by Jonathan Morris Vanilla by Rosa Abreu-Runkel More episodes to come…Dr. Demet Güzey is a food and wine writer and educator based in Verona, Italy. She teaches at Le Cordon Bleu online and at USAC in Verona. She is the author of Food on Foot: A History of Eating on Trails and in the Wild. Twitter: @demetguzeyAmir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Food Justice Now: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) charts a path from food activism to social justice activism that integrates the two. In an engrossing, historically grounded, and ethnographically rich narrative, Joshua Sbicca argues that food justice is more than a myopic focus on food, allowing scholars and activists alike to investigate the causes behind inequities and evaluate and implement political strategies to overcome them.Joshua Sbicca is associate professor of sociology at Colorado State University. His research focuses on food as a site of economic, political, and social struggle. His recent work studies food systems and cultures and social movements at intersections of carcerality, gentrification, and racial capitalism. Underlying these interests is an ongoing engagement with how activists and scholars articulate and practice food justice and what this means for building broad based social movements.Website: http://joshuasbicca.com/Twitter: @joshsbiccaAmir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Since Iran's 1979 Revolution, the imperative to create and protect the inner purity of family and nation in the face of outside spiritual corruption has been a driving force in national politics. Through extensive fieldwork, Rose Wellman examines how Basiji families, as members of Iran's voluntary paramilitary organization, are encountering, enacting, and challenging this imperative. Her ethnography reveals how families and state elites are employing blood, food, and prayer in commemorations for martyrs in Islamic national rituals to create citizens who embody familial piety, purity, and closeness to God. Feeding Iran: Shi’i Families and the Making of the Islamic Republic (U California Press, 2021) provides a rare and humanistic account of religion and family life in the post-revolutionary Islamic Republic that examines how home life and everyday piety are linked to state power.Rose Wellman is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She specializes in Iran and the Middle East.Amir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

The avocado is the iconic food of the twenty-first century. It has gone from a little-known regional food to a social media darling in less than a hundred years. This is an astounding trajectory for a fruit that isn’t sweet, becomes bitter when it is cooked and has perhaps the oddest texture of any fruit or vegetable. But the idea that this rich and delicious fruit is also healthy despite being fatty and energy-dense gives it unicorn status among modern eaters, especially millennials.Through lively anecdotes, colourful pictures and delicious recipes, Jeff Miller's book Avocado: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2020) explores the meteoric rise of the avocado, from its co-evolution with the megaherbivores of the Pleistocene to its acceptance by the Spanish conquistadores in Mexico and its current dominance of food consumers’ imagination.Jeff Miller is an Associate Professor of Hospitality Management at Colorado State University. He is the co-author of Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods (2009) and was named Culinary Educator of the Year in 2017. Amir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Many Western entrepreneurs and businesses have foundered in trying to set up shop in China. Different expectations, different ways of doing business, different institutions and platforms—all come together to remove any pretensions that one can easily transplant a foreign business model into the Chinese market.One of these entrepreneurs was Xavier Naville, who moved to China in 1997 where he built Creative Food. Unlike many others, his venture was a success. It's now a key supplier to major restaurant chains across the country including McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks.The Lettuce Diaries: How A Frenchman Found Gold Growing Vegetables In China tells Xavier’s story growing Creative Foods: managing a Chinese team as a foreign manager, trying to work with farmers to improve how they conducted agriculture, and navigating investor demands. In this interview, Xavier and I talk about his time in China, what he learned about starting a business, and whether things are different in a more developed, more advanced economy.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Lettuce Diaries. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

Today I talked to Rosa Abreu-Runkel about her new book Vanilla: A Global History (Reaktion Books, 2020). Intoxicating and evocative, vanilla is so much more than a spice rack staple. It is a flavor that has defined the entire world—and its roots reach deep into the past. With its earliest origins dating back seventy million years, the history of vanilla begins in ancient Mesoamerica and continues to define and enhance today’s traditions and customs. It has been used by nearly every culture as a spice, a perfume, and even a potent aphrodisiac, while renowned figures from Louis XIV to Casanova and Thomas Jefferson have been captivated by its aroma and taste. Featuring recipes, facts, and fables, Vanilla unravels the delightfully rich history, mystery, and essence of a flavor that reconnects us to our own heritageRosa Abreu-Runkel is assistant professor at New York City College of Technology, Hospitality Department.Amir Sayadabdi is a lecturer in Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is mainly interested in anthropology of food and its intersection with gender studies, migration studies, and studies of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food