The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Material Cultures - by Irina D Mihalache & Elizabeth Zanoni

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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

About the Author

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).