With globalization has come an increased focus on food—where it comes from, how it is transported, who eats it, and what cultural significance it has. This volume brings together ethnographically
These essays are highly original, creative, and provocative.
—Warren Belasco, author of Food: The Key Concepts
This collection ably makes it clear that scholarly analyses of foodways in their cultural context provide a complex and fruitful way to consider the effects of global issues on local cultures.
—Rachelle Saltzman, Project Director of Iowa Place-Based Foods
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based anthropological analyses of shifting meanings and representations associated with the foods, ingredients, and cooking practices of marginalized and/or indigenous cultures. Contributors are
particularly interested in how these foods intersect with politics, nationhood and governance, identity, authenticity, and conservation.
The chapters cover diverse locales, issues, and
foods: the cultural meanings of sinonggi, a thick sago porridge from Sulawesi, Indonesia; the significance of pom, a Surinam dish popular in the Netherlands; the transformation of alpaca meat in Peru;
the impact of culinary tourism on indigenous cuisine in Mexico; the re-presenting of minor millets in South India; and the development of cheeses in the Italian Alps. A conceptual essay on food and
social boundaries rounds out the collection.
Throughout, the contributors address important questions, including: How are traditional foods "repackaged" in the process of mainstreaming
access? What does this repackaging mean for the ways local or indigenous peoples view their traditional food practices? How are local cuisines mobilized in movements to create national images and
identities? What tensions emerge between new representations of foods and local cultural meanings?
Together the contributors provide a thoughtful inquiry into what happens when food and
culinary practices are moved from the cultural or physical margins, and how such movements can be shaped by—and employed in the pursuit of—political, social, and cultural goals.
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