No Longer Half-Baked: Food Studies and Women's History

Warren Belasco and Philip Scranton, eds. Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. viii + 288 pp. ISBN 0-415-93077-4 (pb).

Laurel Kendall, ed. Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. viii + 206 pp. ISBN 0-8248-2488-1 (pb).

Miriam Meyers. A Bite off Mama's Plate: Mothers' and Daughters' Connections through Food. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. xi + 195 pp. ISBN 0-89789-788-9 (cl).

Food is important," proclaims Warren Belasco in the opening sentence of his excellent introduction to the collection he has edited with Philip Scranton, Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. (2) Few would argue with that assertion. Food is, of course, central to life; no human being—or, indeed, any living creature—can survive for very long without it. As anthropologists have delineated, however, food not only answers our most basic physical needs, but also is central to social ritual and the construction of culture. Food plays a vital symbolic role in celebrations and religious ceremonies and is an important marker of social status, gender identity, and ethnic, religious, and national affiliations. The transition to modernity has seemingly intensified the importance of food in society. Food production, preparation, marketing, and consumption are intimately connected with modern and postmodern trends such as industrialization, the rise of mass media, imperialism, economic globalization, multiculturalism and, not least, the changing position of women.

Food and its cultural ramifications pervade modern Western society. Bestseller lists highlight not just the latest cookbook but also Proustian-type memoirs and insider views of the food industry, novels that incorporate recipes into the narrative, and journalistic reportage on what one author has christened the "fast food nation."¹ A popular cable network in the United States spotlights food and its related culture, and at least half a dozen popular magazines focus on cooking. Movies, from Babette's Feast to Big Night, center on food and eating. The restaurant, a modern invention that is a central facet of Western life, has altered perceptions about the public/private distinction, the association of food and sociability, and women's domestic responsibilities, as well as feeding the growth of a low-wage service economy in many post-industrial countries. The growing popularity in the United States and Europe, at least, of restaurants serving "ethnic," "foreign," and fusion cuisine is a tangible reminder of an ongoing global diaspora.

This intense interest in food and its attendant cultural innovations, which is so prevalent in Western popular culture today, has not elicited a corresponding enthusiasm from the academy, however. Indeed, anthropology is perhaps the one discipline whose practitioners have recognized food's importance beyond merely its biological necessity and have tried to incorporate that insight into their researches.² In his overview of the current state of "food studies," as he dubs this new interdisciplinary field, Belasco points to several of the reasons why historians have generally ignored the study of food and its associated role in the culture, politics, and economy of various societies. There is, Belasco asserts, a "certain defensiveness" among food historians, who fear they will be perceived either as "overly discriminating gastronomes (à la Craig Claiborne)" or as "muckraking 'food police' (à la Upton Sinclair)."³ (4-5)

This defensiveness that Belasco notes looms even larger when food studies is brought together with women's history. It would seem that women's historians should be at the forefront of historical explorations of food, given women's primary responsibility for preparation (and in some societies for production) of food, as well as the gendered aspects of food distribution and consumption characteristic of many different cultures. Yet, this has not been the case.⁴ As Belasco points out, the gendered dynamics of food production, preparation, and consumption in the home have tended to reinforce...