Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics

Acknowledgments

. vii A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S I started writing this book in the fall of 2005, soon after a hurricane and a shameful display of political neglect sent me fleeing from Louisiana to Texas to Pennsylvania, fortunate enough to find helpful friends, family , and strangers at each step along the way. I finished writing six years later, five days before the birth of my son. These events do more than bookend the writing of this book. They each, in their own way, capture the exposure and intimacy that are rarely avoidable in considerations of food and politics and that are at the center of this project. In fleeing a flooded city (an experience of fear and outrage punctuated by great moments of compassion) and witnessing the birth of my own child (an experience of joy and wonder marked with tremendous anxiety), I found myself experiencing similar feelings of vulnerability and gratitude that come, invariably, from the sharing of spaces, ideas, tragedies, and opportunities with others. Digesting such experiences—as well as countless other more prosaic events—would be impossible without the material and psychological sustenance provided by people and institutions daily and as a matter of course. This book was nourished in similar but more immediate and obvious ways by the various people and communities who read, solicited, listened to, or commented directly on its contents. Individually, these people include Asma Abbas, Rebecca Bamford, Mark Barrow, Ryan Carey, Bill Chaloupka, Kevin Corrigan, Jodi Dean, Kennan Ferguson, Johnnie Goldfinger, Jim Klagge, Mike Lipscomb, Nancy Love, Tim Luke, Brad MacDonald, Elizabeth Mazzolini, Wolfgang Natter, Amy Nelson, Paul Passavant, Lydia Patton, Joe Pitt, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Chris Russill , Holloway Sparks, Maryann Tebben, Katie Terezakis, Larry Torcello, Shane Vogel, Deborah White, and Kathryn Wichelns. They also include viii . A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S the students in my classes on food at Emory University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Virginia Tech. These folks were all kind enough to indulge my often frustrating engagements with this material, and they somehow managed to inject their own critical approaches into my own occasionally imperious readings. Pieter Martin at the University of Minnesota Press shepherded this manuscript through the various hurdles of academic publishing and offered some very thoughtful last-minute suggestions for revision. The book is surely better because of each of their contributions. (I have to think I am as well.) Great thanks go to Martine Watson Brownley, as well as the wonderful staff and my fellow fellows at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University for generously hosting (and feeding) me during the 2006–7 school year. This project never would have proceeded past the first chapter without both the moral and material support I received while there. The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech later came through with another welcome grant to help me finish the project in the summer of 2011. Thanks to the division of Social Sciences of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the departments of Political Science and Environmental Studies at Winthrop University, and the department of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology for inviting me to talk through some of these issues as I worked on them. Additional thanks to the departments of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Virginia Tech and to my colleagues in the ASPECT program at Virginia Tech for providing welcome and inspiring places to live, work, and write. But it is surely to Elizabeth, my true companion, whose life has intersected with mine in ways too wonderful to state, whose critical eye has greatly improved how I write and think, who pointed me toward food politics then provided both focused and casual remarks that improved every part of this book (even the parts that continue to irritate her), and whose love, humor, and strength helped me endure too many years of commuting up and down the Eastern Seaboard, that I owe the most. And to Walter, who somehow manages a smile as breathtaking as his mother ’s. Here’s to never eating alone. ...