Wow! eBook
Food and the Self: Consumption, Production and Material Culture
Author(s): Isabelle de Solier (Author)
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Publication Date: 10 Oct. 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 0857854216
- ISBN-13: 9780857854216
Book Description
Focusing on the material culture of food, the book explores these theoretical questions through an ethnography of those individuals for whom food is central to their self: ‘foodies’. It examines what foodies do, and why they do it, through an in-depth study of their lived experiences. The book uncovers how food offers a means of shaping the self not as a consumer but as an amateur who engages in both the production and consumption of material culture and adopts a professional approach which reveals the new moralities of productive leisure in self-formation. The chapters examine a variety of practices, from fine dining and shopping to cooking and blogging, and include rare data on how people use media such as cookbooks, food television, and digital food media in their everyday life.
This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the meaning of food in modern life.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Isabelle de Solier has produced an invaluable account of the foodie–a phenomenon that crept up on wealthy nations as food went from being hard to obtain to being easy to savor, regardless of climate or geography. And what an account this is, a fascinating blend of an insider’s and an outsider’s observations. A tour de force. –Toby Miller, Distinguished Professor of Media & Cultural Studies, University of California Riverside USA
Food has become a growing obsession in Western society, as can be seen in the spread of restaurants, cookbooks, TV shows, and blogs, but what does it actually mean to foodies? Although scholars have examined the professional production of gourmet culture, this innovative work follows ordinary people as they navigate the material and moral complexities of eating. –Jeffrey M. Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food and Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, USA
