Food and Gender: Identity and Power (Food in History & Culture)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 905702568X ISBN 13: 9789057025686

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

This volume examines, among other things, the significance of food-centered activities to gender relations and the construction of gendered identities across cultures. It considers how each gender's relationship to food may facilitate mutual respect or produce gender hierarchy. This relationship is considered through two central questions: How does control of food production, distribution, and consumption contribute to men's and women's power and social position? and How does food symbolically connote maleness and femaleness and establish the social value of men and women? Other issues discussed include men's and women's attitudes towards their bodies and the legitimacy of their appetites.

Synopsis:

"Food and Gender: identity and power" marks the inaugural volume in the "Food in history and culture" book series. The series will anthologize articles originally published in the journal "Food and foodways". This volume examines, among other things, the significance of food centred activities to gender relations and the construction of gendered identities across cultures. "Food and gender: identity and power" examines how each gender's relationship to food may facilitate mutual respect or produce gender hierarchy. This relationship is considered through two central questions. How does control of food production, distribution, and consumption contribute to men's and women's power and social position? and how does food symbolically connote maleness and femaleness and establish the social value of men and women? Other issues discussed include evaluating men's and women's attitudes about their bodies and the legitimacy of their appetites.