Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Material Cultures

Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects representations and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars professionals and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks concepts and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice?<br/> <br/> This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local) but also global as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food its material environments and stuff and its representations in media museums and marketing while following food through cycles of production circulation and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues but also actively produce preserve and disrupt identities communities economic systems and everyday social practices.<br/> <br/>The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars museum and information professionals and chefs who represent diverse disciplines such as communication studies anthropology history American studies folklore and food studies.