Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Ferguson is interested not only in the ways in which cookbooks formalize, organize, and codify the political, but also in how cookbooks are 'archives of taste.' To explore this connection, he uses exemplary cases—either single books or book types—to think about the political nature and effects of taste...
Cookbook Politicsoffers a unique perspective and makes an important contribution as an invitation to rethink the location of politics: on the political stage, in our kitchens, in our imaginations, or through our mouths and into our stomachs." * American Studies *
"Are cookbooks political? Of course they are. But
Cookbook Politics does much more than link recipes to the production of national identity or the division of household labor. Exploring cookbooks as models of authority and instruction, focusing on the practices of both reading and cooking, this deft book articulates a politics of food operating at the level of sensation and convincingly argues that a vital politics, like the best cooking, requires a healthy measure of creativity." * Chad Lavin, author of
Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics *
"
Cookbook Politics convincingly demonstrates how cookbooks share and shape political life through the complex phenomena associated with eating. It is a major intervention in arguments concerning the politics of taste." * Thomas Dumm, author of
Home in America: On Loss and Retrieval *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Democracy: The Recipe, the Cookbook, and the Forms of Politics
Chapter 2. Nationalism: Why States Need Cookbooks
Chapter 3. International Relations: Mastery, Sensibility, and Relational Cooking
Chapter 4. Community: Cookbooks as Collectivity
Chapter 5. Ideology: Food, Fast and Slow
Conclusion. How Taste Matters
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
