Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on ethnography conducted in Israel since the late 1990s, Food and Power considers how power is produced, reproduced, negotiated, and subverted in the contemporary Israeli culinary sphere. Nir Avieli explores issues such as the definition of Israeli cuisine, the ownership of hummus, the privatization of communal Kibbutz dining rooms, and food at a military prison for Palestinian detainees to show how cooking and eating create ambivalence concerning questions of strength and weakness and how power and victimization are mixed into a sense of self-justification that maintains internal cohesion among Israeli Jews.
Trade Review"Avieli’s book reveals not only power dynamics associated with what we eat, but also how we, as a community member or as an outsider researcher within it, use food to establish our 'place' in society." * Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Hummus Wars
1 • Size Matters
2 • Roasting Meat
3 • Why We Like Italian Food
4 • Th e McDonaldization of the Kibbutz Dining Room
5 • Meat and Masculinity in a Military Prison
6 • Th ai Migrant Workers and the Dog-Eating Myth
Conclusion: Food and Power in Israel—Orientalization and Ambivalence
Notes
References
Index
