Description
Book SynopsisIn recent years, Peru has transformed from a war-torn country to a global high-end culinary destination. Connecting chefs, state agencies, global capital, and Indigenous producers, this gastronomic revolution makes powerful claims: food unites Peruvians, dissolves racial antagonisms, and fuels development. Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race critically evaluates these claims and tracks the emergence of Peruvian gastropolitics, a biopolitical and aesthetic set of practices that reinscribe dominant racial and gendered orders. Through critical readings of high-end menus and ethnographic analysis of culinary festivals, guinea pig production, and national-branding campaigns, this work explores the intersections of race, species, and capital to reveal links between gastronomy and violence in Peru.
Trade Review"The book presents a stunning and innovative analysis of the politics of Peru’s recent gastronomic boom. . . .[it] is at the forefront of scholarly discussions on the topic and deserves a wide readership among anthropologists and food studies scholars working on food, race, and nationalism in a range of geographic settings." * Gastronomica *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface: Understories
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Stories of Resurgence and Coloniality
Part One: Structures of Accumulation
Interlude: Hauntings
1 • Gastropolitics and the Nation
Interlude: Eating the Nation
2 • Cooking Ecosystems: The Beautiful Coloniality of Virgilio Martínez
Interlude: "Gastronomy Is a Display Case"
3 • Staging Difference: The Gastropolitics of Inclusion and Recognition
Part Two: Narratives from the Edge
Interlude: "Apega Needs Us to Look Pretty"
4 • Gastropolitics Otherwise: Stories in and of the Vernacular
Interlude: Of Humor and Violence
5 • Guinea Pig Matters: Figuring Race, Sex, and Nation
Interlude: Chemical Castration
6 • Death of a Guinea Pig
Epilogue. Huacas Rising
Notes
References
Index
