Description
Book SynopsisIn
Meals Matter, Michael Symons returns economics to its roots in the distribution of food and the labor required. Setting the table with vivid descriptions of conviviality, he offers a gastronomic rebuttal to the narrow worldview of mainstream economics.
Trade ReviewMichael Symons succeeds brilliantly in a radical project: convincing readers to rethink a singular ‘economics’ as multiple ‘economies’: bodily, household, market, political, and natural. His book draws on intellectual history, economic and social theories, and gastronomy, and it is richly illustrated with stories about meals. -- Janet Flammang, author of
The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil SocietyAs an academic economist and former chef, this is a book I wish I had written. Symons’s work provides a unique contribution through its fusion of philosophy, economics, and food, arguing for the need to reject the acquisitive self-interest ethos of economics and instead return to a social-centric Epicurean philosophy. I for one would enjoy a seat at Symons’s table. -- Ted P. Schmidt, author of
The Political Economy of Food and FinanceMeals Matter is a passionate call to create a more convivial world by centering food and its consumption. It combines a powerful challenge to action with a well-documented contribution toward our understanding of the cultural and social significance of food and foodways. -- Bertram M. Gordon, author of
War Tourism: Second World War France from Defeat and Occupation to the Creation of HeritageA clearly written and exciting reappraisal of the development of Western economic thinking and when and where it goes awry.
Meals Matter offers an original argument about the relationship of food, money, and economics that has the potential to upend many orthodoxies. -- David Sutton, author of
Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and MemoryMeals Matter is compelling, original and sophisticated. The book would appeal to a scientific and lay audience seeking a deeper understanding of how society got to a point of extreme commodification of food, alienation from its sociocultural value, and the neglect of meals. * Nature Food *
Meals Matter is a passionate and inspiring proposal for change. Symons’s suggestion that the 'festal core' of democracy needs to be resurrected is certainly correct. * The Australian *
Table of ContentsPrologue: Meals Before Money
1. It’s Not “
the Economy, Stupid,” but More Than Five of Them
Part I: Insatiable Greed vs. Satiable Appetite2. In Greed They Trust
3. Brillat-Savarin’s Quest for Table-Pleasure
Part II: Liberal Economics4. Epicurus and the Pleasure of the Stomach
5. Cavendish, Hobbes, Locke, and Liberal Political Economy
6. The City Sacks Versailles
7. Making the Market
Part III: The Capture8. The Dismal Science
9. Ludwig von Mises, Neoliberal Godfather
10. Rationalization and Corporate Purpose
11. The Creation of
Homo EconomicusPart IV: Restoring Economics12. Free the Market! (It’s Been Captured by Capitalism)
13. Value Families! (Economics Begins at Home)
14. Get Political! (Bring Back Banquets)
Epilogue: “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry”
Acknowledgments
Glossary: List of Ingredients
Notes
References
Index
