Description
Book SynopsisFrom table talk to farmers' markets, analyzing the cultural politics of what and how we eat
Trade Review"Provocative. . . . Flammang makes a convincing case for the centrality of food work and shared meals, much along the lines laid down by Carlo Petrini and Alice Waters, but with more historical perspective and theoretical rigor."--Michael Pollan,
The New York Review of Books"[Flammang] treats this subject with the high seriousness and scholarly insight it deserves."--
Hypatia "An important and provocative book."--
Gastronomica"A compelling argument reconnecting domesticity to civil society. . . . Highly recommended."--
Choice"Eating is something we all have in common: it opens up both our senses and our consciences to our place in the world. Janet A. Flammang's
The Taste for Civilization shows how the American family meal has been devalued from its role as a daily enactment of shared necessity and ritualized cooperation--and how important it is to restore the daily ritual of the table in our lives."--Alice Waters, founder, Chez Panisse
"Deftly bringing together political theory, feminist analysis, and cultural studies, Flammang uses the familiar world of our private lives and everyday practices with food to interrogate the public life of American democracy and civil society. Thoughtful and creative."--Anna Sampaio, coeditor of
Transnational Latina/o Communities: Politics, Processes, and CulturesTable of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction; Civility, Civil Society and Democracy; Political Theory: Where's the Household in Civil Society?; Empirical Studies: It's Hard to Measure the Table; The Art of Conversation and Civic Virtues of Thoughtfulness and Generosity; Meals, Conversations and Women; What Changes are Needed?; Part One: Household Foodwork; Chapter 1: The Time Crunch; Farm and City Foodwork; Women's Labor Force Participation and Overworked Americans; Technology and Food Tasks; The Second Shift and the Globalization of Housework; Invisible Foodwork; Solutions to the Time Crunch; Chapter 2: Domesticity: Meals, Obligation and Gratitude; Political and Gendered Domesticity; Deciding on the Menu: Household Variations; Gift, Obligation and the Economy of Gratitude; Psychological Memories and Social Connections; Escape from the Household with Commercial Food; Chapter 3: American Food; American Food as Multi-Ethnic and Regional Corporations Urge Immigrants to Eat American; Racial and Ethnic Pride in Foodways; The Slow Food Movement; American foodways, the Obesity Crisis and Global Warming; Part Two: Table Conversation; Chapter 4: Conversation and Manners; Conversations and Civility; Civil Society: Light Social Conversations and Heavy Political Arguments; The Lost Art of Conversation in the United States; Upper Class and Feminine: Courtesy, Civility, Politeness and Manners; The Universality of Table Manners; Manners and the Middle Class
