The Oxford Handbook Of Food History

The final chapter in this section explores the uses of food in the classroom.

This handbook places existing works of food history in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological and geographic boundaries, while also suggesting new routes for future research. The 27 essays in this book are organised into 5 basic sections: historiography and disciplinary approaches as well as the production, circulation, and consumption of food.

Fermentation, as a chemical and biological process, is everywhere. Countless societies throughout history have used it to form a vast array of foods and drinks, many of which were integral and essential to those cultures; it could be argued that the production of beer and bread formed the basis of many agriculture-based civilizations. Today, nearly every person on the planet consumes fermented products, from beer and wine, to bread and dairy products, to certain types of meat and fish. Fermentation is a nearly ubiquitous process in today's food science, and an aspect of chemistry truly worth understanding more fully. In The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations, Charles W. Bamforth and Robert E. Ward have collected and edited contributions from many of the world's experts on food fermentation, each focused on a different fermentation product. The volume contains authoritative accounts on fermented beverages, distilled beverages, and a diverse set of foods, as well as chapters on relevant biotechnology. Each chapter embraces the nature of the product, its production, and its final composition. The text also touches on the raw materials and processes involved in producing packaged foodstuff, and the likely future trends in each area. In the conclusion, Bamforth and Ward present a comparison between the various products and the diverse technologies employed to produce them. Fermentation is a multifaceted process that affects a wide variety of products we consume, and The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations is the definitive resource that captures the science behind fermentation, as well as its diverse applications.

The term 'consumption' covers the desire for goods and services, their acquisition, use, and disposal. The study of consumption has grown enormously in recent years, and it has been the subject of major historiographical debates: did the eighteenth century bring a consumer revolution? Was there a great divergence between East and West? Did the twentieth century see the triumph of global consumerism? Questions of consumption have become defining topics in all branches of history, from gender and labour history to political history and cultural studies. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption offers a timely overview of how our understanding of consumption in history has changed in the last generation, taking the reader from the ancient period to the twenty-first century. It includes chapters on Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America, brings together new perspectives, highlights cutting-edge areas of research, and offers a guide through the main historiographical developments. Contributions from leading historians examine the spaces of consumption, consumer politics, luxury and waste, nationalism and empire, the body, well-being, youth cultures, and fashion. The Handbook also showcases the different ways in which recent historians have approached the subject, from cultural and economic history to political history and technology studies, including areas where multidisciplinary approaches have been especially fruitful.

The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, first published in 1999, became, almost overnight, an immense success, winning prizes and accolades around the world. Its combination of serious food history, culinary expertise, and entertaining serendipity, with each page offering an infinity of perspectives, was recognized as unique. The study of food and food history is a new discipline, but one that has developed exponentially in the last twenty years. There are now university departments, international societies, learned journals, and a wide-ranging literature exploring the meaning of food in the daily lives of people around the world, and seeking to introduce food and the process of nourishment into our understanding of almost every compartment of human life, whether politics, high culture, street life, agriculture, or life and death issues such as conflict and war. The great quality of this Companion is the way it includes both an exhaustive catalogue of the foods that nourish humankind - whether they be fruit from tropical forests, mosses scraped from adamantine granite in Siberian wastes, or body parts such as eyeballs and testicles - and a richly allusive commentary on the culture of food, whether expressed in literature and cookery books, or as dishes peculiar to a country or community. The new edition has not sought to dim the brilliance of Davidson's prose. Rather, it has updated to keep ahead of a fast-moving area, and has taken the opportunity to alert readers to new avenues in food studies.

Food matters, not only as a subject of study in its own right, but also as a medium for conveying critical messages about capitalism, the environment, and social inequality to diverse audiences. Recent scholarship on the subject draws from both a pathbreaking body of secondary literature and an inexhaustible wealth of primary sources--from ancient Chinese philosophical tracts to McDonald's menus--contributing new perspectives to the historical study of food, culture, and society, and challenging the limits of history itself. The Oxford Handbook of Food History places existing works in historiographical context, crossing disciplinary, chronological, and geographic boundaries while also suggesting new routes for future research. The twenty-seven essays in this book are organized into five sections: historiography, disciplinary approaches, production, circulation, and consumption of food. The first two sections examine the foundations of food history, not only in relation to key developments in the discipline of history itself--such as the French Annales school and the cultural turn--but also in anthropology, sociology, geography, pedagogy, and the emerging Critical Nutrition Studies. The following three sections sketch various trajectories of food as it travels from farm to table, factory to eatery, nature to society. Each section balances material, cultural, and intellectual concerns, whether juxtaposing questions of agriculture and the environment with the notion of cookbooks as historical documents; early human migrations with modern culinary tourism; or religious customs with social activism. In its vast, interdisciplinary scope, this handbook brings students and scholars an authoritative guide to a field with fresh insights into one of the most fundamental human concerns.

Fermentation, as a chemical and biological process, is everywhere. Countless societies throughout history have used it to form a vast array of foods and drinks, many of which were integral and essential to those cultures; it could be argued that the production of beer and bread formed the basis of many agriculture-based civilizations. Today, nearly every person on the planet consumes fermented products, from beer and wine, to bread and dairy products, to certain types of meat and fish. Fermentation is a nearly ubiquitous process in today's food science, and an aspect of chemistry truly worth understanding more fully. In The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations, Charles W. Bamforth and Robert E. Ward have collected and edited contributions from many of the world's experts on food fermentation, each focused on a different fermentation product. The volume contains authoritative accounts on fermented beverages, distilled beverages, and a diverse set of foods, as well as chapters on relevant biotechnology. Each chapter embraces the nature of the product, its production, and its final composition. The text also touches on the raw materials and processes involved in producing packaged foodstuff, and the likely future trends in each area. In the conclusion, Bamforth and Ward present a comparison between the various products and the diverse technologies employed to produce them. Fermentation is a multifaceted process that affects a wide variety of products we consume, and The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations is the definitive resource that captures the science behind fermentation, as well as its diverse applications.

Food has, for most of our species history, been intensely political: who gets to eat what, how often, and through what means? The scale of polity in question has shifted over time, from very local institutions dividing up grain piles to an international community imagined in the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations. Simultaneously, the numbers and interests of people asserting political stakes in food and agriculture have likewise shifted up and out. Global networks advocate social justice in distal agrarian systems, promotion of some farming techniques and prohibition of others, food sovereignty or efficiencies of markets and trade. Political consumerism allows the well-endowed to "vote with their dollars" for changes in food systems far from home, but depends on certification and labeling from unseen institutions. As an object of governmentality, food has never been so prominent. The thirty-five handbook chapters confront four major themes in the politics of food: property, technology, justice and knowledge. Ronald Herring's editorial introduction asks how food is political, highlighting contention around the role of market, state and information in societal decisions. The first section of the handbook then examines technology, science and knowledge in food production. What is known - and disputed - about malnutrition, poverty and food security? The second section addresses ethics, rights and distributive justice: agrarian reform, gender inequality, entitlements and subsidies, and the social vision of the alternative food movement. The third section looks to intersections of agriculture and nature: wild foods, livestock, agro-ecological approaches to sustainability, and climate change and genetic engineering. The fourth section addresses food values and culture: political consumerism, labeling and certification, the science and cultural politics of food safety, values driving regulation of genetically modified foods and potential coexistence of GMOs, and organic and conventional crops. The fifth and final section looks at frontiers of global contentions: rival transnational advocacy networks, social movements for organic farming, the who and why of international land grabbing, junctures of cosmopolitan and local food narratives, the "supermarket revolution" and the international agrifood industry in low-income countries, and politics of knowledge in agricultural futures.