Hannah C. Gunderman reviews Brigette Sebastia’s edited volume, “Eating Traditional Food: Politics, Identity, and Practices,” which examines the processes that produce notions of “traditional” foods, particularly within a global foodscape.
Josiah Taylor reviews Jessica Hayes-Conroy’s “Savoring Alternative Food: School Gardens, Healthy Eating, and Visceral Difference,” which reveals how social factors like culture, class, gender, and race contribute to exclude some people from the table.
Virginia Webb reviews Richard Ocejo’s “Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy,” which examines how lower status jobs (bartender, distiller, barber, and butcher) are being upscaled by educated urbanites in a post-industrial city.
In this fifth issue of the Journal, Editor-in-Chief Emily Contois seeks to define food studies and why it matters, particularly during our current political climate.
In the wake of the quinoa boom, hundreds of articles were published in the mainstream media regarding the ethicality of the transnational quinoa trade. In this article, Victoria Albert evaluates these pieces, and argues that simplistic dichotomies of good/bad and exploitative/not exploitative obscure more legitimate concerns regarding environmental degradation and socioeconomic inequality.
Kendall Vanderslice carries out an experiment inspired by autoethnographic technique and collective biography. In this article, she uses embodied research methods to discover the different ways four women feel friendships form over the course of four meals shared together, as well as how the sharing of spatial knowledge while cooking and eating together contributes to flows of power.
Following kosher laws in Israel can demonstrate commitment to religion and signify belonging to the nation. In this article, Claudia Raquel Prieto Piastro examines how different people interpret and live kosher laws in Israel and the importance they give to them in their everyday lives.
Jessica Galen scrutinizes current cheese consumption recommendations for pregnant women to elucidate their semantic and scientific shortcomings. She also provides a framework for authorities to develop a new set of recommendations that gives pregnant women a clear path for making safe and delicious cheese selections.
To understand how restaurants are catalysts for cultural adaptation, Noah Allison uses GIS software to map Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York City’s geographically largest borough and the nation’s most ethnically and racially heterogeneous county, where over 150 different languages are spoken.
In this Food-Stuff piece, Emely Vargas writes a letter to her mom: “Let me tell you why my brother David, a man growing up in our Hispanic family that frequently practices stereotypical gender roles, would voluntarily take the chance of burning rice, undercooking chicken, and hearing all the criticism that comes with using a pan…”
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