Filling our plate: A spotlight on feminist food studies (original) (raw)

Feminist Food Studies: A Critical Overview

While feminist scholars have been examining women's relationship with food since women's studies first formed into a field of its own in the 1970s, feminist food studies has only begun to cohere into a self-referential field of study within the past twenty years. As it has done so, key sites of investigation have come firmly and repeatedly into relief. In keeping with women's studies at large, feminist food studies has locked onto the domestic sphere as a conflicted site, one that simultaneously reproduces patriarchal values and that serves as a space where women enjoy an amount of power surpassing that which they exert over the public and political realms. Feminist food studies likewise focuses intently on the female body and the myriad ways in which its appetites are nourished or suppressed by cultural forces. Beginning in the 1980s, feminists from a range of fields including anthropology, history, folklore, sociology, literature, and medieval studies began to conceptualize appetite and food choice (or food refusal) as "an important voice in the identity of a woman" and to explore cookery and recipe writing as crucial forms of self-expression (Brumberg, 168 1988; Bynum; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett; Ireland; Leonardi; Michie; Schofield). Scholars not only claimed domestic and community cookbooks as rich sources for academic investigation but also established women's culinary autobiography as a canonical form of literature. In the 1990s the work of scholars began emerge into a recognizable subfield of its own, an emergence marked by the publication of several anthologies that serve as foundational texts in feminist food studies-Anne Bower's Recipes for Reading (1997); Carole Counihan and Steven L. Kaplan's Food and Gender: Identity and Power; selected essays on gender and women's studies from Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterick's Food and Culture (1997); Dean Curtin and Lisa Heldke's Cooking, Eating, Thinking (1992); Marjorie DeVault's Feeding the Family (1981); Mary Anne Schofield's Cooking by the Book; and Arlene Voski Avakian's Through the Kitchen Window (1998).

Feminist Food Studies: From Inception to Intersectionality, 1970–2020

Yemek ve Kültür, 2021

Since feminist food studies began to cohere into a field of its own twenty years ago, academics and scholar activists have developed a theoretical framework that draws from a range of interdisciplinary studies to create distinctive methodologies that deal explicitly with the body and with the ideological and material realities that regulate its existence. The more rhetorical approaches examine symbolic networks that inscribe and regulate the body and its hungers, using textual and visual representations—books, art, film, and material culture. Other approaches focus on the material and systemic forces that shape the body. No longer individuated, sterilized, or hidden from view altogether, the body has emerged in twenty-first century feminist food studies with its viscera on full display. This essay provides a literature review of the field and introduces the theoretical frameworks it has developed over the past five decades.

Women's Food Matters: Stirring the pot

2021

Women's Food Matters "This groundbreaking interdisciplinary feminist study offers a new perspective on how, and why, women's food matters throughout history and in our contemporary world. As one of the first studies to combine a focus on food production, processing and cooking, on food cultures and food systems, Swinbank puts women's knowledge and creativity at center stage in the reproduction and transformation of culture and agriculture. Women's Food Matters provides a theoretically rich contribution that is jargon-free, making it an appropriate choice for classes at any level, as well as for the general reader. Destined to 'stir the pot' of contemporary food studies.

From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food

2005

Here, feminist scholars shed new light on the history of food, cooking, and eating. In recent years, scholars from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to food to gain a better understanding of history, culture, economics, and society. The emerging field of food studies has yielded a great deal of useful research and a host of publications. "Missing", however, has been a focused effort to use gender as an analytic tool. This stimulating collection of original essays addresses that oversight, investigating the important connections between food studies and women's studies. Applying the insights of feminist scholarship to the study of food, the thirteen essays in this volume are arranged under four headings - the marketplace, histories, representations, and resistances. The editors open the book with a substantial introduction that traces the history of scholarly writing on food and maps the terrain of feminist food studies. In the essays that follow, con...

Gender, feminism and food studies

2015

Policy research and scholarship on food has rapidly increased in recent decades. The attention to 'gender' within this work appears to signal important practical and academic efforts to mainstream gendered understandings of food consumption, distribution and production into expansive conceptualisations of human security. This article argues that the gender-related work on food has wide-ranging and often troubling political and theoretical foundations and implications. Often growing out of knowledge regimes for managing social crises and advancing neo-liberal solutions, much gender and food security work provides limited interventions into mainstream gender-blind work on the nexus of power struggles, food resources and globalisation. A careful analysis of knowledge production about gender and food is therefore crucial to understanding how and why feminist food studies often transcends and challenges dominant forms of scholarship and research on food security. This article&#39...

Feminist Freedoms : Revisiting the Politics of Food

2017

Introduction Writing and research about food in South Africa has generated a wave of work on the gendered dimensions of access to affordable food as well gendered labour exploitation in cooking and food production. Like the increasing work on gender and food in other postcolonial contexts, this research reflects diverse political and theoretical foundations. Some scholarship tends to endorse a development paradigm, explicitly or indirectly showing that dominant models for producing, processing, thinking about and distributing food should be mainstreamed or adapted to address the “food security” needs of subordinate and exploited groups, especially women (see, for example, Dodson, Chiwerza and Riley, 2012). However, as Megan Carney (2016) argues, “’food insecurity’ as a concept stems from an ongoing politics of knowledge” that naturalizes or ignores “political-economic or social problems ...all the while dehumanizing those who suffer” (2014: 2). This broader socioeconomic context is ...

Feasts of Resistance: The Role of Food in Shaping Feminist Cultural Discourse

Cultural Intertexts, 2024

This paper explores the multifaceted representations of food as a symbolic medium in constructing and negotiating female identities, tracing the lineage from mythological narratives to postmodern feminist texts. By delving into the thematic intersections of food symbolism and female agency within a broad spectrum of literature, the arts, and media, the study elucidates how culinary motifs articulate power dynamics, social politics, and resistance movements. It engages with Vandana Shiva's critique of global food politics in Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (2000), and Michaela DeSoucey's analysis of culinary resistance in Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food (2016). Furthermore, it highlights the contributions of Jessica B. Harris in High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (2011), illustrating the profound connection between gastronomy, identity politics, and the feminist movement. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, the research juxtaposes mythological depictions of women as nurturers and providers with postmodern representations that challenge and subvert traditional roles through culinary metaphors. It highlights the evolution of female identities from passive subjects of mythic lore to active agents of feminist resistance, underscoring the transformative power of food imagery in articulating and contesting gender norms. Furthermore, it examines how contemporary feminist narratives harness the symbolism of food to critique societal structures, thereby reinforcing the connection between gastronomy and the politics of identity. By analyzing the contributions of scholars like Carole Counihan, and Penny Van Esterik in Food and Culture: A Reader (2013) and the critical perspectives offered by Arlene Voski Avakian and Barbara Haber in From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies (2005), the article reveals the nuanced ways food serves as a vehicle for exploring and asserting female identities across temporal and cultural divides. It contributes to the broader discourse on gender, power, and resistance by showcasing the enduring relevance of food symbolism in the ongoing struggle for female autonomy and empowerment.