Carole M. Counihan, Ph.D. - Books
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The Anthropology of Food and
Body: Gender, Meaning and Power The Anthropology of Food and Body explores the ways that making, eating, and thinking about food reveal culturally determined gender-power relations in diverse societies. Carole M. Counihan uses a cross-cultural approach to the study of food in order to ask compelling questions about eating disorders, body dissatisfaction, bodily changes in reproduction, and gender differences. Drawing upon ethnographic data from her fieldwork in Europe and the United States, Counihan addresses such issues as: What powers to women gain and lose through their control over food preparation and distribution? What do food images in children's fantasy stories tell us about their sense of self? How do beliefs about eating and intercourse in different societies reflect and affect ideologies of gender? How does the objectification of the female body subordinate women, and how can women challenge it? And how do pregnancy and birth affect women's body image and empowerment? The Anthropology of Food and Body is a fascinating examination of the way we understand our bodies, our genders, and ourselves through food. Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 - Food, Culture, and Gender Chapter 2 - Bread as World: Food Habits and Social Relations in Modernizing Sardinia Chapter 3 - Food, Power, and Female Identity in Contemporary Florence Chapter 4 - Food, Sex and Reproduction: Penetration of Gender Boundaries Chapter 5 - What Does It Mean to Be Fat, Thin, and Female? A Review Essay Chapter 6 - An Anthropological View of Western Women’s Prodigious Fasting: A Review Essay Chapter 7 - Food Rules in the United States: Individualism, Control, and Hierarchy Chapter 8 - Fantasy Food: Gender and Food Symbolism in Preschool Children’s Made-Up Stories Chapter 9 - Food as Tie and Rupture: Negotiating Intimacy and Autonomy in the Florentine Family Chapter 10 - The Body as Voice of Desire and Connection in Florence, Italy Chapter 11 - Body and Power in Women’s Experiences of Reproduction in the United States Notes Bibliography RECIPES Index |
