Pub Date : 2023-07-03DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2228033
Laurel Forster
Abstract This article discusses the underlying reasons for the rise in popularity of the country cookbook – a genre that reflects rural cookery practices, using locally-available, seasonal and foraged ingredients – in 1970s Britain. Despite country cookbooks being styled along traditional lines, their increased popularity very much drew upon unconventional, countercultural movements of communal living, self-sufficiency and folk feminism. Country cookbooks can be seen as a direct response to a troubled decade, expressing a desire for an alternative life away from the work-consumption cycle and a longed-for dissent from agri-politics and industrialized food, but without the unconventionality of the commune, the hard graft of self-sufficiency, or the media-fueled mockery of feminism. The 1970s was also the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK and women’s work in the kitchen was highly politicized. Amidst these debates, the country cookbook through its comforting, sometimes old-fashioned, recipes and advice offers an imagined return to country living, a psychological shift away from capitalism and the limitations of modern life. By adopting narrative structures and writerly tone which emulate rural life, the country cookbook emulates a mindset that draws from countercultures, but also proffers security and accessibility.
{"title":"Country cooking: Cookbooks and Counterculture in the 1970s","authors":"Laurel Forster","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2228033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2228033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article discusses the underlying reasons for the rise in popularity of the country cookbook – a genre that reflects rural cookery practices, using locally-available, seasonal and foraged ingredients – in 1970s Britain. Despite country cookbooks being styled along traditional lines, their increased popularity very much drew upon unconventional, countercultural movements of communal living, self-sufficiency and folk feminism. Country cookbooks can be seen as a direct response to a troubled decade, expressing a desire for an alternative life away from the work-consumption cycle and a longed-for dissent from agri-politics and industrialized food, but without the unconventionality of the commune, the hard graft of self-sufficiency, or the media-fueled mockery of feminism. The 1970s was also the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK and women’s work in the kitchen was highly politicized. Amidst these debates, the country cookbook through its comforting, sometimes old-fashioned, recipes and advice offers an imagined return to country living, a psychological shift away from capitalism and the limitations of modern life. By adopting narrative structures and writerly tone which emulate rural life, the country cookbook emulates a mindset that draws from countercultures, but also proffers security and accessibility.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"159 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42426767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-23DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2228035
Charity Givens
Abstract Community cookbooks, also known as charity cookbooks, have existed in the United States since the Civil War. Originally designed to raise money for war widows and orphans, these cookbooks have remained a fundraising staple for church groups, women’s social clubs, schools, and other non-profits and reflect people and places from specific points in time. With the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent quarantines and isolations came a rise in digital quarantine cookbooks that functioned as fundraisers and reflected the makeup of communities like their hard-copy ancestors. By placing digital quarantine cookbooks within the established genre of community cookbooks, we see how this new digital practice attempts community through connection and solidarity in the face of isolation and separation.
{"title":"Creating community, one byte at a time: Digital community cookbooks during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Charity Givens","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2228035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2228035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Community cookbooks, also known as charity cookbooks, have existed in the United States since the Civil War. Originally designed to raise money for war widows and orphans, these cookbooks have remained a fundraising staple for church groups, women’s social clubs, schools, and other non-profits and reflect people and places from specific points in time. With the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent quarantines and isolations came a rise in digital quarantine cookbooks that functioned as fundraisers and reflected the makeup of communities like their hard-copy ancestors. By placing digital quarantine cookbooks within the established genre of community cookbooks, we see how this new digital practice attempts community through connection and solidarity in the face of isolation and separation.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"200 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41433381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-22DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2228034
K. Geddes
Abstract This paper provides a historical analysis to demonstrate the connections and developmental links which emerged between cookbooks and television in Britain after World War II, focused on television broadcasts in the period 1946 and 1976. In this paper, I discuss how early presenters of British television cookery programmes, and their publishers, had vision and marketing skills which enabled links between visual and printed media, and established a pattern of connected cookbook and television production which is taken for granted today. I examine the connected television and publishing careers of three early British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television cooking pioneers: Marguerite Patten, Philip Harben and Fanny Cradock, who collectively dominated on-screen cooking programmes from the late 1940s until the mid-1970s. By analyzing their cookbooks, particularly their jackets and promotional materials, and interpreting archival research conducted in the BBC Written Archives and other documentary archives, their contributions will be discussed alongside the development of the television-connected cookbook in Britain. I conclude that these television cooks and presenters made a significant contribution on and off our screens during that period which established the connection between television cooking programmes and cookbooks in Britain.
{"title":"“Accompanying the series”: Early British television cookbooks 1946-1976","authors":"K. Geddes","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2228034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2228034","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper provides a historical analysis to demonstrate the connections and developmental links which emerged between cookbooks and television in Britain after World War II, focused on television broadcasts in the period 1946 and 1976. In this paper, I discuss how early presenters of British television cookery programmes, and their publishers, had vision and marketing skills which enabled links between visual and printed media, and established a pattern of connected cookbook and television production which is taken for granted today. I examine the connected television and publishing careers of three early British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television cooking pioneers: Marguerite Patten, Philip Harben and Fanny Cradock, who collectively dominated on-screen cooking programmes from the late 1940s until the mid-1970s. By analyzing their cookbooks, particularly their jackets and promotional materials, and interpreting archival research conducted in the BBC Written Archives and other documentary archives, their contributions will be discussed alongside the development of the television-connected cookbook in Britain. I conclude that these television cooks and presenters made a significant contribution on and off our screens during that period which established the connection between television cooking programmes and cookbooks in Britain.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"219 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43935697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2199968
A. Giampiccoli, A. Dłużewska, E. Mnguni
Abstract Eating and drinking venues are key to the creation of new forms of city living that are associated with the regeneration of de-industrialized and depressed urban areas. New ‘food clusters’ with social functions are becoming centers of leisure for locals and tourists alike and they can include various types of food and cuisine. They can also be part of the revitalization strategies of specific city neighborhoods. This article investigates two evolving food areas in the city of Warsaw, Poland that are regenerating the Mirów sub-district – Browary Warszawskie and Norblin Factory, focusing on tourists and local residents. It draws on previous literature, internet sites and observation. The article proposes that the international rather than the local cuisine on offer aims to attract more local residents than tourists and that the types of cuisine on offer, which represent formalized/’luxury’ street food, are in line with the gentrification of these areas. Thus, using a specific district in Warsaw the article aims to contribute to the debate on the possible role of new food landscapes in the regeneration – and gentrification – of urban areas.
{"title":"Tourists, locals and urban revitalization through street food in Warsaw","authors":"A. Giampiccoli, A. Dłużewska, E. Mnguni","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2199968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2199968","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Eating and drinking venues are key to the creation of new forms of city living that are associated with the regeneration of de-industrialized and depressed urban areas. New ‘food clusters’ with social functions are becoming centers of leisure for locals and tourists alike and they can include various types of food and cuisine. They can also be part of the revitalization strategies of specific city neighborhoods. This article investigates two evolving food areas in the city of Warsaw, Poland that are regenerating the Mirów sub-district – Browary Warszawskie and Norblin Factory, focusing on tourists and local residents. It draws on previous literature, internet sites and observation. The article proposes that the international rather than the local cuisine on offer aims to attract more local residents than tourists and that the types of cuisine on offer, which represent formalized/’luxury’ street food, are in line with the gentrification of these areas. Thus, using a specific district in Warsaw the article aims to contribute to the debate on the possible role of new food landscapes in the regeneration – and gentrification – of urban areas.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"135 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43935196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2194050
R. Suryantini, P. Atmodiwirjo, Y. Yatmo
Abstract This paper explores the idea of “squeezing” as a way of integrating the space of cooking for commercial practice and other domestic-related activities within a limited setting. Such integration of the traditional fish curing space observed in this study arguably demonstrates squeezing as a spatial strategy, which invites further operations. This paper believes that squeezing operates not only temporally but also spatially, expanding the idea of the kitchen as a space constituted of multiple ministrategies. This paper investigates such spatial strategy of a smokehouse in Central Java, Indonesia, that performs traditional fish curing and simultaneously other domestic needs as their everyday practice. Observations and interviews were conducted to map the changes and movement of activities and stuff during the fish curing activity in a limited setting. The squeezing is characterized by the ministrategies and generates a cooking space with layered and nested spaces. These findings urge further discussion of everyday spatial organization as well as enriching the idea of functional flexibility and adaptability, particularly of the traditional food production setting.
{"title":"‘Squeezing’ commercial traditional food production space, a case study of local Javanese traditional fish curing","authors":"R. Suryantini, P. Atmodiwirjo, Y. Yatmo","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2194050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2194050","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the idea of “squeezing” as a way of integrating the space of cooking for commercial practice and other domestic-related activities within a limited setting. Such integration of the traditional fish curing space observed in this study arguably demonstrates squeezing as a spatial strategy, which invites further operations. This paper believes that squeezing operates not only temporally but also spatially, expanding the idea of the kitchen as a space constituted of multiple ministrategies. This paper investigates such spatial strategy of a smokehouse in Central Java, Indonesia, that performs traditional fish curing and simultaneously other domestic needs as their everyday practice. Observations and interviews were conducted to map the changes and movement of activities and stuff during the fish curing activity in a limited setting. The squeezing is characterized by the ministrategies and generates a cooking space with layered and nested spaces. These findings urge further discussion of everyday spatial organization as well as enriching the idea of functional flexibility and adaptability, particularly of the traditional food production setting.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"90 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46781100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2197166
Marie Helene Sauner, I. B. Parlak
Abstract French novels of the 19th century recall the aspects of food culture in different ways through their reflections on the golden age for both gastronomy and the pleasures of the table. La Comédie Humaine is a milestone in highlighting the keystones of French food and gastronomy. In this study, we propose a multistage analysis of 21 novels of La Comédie Humaine by examining the food terms and their translations into English and Turkish. Our main contribution is the qualitative and quantitative analysis of food in the Balzacian context. We have performed food data visualization from original and translated texts and thus revealed how the terms for beverages and mealtimes are interconnected in the Comédie Humaine and how food translations might differ in English and Turkish, especially the names of wine, coffee terms and mealtime names. We provide a contextualized food approach to Balzac’s novels through the lens of Turkish and English culture revealing their openness, or not, to French food culture, linked to the rules of prestige and the habitus of the target culture. We started our analysis by localizing food patterns in the source language. Then we analyzed them in distant reading – analysis of quantitative data – and close reading focused on the qualitative analysis. This mixed methodology gives a new layer of insight and could be extrapolated to other texts and languages in the domain of food and literature.
{"title":"Challenges of translating food in multiparallel corpus: Beverages and mealtimes in Balzac’s human comedy (La Comédie Humaine)","authors":"Marie Helene Sauner, I. B. Parlak","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2197166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2197166","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract French novels of the 19th century recall the aspects of food culture in different ways through their reflections on the golden age for both gastronomy and the pleasures of the table. La Comédie Humaine is a milestone in highlighting the keystones of French food and gastronomy. In this study, we propose a multistage analysis of 21 novels of La Comédie Humaine by examining the food terms and their translations into English and Turkish. Our main contribution is the qualitative and quantitative analysis of food in the Balzacian context. We have performed food data visualization from original and translated texts and thus revealed how the terms for beverages and mealtimes are interconnected in the Comédie Humaine and how food translations might differ in English and Turkish, especially the names of wine, coffee terms and mealtime names. We provide a contextualized food approach to Balzac’s novels through the lens of Turkish and English culture revealing their openness, or not, to French food culture, linked to the rules of prestige and the habitus of the target culture. We started our analysis by localizing food patterns in the source language. Then we analyzed them in distant reading – analysis of quantitative data – and close reading focused on the qualitative analysis. This mixed methodology gives a new layer of insight and could be extrapolated to other texts and languages in the domain of food and literature.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"108 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45251136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2194049
Ana Tominc
Abstract This article explores the construction of a national and supra-national culinary identity in Slovenia in the decades since its independence from Yugoslavia through the TV chefs Valentina and Luka Novak’s celebrity cookbooks. As they cook for the nation, they establish the idea of what is to be “Slovene” in post-socialism. Based on an analysis of the spin-off cookbooks from their popular TV series Love through the Stomach broadcast on Slovene television from 2009 to 2014, the paper discusses their complex navigation between various aspects of Slovenia’s history, as the chefs distance the cuisine from its Yugoslav past and explicitly reorient its food culture toward Central Europe. In doing this, they reflect and reinforce larger discourse shifts that have been taking place in Slovenia since the 1980s and through which its political and media elites prepared the ground for Slovenia’s entry to the EU in 2004, distancing themselves from its “Balkan” neighbors and embracing its European essence. This paper shows how such shifts can be reflected in culinary texts, such as cookbooks, contributing to the understanding of everyday food texts as political texts. The paper also demonstrates the role of the Slovene middle-class elite as culinary trendsetters in the post-socialist period.
{"title":"Between the Balkans and Central Europe: Celebrity chefs, national culinary identity and the post-socialist elite in Slovenia","authors":"Ana Tominc","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2194049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2194049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explores the construction of a national and supra-national culinary identity in Slovenia in the decades since its independence from Yugoslavia through the TV chefs Valentina and Luka Novak’s celebrity cookbooks. As they cook for the nation, they establish the idea of what is to be “Slovene” in post-socialism. Based on an analysis of the spin-off cookbooks from their popular TV series Love through the Stomach broadcast on Slovene television from 2009 to 2014, the paper discusses their complex navigation between various aspects of Slovenia’s history, as the chefs distance the cuisine from its Yugoslav past and explicitly reorient its food culture toward Central Europe. In doing this, they reflect and reinforce larger discourse shifts that have been taking place in Slovenia since the 1980s and through which its political and media elites prepared the ground for Slovenia’s entry to the EU in 2004, distancing themselves from its “Balkan” neighbors and embracing its European essence. This paper shows how such shifts can be reflected in culinary texts, such as cookbooks, contributing to the understanding of everyday food texts as political texts. The paper also demonstrates the role of the Slovene middle-class elite as culinary trendsetters in the post-socialist period.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"67 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49013128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-21DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2191886
Akash Kumar Srivastava, V. Chandra
{"title":"The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are","authors":"Akash Kumar Srivastava, V. Chandra","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2191886","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2191886","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47807472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2162200
E. Veen, S. Wahlen, Lian Angelino
Abstract Sharing platforms gained importance in recent years. Little is known about whether and why novel means to digitally share meals are incorporated into people’s everyday portfolios of everyday food provisioning. The objective of this paper is accordingly to explore why digitally mediated meal sharing is incorporated (or not) into an array of everyday food provisioning practices. We use observations of and interviews with users of the Dutch platform Thuisgekookt, on which home cooks offer meals to be picked up by neighbors. Our practice theoretically inspired analysis starts with the concept of teleoaffective structures. These consist of a teleological dimension which points to objects (such as food) motivating action. The second, affective dimension indicates motivational engagement and emotional states. Three teleoaffective episodes - anticipating, actualizing and assessing - assist in explaining why meal sharing recruits practitioners (or not). We find that while meal sharing has advantages over other food provisioning practices, the generated affect is often not sufficient to recruit the new means of digitally mediated meal sharing in daily life, especially because of meal sharing’s relative inconvenience. Temporal conditions as well as a limited array of food provisioning practices, however, afford coordination of meal sharing with other everyday practices. The three episodes of teleoaffectivity enabled the understanding that meal sharing is not only evaluated on its own terms, but also anticipated and assessed in relation to other options and the recruitment of practitioners proofed difficult.
{"title":"Exploring everyday food provisioning: the teleoaffectivity of meal sharing","authors":"E. Veen, S. Wahlen, Lian Angelino","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2162200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2162200","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Sharing platforms gained importance in recent years. Little is known about whether and why novel means to digitally share meals are incorporated into people’s everyday portfolios of everyday food provisioning. The objective of this paper is accordingly to explore why digitally mediated meal sharing is incorporated (or not) into an array of everyday food provisioning practices. We use observations of and interviews with users of the Dutch platform Thuisgekookt, on which home cooks offer meals to be picked up by neighbors. Our practice theoretically inspired analysis starts with the concept of teleoaffective structures. These consist of a teleological dimension which points to objects (such as food) motivating action. The second, affective dimension indicates motivational engagement and emotional states. Three teleoaffective episodes - anticipating, actualizing and assessing - assist in explaining why meal sharing recruits practitioners (or not). We find that while meal sharing has advantages over other food provisioning practices, the generated affect is often not sufficient to recruit the new means of digitally mediated meal sharing in daily life, especially because of meal sharing’s relative inconvenience. Temporal conditions as well as a limited array of food provisioning practices, however, afford coordination of meal sharing with other everyday practices. The three episodes of teleoaffectivity enabled the understanding that meal sharing is not only evaluated on its own terms, but also anticipated and assessed in relation to other options and the recruitment of practitioners proofed difficult.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"22 - 42"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45933694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2023.2162199
Nathan Hopson
Abstract We are not only what we eat, but how. This article examines the 1970s’ morality politics of spork usage that accompanied the rollout of rice in school lunches. I argue that these discourses about the material culture and etiquette of eating reflect the economic and political context of 1970s Japan and (re)emergent tensions about national identity and the role of children’s diet and table manners in determining Japan’s future. Japan’s national school lunch program is a critical site of “making Japan.” Schoolchildren and teachers generally eat identical meals in their classrooms, serving and cleaning up after each other. Revived in 1946 by the Occupation, the program was nearly universal in public elementary and middle schools by the 1960s. Meals were mostly bread, milk, and soup, stew, etc. The spork was the standard utensil. Cheap, multipurpose, and hygienic, it was a rational mass-catering solution. In the mid-1970s, simultaneous to the introduction of rice to the menu, the spork became the villain in a morality play about children’s eating habits and the nation’s fate. Culturalist pundits warned that sporks hindered development of the special dexterity, cleverness, and sensitivity that made Japan superior among the nations of the world.
{"title":"“Humans bring food to their mouths, animals bring their mouths to food”—The morality politics of school-lunch sporks in 1970s Japan","authors":"Nathan Hopson","doi":"10.1080/07409710.2023.2162199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07409710.2023.2162199","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We are not only what we eat, but how. This article examines the 1970s’ morality politics of spork usage that accompanied the rollout of rice in school lunches. I argue that these discourses about the material culture and etiquette of eating reflect the economic and political context of 1970s Japan and (re)emergent tensions about national identity and the role of children’s diet and table manners in determining Japan’s future. Japan’s national school lunch program is a critical site of “making Japan.” Schoolchildren and teachers generally eat identical meals in their classrooms, serving and cleaning up after each other. Revived in 1946 by the Occupation, the program was nearly universal in public elementary and middle schools by the 1960s. Meals were mostly bread, milk, and soup, stew, etc. The spork was the standard utensil. Cheap, multipurpose, and hygienic, it was a rational mass-catering solution. In the mid-1970s, simultaneous to the introduction of rice to the menu, the spork became the villain in a morality play about children’s eating habits and the nation’s fate. Culturalist pundits warned that sporks hindered development of the special dexterity, cleverness, and sensitivity that made Japan superior among the nations of the world.","PeriodicalId":45423,"journal":{"name":"Food and Foodways","volume":"31 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41951139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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