Food history


Food history is an interdisciplinary field that examines the history and the cultural, economic, environmental, and sociological impacts of food and human nutrition. It includes famines and malnutrition. It is distinct from the more traditional field of culinary history, which focuses on the origin and recreation of specific recipes.

Anthropologists and historians

Since the 19th century, anthropologists have pioneered the study of the role of food in traditional societies through direct observation and by reconstructing behavior from artifacts recovered from historical sites. The topic remains a central part of current anthropology and archaeology research as typified by K.C. Chang at Harvard University. The systematic study of food culture by professional historians is a more recent development, inspired in large part by the French Annales school typified by Fernand Braudel. However, there have always been numerous popular historical accounts, as typified by Waverley Root.
The first journal in the field, Petits Propos Culinaires, was launched in 1979 and the first conference on the subject was the 1981 Oxford Food Symposium.

Politics of food

Historians and political scientists have explored many national and international political aspects of food history. For example, they have looked at food's role as a colonial tool in Africa and Asia; "McDonaldization"; the food dimensions of Mexican, Chinese and Italian diasporas; class dimension in terms of the meals served in upper, middle, and working class cafés; the Green Revolution that averted starvation in the Third World; and intense debates over Genetically modified food, and efforts to stop their importation.

Historiography

  • Asfora, Wanessa, and Gregorio Saldarriaga. "Recent Trends in Food History Research in Ibero-America: 2014-2016." Food and History 13.1-3 : 285-290.
  • Aymard, Maurice. "Toward the History of Nutrition: Some Methodological Rremarks" in Robert Forster, and Orest Ranum, eds. Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales, économies, sociétiés, civilizations pp.1–16.
  • Claflin, Kyri and Peter Scholliers, eds. Writing Food History, a Global Perspective
  • Counihan, Carole M. The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning, and Power.
  • De La Peña, Carolyn, and Benjamin N. Lawrance. "Introduction: Traversing the local/global and food/culture divides." Food and Foodways 19.1-2 : 1–10.
  • Freedman, Paul, et al. eds. Food in Time and Place: The American Historical Association Companion to Food History 17 scholarly reviews of worldwide historiography.
  • Iacovetta, Franca, Valerie J. Korinek, and Marlene Epp. Edible histories, cultural politics: Towards a Canadian food history.
  • Otter, Chris. "The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories", History Compass 10/11 : pp. 812–825, : 10.1111/hic3.12001
  • Peters Kernan, Sarah. "Recent Trends in Food History Research in the United States: 2017-19." Food & History, Vol. 18 Issue 1/2, pp 233–240.
  • Pilcher, Jeffrey M.. "Introduction" in The Oxford Handbook of Food History pp. xvii to xxviii; https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199729937.002.0007
  • Pilcher, Jeffrey M. "The embodied imagination in recent writings on food history." American Historical Review 121#3 : 861–887.
  • Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ed. Food History: Critical and Primary Sources 4 vol; reprints 76 primary and secondary sources.
  • Scholliers, Peter. " Twenty-five Years of Studying un Phénomène Social Total: Food History Writing on Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 10#3 pp 449–471 https://doi.org/10.2752/155280107X239881
  • Taylor, Lynne. "Food Riots Revisited" Journal of Social History 30#2 pp. 483–496
  • Woolgar, Christopher M. "Food and the Middle Ages." Journal of Medieval History 36.1 : 1–19.

    Journals

  • Petits Propos Culinaires, first journal in the field
  • Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment
  • Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
  • Food & History: multilingual scientific journal about the history and culture of food published by the
Category:Dinner
Category:Food science
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Category:Historical foods
Category:History of food and drink
Category:Meals