Food in world history
By: Jeffrey M. Pilcher.
Series: Themes in world history
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 132
Subjects: Food -- History; Food supply -- History
Description: Providing a comparative and comprehensive study of culinary cultures and consumption throughout the world from ancient times to present day, this book examines the globalization of food and explores the political, social and environmental implications of our changing relationship with food. Including numerous case studies from diverse societies and periods, Food in World History examines and focuses on: * how food was used to forge national identities in Latin America * the influence of Italian and Chinese Diaspora on the US and Latin America food culture * how food was fractured along class lines in the French bourgeois restaurant culture and working class cafes * the results of state intervention in food production * how the impact of genetic modification and food crises has affected the relationship between consumer and product. This concise and readable survey not only presents a simple history of food and its consumption, but also provides a unique examination of world history itself. --Publisher.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: The first world cuisine; title: The ingredients of change; title: The Columbian exchange; title: Sugar, spice, and blood; title: Nouvelle cuisines; title: Moral and political economies; title: The taste of modernity; title: The industrial kitchen; title: Cuisine and nation-building; title: Empires of food; title: Migrant cuisines; title: The global palate; title: Guns and butter; title: The green revolution; title: Mcdonaldization and its discontents; title: Culinary pluralism.